Case Study : Phar Mor 's Assets

The organizational structure of Phar-Mor was ineffective and lacked many control activities including: segregation of duties, authorization, documentary and IT controls. As a result, Phar-Mor’s president had a stronghold on certain upper level management and executives which gave him the opportunity to control the fraud and hide it from other members of the organization and supposedly Phar-Mor’s auditors, Coopers and Lybrand LLP.

This $490 million came from the netting manipulation when they offset their expenses with unrelated gains on the sale of assets. The geography manipulation allowed them to move millions of dollars to different sections of the income statement to “make the financials look the way we want to show them” said James Koenig, one of the primary forces behind the scandal. However, none of the fraudulent activities would have gone unknown for so long without the aid of the auditors, Arthur Anderson LLP, involved with Waste Management.

The Enron and WorldCom scandals were arguably the incidents that permanently changed the procedures for accounting controls. In response to these incidents, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 was passed. Once the knowledge of these scandals was made public, a number of subsequent accounting scandals were discovered in public companies such as Tyco International, HealthSouth, and American Insurance Group. In addition, a then-employee-owned company, Post, Buckley, Schuh & Jernigan, Inc. (dba PBS&J, now known as “Atkins North America, Inc.”), was also hit by a similar accounting scandal. Henceforth, a case study of PBS&J is presented where we will examine the fraudulent transactions that

Founders Michael “Mickey” Monus and David Shapira perpetrated financial fraud because there was conflict of interest involved with Monus supporting a World Basketball League with Phar-Mor’s revenue. With the help of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Patrick “Pat” Finn $10 million was hidden in World Basketball League that Monus had founded. This was done by overstating the company’s inventory and earnings. Also, within 10 years of establishment Phar-Mor had grown to 300 stores and 25,000 employees which resulted in Phar-Mor having to borrow millions to fund this growth (Bloomberg Business.1992)

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.”

Fraudulent financial reporting is one form of corporate corruption and may involve the manipulation of the documents used to record accounting transactions, the misrepresentation of accounting events or transactions, or the intentional misapplication of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) (Crumbley, Heitger, and Smith, 2013). Examples of fraudulent schemes befitting of this category abound and usually involve financial statement items that have been misclassified, omitted, overstated, undervalued, or prematurely recognized. One case involving CEO Bill Smith of Moonstay

Problem Identification: How should a company report, if at all, cash and non-cash transactions owed to an entity’s financial subsidiary?

It is not possible for the auditor to be 100% certain that he/she has obtained all evidence regarding all significant related party transactions, especially if management is trying to conceal something. However, the

In 2005, NIC was dissatisfied with a decision the independent audit firm made to replace an engagement Partner. Although, nearly complete with the Audit, the new Partner was not willing to rely on the finding of the previous Partner, which prolonged the audit (Weirich). Deloitte had been NIC auditor since 1908 and the business community was shocked to learn of the termination of their relationship. After 98 years as their accountants Navistar filed a lawsuit against Deloitte for 500 million dollars for allegations of malpractice that caused the manufacturing company to revise its financial statements. According to law360, “Navistar claimed that Deloitte accountants misrepresented them between the years of 2002

4. The auditors have the responsibility to search for related-party transactions because of materiality. AU 334 & AS 18 gives a standard for related parties that auditors have to perform during an audit. One way to search for related parties is to examine the transactions between different parties and trace to locate the customers and or suppliers. Another way to locate related parties is money that comes into the business from lenders and or borrowers. Audit procedures that should be applied by discussing with the BOD of any transactions that may be related, examine closely each account and to audit intercompany accounts.

In the case of Phar-Mor fraud, the company was involved in cover up and some accounts were created to hide the fraudulent activities. Bad inventory counts in the stores were made to help with the cover up and deceit about activities that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. (Williams, S.L., 2011)

The manipulation of accounts fraud scheme is generally fulfilled by employees in top management positions and it usually involves making understatements or overstatements on financial statements making it very hard to detect. The process followed as Troy Adkins, (2015) explains is very simple. The financial statements are either overstated to show different figures in the earnings on the income statements making them look better than they actually are or the earnings in the current periods are manipulated in such a way that the revenue is understated or they inflate the current year’s expenses. The second process includes making the financial statements look worse than they are in reality. Deloitte, (2009) explains a number of ways which the accounts are manipulated where as one of the ways is to manipulate the reported earnings directly. They further explained that overstating the

The auditing firm has been in engagement with the company throughout the period when the fraud was being committed. One of the common and clear indicators of possible fraud was the company’s cash flow statement. The company experienced positive growth in its profits from the year 1996 through to the year 1998. However, a close analysis of the cash flow statement shows that the company had experienced negative figures of cash flow from both operating and investing activities and positive cash flow from financing activities which would not sufficiently offset the negative cash flows from operating and investing. It is therefore evident

Phar-Mor was known as one of the major discount chain retailers in the late 1980’s - early 1990’s. It was founded by Mickey Monus, a gambler in nature, who with the help of senior management was “cooking the books” for years to cover up his loses. The reason why senior management agreed to do this fraud is the belief in unique ability of their leader to fix everything later on. This case is known as one of the biggest accounting frauds in the corporate history of the U.S. This paper will analyze who was affected by this fraud, the motives behind it and what systems of control failed to prevent it.

Integrity might cause problems in this case as the main persons in this organization are family members and there are also family members with high functions in the bank and JRW Realty with which Prefab has close business relations. Moreover, the members of the audit and compensation committee are not all independent of the firm and therefore, the likelihood of fraud or material misstatements in the financial statements is quite high. The profitability of the engagement to the auditor should be considered as well. Due to the extensive investigation the auditor has to do, especially due to the relationships between the people at the top management and the independence of the audit and compensation committee, the profitability might be a concern. Furthermore, from the analysis of the business risks of accepting the audit it can be concluded that there are several severe problem areas in which fraud or material misstatements in the financial statements can take place. At the Prefab Sprout Company the risk of fraud or material misstatements is considered to be very high and therefore, the engagement should not be accepted.