A Short Note On The, Inc.

As with Enron, the more that it was investigated the worse it became. There was fraudulent reporting on the balance sheet and income statement some that was found after the fact during the post-bankruptcy audit ( (Romar & Calkins, 2006). The total of the fraudulently report amounts was approximately $73.7 billion in overstated revenues and $5.8 billion in overstated assets for a total of $79.5 billion in overstatements in less than a two year period (Romar & Calkins, 2006). The biggest difference with WorldCom is that it restructured and was bought by

Cynthia Cooper was contemplating over this whole debacle with what was the right decision to make with her discovering “almost four billion dollars in questionable accounting entries”. (Mead) While contemplating something crossed her mind on deciding if she should speak up and become known as a whistleblower, is that her findings could cost WorldCom’s credibility, about seventy thousand employees would lose their jobs, and also pension funds that were loaded with WorldCom stock. Her job as an internal auditor she had a responsibility to WorldCom’s Stockholders and also her own conscious to do something like as the fraud that was uncovered was so

The situation began to unfold when the Securities and Exchange Commission was probing into a restatement of the company's stock price. Kozlowski's business practices raised some eyebrows. In 1999, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) initiated an inquiry into Tyco's practices that resulted in a restatement of the company's earnings. In January, 2002, questionable accounting practices came to light. Tyco had forgiven a $19 million, no-interest loan to Kozlowski in 1998 and had paid the CEO's income taxes on the loan. It was found that he company's stock price had been overrated, and that the CEO and CFO had sold 100 million dollars' worth of shares, and then stated to the public that he was holding them, which was a misrepresentation and misled the investors.

Sen. Sarbanes's bill passed the Senate Banking Committee on the 18th of June 2002, by a vote of 17 to 4. On the 25th of June 2002, WorldCom revealed it had overstated its earnings by more than $3.8 billion during the past 15 months, primarily by wrongly accounting for its operating costs. Sen. Sarbanes introduced Senate Bill 2673 to the full Senate on the same day and it passed 97 to0 less than three weeks later on the 15th of July

The stakeholders in this fraudulent case of WorldCom consist of Bernie Ebbers, Scott Sullivan, Buford Yates, David Myers, Cynthia Cooper, and Betty Vinson belong to the company. While the other stakeholders would consist of the creditors, Andersen (accounting firm), investors, and the public. This fraudulent act committed within WorldCom impacted every single stakeholder in a way. Either in a negative or positive way, most of the impact was caused with harm to everyone. The main individuals such as Ebbers, Sullivan, and Vinson all had major consequences as resulting with the fraud. Criminal trials were a major result with their fraudulent acts within WorldCom. Cooper was a lifesaver by most of the community. Aside from these individuals, the rest also got affected by the fraud. Investments conducted by the investors were all lost within the fraud process. The impact towards much of the image for Andersen was ruined. Many of the public lost their trust on the honesty and professionalism of Andersen and other certified public accounting firms. The entire employees from the top management to the smaller group of workers stayed unemployed and some with criminal punishment.

Another corporate accounting scandal that occurred in the United States before the Sarbanes-Oxley Act came into effect was the WorldCom scandal in 2002. Seventeen thousand employees were fired and $3.8 billion dollars in profit were removed from their accounting books after an internal audit discovered improper expense accounting in 2001 and 2002. This improper accounting inflated the cash flow so the company would not report a net loss, only a net gain (Hancock, 2002).

A.L. Conner Inc. is a home inspection company that is located in Midlothian, Virginia. Art Conner, the home inspector specialist has over 25 years experience as a home inspector. The things included in a home inspection are the structural condition and basement, electrical, plumbing, water heater, heating and cooling, kitchen and appliances, general interior, and general exterior. A.L. Conner, Inc. is certified by the American Society of Home

Trinity Industries Inc. is a “diverse industrial company that has managed to tap a variety of market-leading businesses providing products and services to the energy, transportation, chemical, and construction sectors” (Trinity Industrial INC. – about us). Trinity’ 2015 10K annual report was used to derive the following information. Their main headquarters is located in Texas, their state of incorporation is Delaware, and they have been publicly traded since 1958 on the New York Stock Exchange, under the symbol “TRN”. Trinity employs over twenty thousand individuals primarily in the United States, and Mexico and maintains a distinct group of clients through their five segments. The first Rail Group, which is the heart of the company earned

This leads into my second pressure, which deals with personal lives. Employees were receiving tremendous benefits due to the company’s great performance. However, if the company did not improve, people’s salaries would be cut or even worse, their jobs would be cut. That is why so many people were willing to engage in the fraud, because they felt WorldCom was supplying a salary and benefits that other companies would not be able to match. Betty Vinson was a prime example. She knew that releasing line accruals was wrong, but needed to

Due to these criminal activities, many top executives were convicted fraud and sentenced to spend time in prison. WorldCom activities did not align with the company's overall mission and goals. The actions taken by management were not in the best interest of the customer instead they were consumed with acquisitions and increasing the value of WorldCom Shares. The management also should have considered general accounting practices during their strategic planning. Furthermore, create procedures that protect all stakeholders within the firm.

On March 15, 2005 former CEO of WorldCom, Bernard Ebbers sat in a federal courtroom waiting for the verdict. As the former CEO of WorldCom, Ebbers was accused of being personally responsible for the financial destruction of the communications giant. An internal investigation had uncovered $11 billion dollars in fraudulent accounting practices. Later a second report in 2003 found that during Ebber’s 2001 tenure as CEO, the company had over-reported earnings and understated expenses by an astonishing $74.5 billion dollars (Martin, 2005, para 3). This report included the mismanagement of funds, unethical lending practices among its top executives, and false bookkeeping which led to loss of tens of thousands of its employees.

WorldCom was the ultimate success story among telecommunications companies. Bernard Ebbers took the reigns as CEO in 1985 and turned the company into a highly profitable one, at least on the outside. In 2002, Ebbers resigned, WorldCom admitted fraud and the company declared bankruptcy (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, &Wright 2007). The company was at the heart of one of the biggest accounting frauds seen in the United States. The demise of this telecommunications monster can be accredited to many factors including their aggressive-defensive organizational culture based on power and the bullying tactics that they employed. However, this fiasco could have been prevented if WorldCom had designed a system of checks and balances that would have

P., & Coulter, M. K., 2012, p. 152), although it seems none of WorldCom’s executive management team seemed to feel this way. Many steps could have been taken to prevent the collapse of the WorldCom empire, but only a few key managers held the power and none were willing to take action. One control that did not exist in WorldCom’s culture was allowing both internal and external auditors access to all necessary documents and statements. Without full disclosure of these items no one could see how many risks the company was taking by making fraudulent entries against their books. Also the external audit team, Arthur Anderson, held WorldCom as one of its best customers which was a major conflict of interest. This relationship lead to many fundamental mistakes from Anderson not keeping pressure on WorldCom and getting all vital information that would prove how poorly the company was being run. Had they been operating transparently, auditors and employees would have seen the accounting deception and could potentially have stopped it prior to the company’s collapse. In addition, by employing multiple auditing firms many of the mistakes being made may have been caught and discontinued from the beginning.

The perfect fraud storm occurred between the years 2000 and 2002 involving two of the largest energy and telecom corporations in the United States: Enron and WorldCom. It was determined that both organizations fraudulently overstated assets, created assets from expenses or overstated revenues, costing investors billions of dollars and resulting in both organizations declaring bankruptcy (Albrecht, Albrecht, Albrecht & Zimbelman, 2012). Nine factors contributed to fraud triangle creating this perfect fraud storm, and assisting management in concealing the fraud until exposed and rectified.

This paper will discuss the corporation WorldCom, a telecommunications company that was based in Mississippi. In 2002 WorldCom was involved in one of the largest accounting scandals in the United States. WorldCom inflated its assets by nearly $11 billion dollars, which eventually lead to about 30,000 employees losing their jobs, as well as, 180-billion dollars in losses for its investors. The CEO at the time of this accounting fraud was Bernard Ebbers and led to him receiving a 25-year prison sentence. This paper will go into the details of how WorldCom was able to manipulate its accounting records to deceive its internal auditors, as well as, investors.