An Evaluative Report on Company Fraud
How does a company truly know if they have accurate check and balancing in place to detect malicious activity that may impact financial statements? The main obligation for the sufficiency and release in the company’s annual statements resides within the management of the company (Whittington & Pany, 2014). It is a critical component, for management to have a strong financial management system that is documented, meaningful and well-considered accounting policies and procedures manual (Reineking, Chamberlain, Rudolph, & Smith, 2013); this has been demonstrated through other published audits as company have provided documentation around this policies and procedures. Additionally, all companies should create operational internal controls to improve the accuracy and validity of financial data and serve as a mechanism to defend the company’s financial assets, and to prevent fraud. The success of a company is directly influenced by procedures and policies, implementation of internal controls, checks and balancing, annual auditing, which all aid in ensuring that the company is acting in accordance to rules and regulation set forth, furthermore reflecting in positive results and successful audit reviews.
The Leslie Fay Company History
The Leslie Fay Company, founded in 1947 by Fred Pomerantz and was a family–run business with a distinctive style (Macdonald & Bounds, 1997). The company was named after Fred Pomerantz’s daughter Leslie Fay
At an early age, Barry Minkow was introduced to the carpet cleaning industry by his mother who worked part time as a telephone solicitor for a small carpet cleaning company. This insight of the industry allowed Minkow to understand that the carpet cleaning industry was one which had very few barriers to entry, no licensing requirements, and required only a small amount of capital to enter. Also, because of these few barriers to entry, the industry has historically attracted a larger number of faulty startups in comparison to other industries. At 16 years old, Minkow started his carpet cleaning company under the name of ZZZZ Best Company. Right away he had a difficult time with customer
All businesses and organisations have to check to see that the information they have stored is accurate. For example, the money coming in and going out have to be correctly recorded otherwise it will look as if the company has not made much profit and it can affect the share prices of the company, affect the employees as the company might not be able to pay the employees and will have to cut down on staff, lenders will not agree to lend money, etc.
The chances of failures can be decreased by executing the checks on the systems. These keep an eye on the systems preventing risks from occurring, and these checks are avoided as the interior controls. The motivation behind the inner controls is to keep the organization safe from risks associated with the modernized accounting-system risks. Organizations change their manual accounting systems to computerized accounting systems for different reasons, this incorporates the points of interest, and the explanation behind utilizing electronic accounting information is instinct. The organizations embrace the policies of their
The amount listed is the enrollment agreement was 10,020.00 which gives a difference of :
L’Tanya Allen Harris, the housing inspector, encouraged me to bring this issue to the Fraud Department. Recently, I spoke with her and she said that I should bring this up to the Fraud Department. She agrees that the utility receipt proves that there is an oral agreement between the landlord and tenant. Also, she states that the fraud department can help the landlord with this particular issue.
According to Investopedia online (2015), Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX Act) is defined as a “legislative response to a number of corporate scandals that sent shockwaves through the world financial markets.” Prior to SOX, the United States faced major financial scandals in the American history. Some of the biggest financial scandals involved such high-profile companies as Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, and Arthur Andersen. Two types of fraud exist in the corporate world. First is fraudulent financial reporting which is defined as an intentional misstatement of amounts or disclosures with the intent to deceive users. The other fraud is misappropriation of assets which is defined as a fraud that involves theft of an entity’s assets. The following will
In order to be successful in business, a company must be able to track their assets. This tracking system is typically done by a bookkeeper and must be reliable in order to be effective. The way a company ensures their financial records are reliable is by setting up a system of internal controls. Internal controls allow a company to protect its assets from fraud and theft as well as ensuring records are kept accurately by reducing errors and irregularities (Keisco, Kimmel and Weygandt, 2008). Internal controls work by assigning responsibility, separating duties to provide checks and balances, hiring an independent verification agent and through the use of technology and physical controls. In many instances, internal controls are
The Leslie Fay Companies, which is a manufacturer of women’s apparel, was founded by Fred
Many organizations have been in the news over the past few years due to accounting ethical breaches that have affected their customers, employees, and the general public. I searched the Internet to locate a story in the news that depicts an accounting ethical breach. I selected Krispy Kreme. I enjoy their hot donuts and was curious to learn more about how they played with the numbers. For some reason I always want to dig into the trickery behind the manipulation of financial statements.
The video “Cooking the Books” discussed the ZZZZ Best case of fraud, it tells how and why fraud was perpetrated by Barry Minkow and why it was undetected for so long. According to the video, ZZZZ Best was founded by Barry Minkow in 1982; when he was sixteen years old, it started as a carpet cleaning company. But, due to high competition in the industry, low entry barriers, and bad internal control, this young entrepreneur started to have cash flow problems, thus creating a shortage of working capital. As a result of the financial pressure, he started to commit fraud by creating false accounts receivable and sales, false documents (using photocopies of real
Albert Miano was the trust facilities supervisor for nearly 15 years when his fraudulent activities were finally detected. It is estimated that he embezzled somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 million dollars from a magazine publisher over the course of his employment with a simple false billing scheme (Wells, 2014, pp. 106-107). “What measures could have been taken to prevent the fraud committed by Albert Miano or detect it earlier?” (class question)
Fraudulent, erroneous, and illegal acts committed by a public company, usually at a managerial or executive level, have been a very serious problem for many years and have prompted development of strict and updated regulations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, in an attempt to prevent these occurrences. Unfortunately, these new or updated regulations are not enough to prevent these acts from happening, thus not alleviating the auditors of their responsibility to detect fraud. Some methods that management and auditors can employ to prevent and detect fraud, errors, and illegal acts are: improving knowledge, improving skills,
An important function of the accounting field is to provide external users of financial statements with assurance that the financial information being presented is both reliable and accurate. This basic function of accounting is so important that there is an entire field of experts, called auditors, dedicated to assuring its proper performance. Throughout history there have been many instances in which the basic equilibrium between an institution and current/potential investor has been threatened due to a lack of accountability and trust between the two parties. This issue has been the catalyst for many discussions regarding the proper procedures a firm should follow in order to provide
A business can not work out without an account system, which includes internal. Internal controls are used by companies to make sure financial information is accurate and valid. Strong internal controls are signs of a financially healthy company and protect the company’s integrity. Strong internal controls can also increase a company’s profitability. There are several types of internal controls that companies used to protect themselves such as: Segregation of duties, asset purchases, supervisor review, internal audits and adequate documents and records. This paper will discuss several topics from a case study about And the Fraud
A company prepares financial statement to provide information about its financial position and performance. This information is in turn used by a wide range of stakeholders (such as investors, banks, customers, suppliers etc) in making economic decisions with respect to respective economic interest in the company. Typically, in terms of ownership by investment in shares of the company, shareholders though own the company but do not manage it. Therefore, the shareholder and other such stakeholders to get comfort in taking sound decision need independent assurance from the auditors that the financial statements reflect true and fair view of the company affairs in all material respects. Hence, in order to enhance the level of