Forecasting Fraud Case

Appendix A.2 also lists several factors that could provide opportunities for management/employees to commit fraud. One factor that could lead to fraud is if, “There is ineffective monitoring of management as a result of: domination of management by a single person or small group without compensating controls.” The auditors should have taken notice of the lack of controls and segregation of duties with respect to Phar-Mor’s

2. What procedures can auditors perform to detect fraudulent entries made during the consolidation process?

5-29 (Assertions) In planning the audit of a client 's inventory, an auditor identified the following

With different industry definitions and viewpoints, fraud can be a tough issue for audit committee members to grasp for oversight purposes. The legal obligations of audit committee members have intensified because their standard duty of care and loyalty to the entity has increased in light of management fraud activities.

Professional auditing standards discuss the three key “conditions” that are typically present when a financial fraud occurs and identify a lengthy list of “fraud risk factors.”

2 Managing fraud risk: The audit committee perspective Fraud in a fi nancial statement audit

f) To evaluate the material misstatement in the accounts, I think both of the consolidated income statement and the three financial statements are useful. We need to use the information properly from all the financial statements. However the consolidated income statement is the most useful one. If there is a significant change in an account balance comparing with preceding two years, the auditor will examine whether there a material misstatement exists. For instance, the bad debt expense as a percent of net sales in 2011, 2010 and 2009 are 0.56%, 0.70% and 0.69%, respectively. There should

Evaluating the Reasonableness of the Accounting Estimates, and Determining Misstatements: the auditor shall evaluate, based on the audit evidence, whether the accounting estimates in the financial statements are either

1a) What should the auditor consider when determining whether an account should be considered significant?

b. Yes, the auditor should have discovered this defalcation. The defalcation would most likely have been uncovered by performing a simple analytical test of multiplying the asset amount (certificate of deposit) by the applicable interest rate and comparing it with interest income.

There are various procedures that could be taken in to account that would, if properly implemented, would have detected the frauds that occurred within the companies. There are many control risks that should have been taking regarding inventory along with preliminary audit strategies for the inventory and substantive test to be done that would have raised many flags during the typical audits as well as in depth ones.

d. “The auditor's reliance on substantive tests to achieve an audit objective related to a particular assertion may be derived from tests of details, from analytical procedures, or from a combination of both. The decision about which procedure or procedures to use to achieve a particular audit objective is based on the auditor's judgment on the expected effectiveness and efficiency of the available procedures. For significant risks of material misstatement, it is unlikely that audit evidence obtained from substantive analytical procedures alone will be sufficient (PCAOB, AS 2305.09).”

B) I think the auditors should have equal responsibility for detecting material misstatements due to error and fraud. It’s their job to make sure the financial statements are as accurate as possible. Although it may be hard to check all the information from a company it’s the responsibility of the auditor to sign off that everything is in check.

To prevent these kinds of situations, independent auditors must play a key role in looking for obvious red flags. The situation involving the

Following the risk assessment procedures, substantive procedures are designed and conducted to detect material misstatements of relevant assertions. Substantive procedures include analytical procedures and tests of details. Analytical procedures involve evaluations of financial statement information by a study of relationships among financial and nonfinancial data. Tests of details may be divided into three types. One test is the test of account balances to address whether there are misstatements in the ending balance of an account. In the case of Crazy Eddie, auditors should have put greater attention to inventory and accounts payable accounts. The second test is a test of classes of transactions to determine whether particular types of transactions have been properly accounted for during the period. Crazy Eddies fraudulently classified these transshipping transactions as retail sales to inflate its sales revenue and continue growth at existing stores. A key ratio for retailers is to compare growth in existing stores to growth from new stores. The third and final test is a test of disclosures to evaluate whether financial statement disclosures are properly presented. Crazy Eddie prepared bogus debit memos of over $20 million to understate accounts payable.