Crazy Eddie Case

In this case, there are several conspirators who is involved in the fraud receiving punishment from either SEC or federal government. Robert Levin, the AMRE executive and major stockholder, and Dennie D.Brown, the company’s chief accounting officer, were subject to the punishment in the form of a huge amount of fine by the SEC and the federal government. This punishment came from reasons. After AMRE going public, the company have the obligation to publish its financial reports but its performance did not meet expectation. The investigation by SEC shows that Robert took the first step of this scam, fearing the sharp drop of AMRE’s stock price because of the poor performance of company. He abetted Brown, to practice three main schemes to present a false appearance of profitable and pleasant financial reports. Firstly, they instructed Walter W.Richardson, the company’s vice president of data processing, to enter fictitious unset leads in the lead bank and they originally deferred the advertising cost mutiplying “cost per lead” and “unset leads” amount, so that they deferred a portion of its advertising costs in an asset account. The capitalizing of advertising expenses allowed them to inflate the net income for the first quarter of fiscal 1988. Secondly, at the end of the third and fourth quarters of fiscal 1988, they added fictitious inventory to AMRE’s ending inventory records, and prepared bogus inventory count sheets for the auditors. Thirdly, they overstated the percentage

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.

The one pattern within the data that appears to be inconsistent yet if the auditors had established an internal control systems would be Monus the founder moving so freely throughout every aspect of the company with no one checking his movements. From choosing what properties to purchase to purchasing supplies. In any company there should be segregation of duties. For example, the person making the deposits should not be the person writing the checks. Had there been stipulations made it would not have been so convenient to commit the

The AICPA published the generally accepted auditing standards (GAAS). GAAS are those guidelines which auditors must follow while conducting an audit of a company's financial statements. It must also be stated in the audit report that the audit was conducted following GAAS.

Arthur Andersen (AA) contributed to the Enron disaster when it has failed to the management by failing to have Enron establish and enforce its own internal control. There has been flaws to AA‘s internal control. There has been assumption that AA partners were too motivated by revenue recognition thus, overlooking several criteria when providing their services to Enron. Additionally, AA also recognised the retention of audit clients as vital and a loss of any clients would be disadvantaged to an auditor’s career. In AA internal control, the person who is able to make most of the decisions is the person who is most concerned about the revenue or losses of the client’s company.

The executives of the company failed to exercise proper judgement on behalf of their principals. The senior officers and professional accountant acted in their own self-interest rather than for the benefit of the shareholders. A director is legally expected to make judgements in the best interest of the company and its shareholders, and perhaps some benefits will flow to other stakeholders and the public interest (Brooks & Dunn 2014). Moreover, both HealthSouth and Enron were charged with accounting fraud, as HealthSouth cheated on accounts and falsified documents, and Enron kept huge debts off the balance sheets and led to

family members holding key positions in his company. No amount of company oversight could have been effective under these circumstances. There were no checks and balances

Businesses, investors, creditors rely on accounting ethics. The accounting profession requires honesty, consistency with industry standards, and compliance with laws and regulations. The ethics increase the responsibility and integrity of accounting professionals, and public trust. The ethical requirements influence the management behavior and decision-making. The financial scandal of Enron and Arthur Anderson demonstrates the failure of fundamental ethical framework, such as off-balance sheet transactions, misrepresentation of financial statements, inaccurate disclosure, manipulations with earnings, etc. The confronted accounting profession and concern for ethics in businesses forced regulators to revise the conceptual framework of accounting processes.

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

2) Much of Crazy Eddie’s fraud can be attributed to the overstatement of inventory and the understatement on accounts payable, not to mention the vast number of executives who were involved in the scheme. Specific audit procedures, if performed, could have led to the detection of the following accounting irregularities:

(1)It’s against the SEC laws and inconsistent with GAAP standards; unfair to stockholders; uncertainty about how long the company can cover up the deficiencies which keep growing with the company; honesty and integrity are challenged. (2)Loyalty to Eddie and the company is challenged. No more personal financial benefit can be generated from the rising stock price and the CFO position any more. Investors are still kept in the dark. (3) The company’s stock price may drop significantly when investors learn about the truth; company may face bankruptcy due to loss of public confidence. The wealth of Eddie’s whole family will shrink seriously. (4) While Eddie may

There were several red flags in Crazy Eddie’s financial statements. The company’s higher-than-normal level of audit risk can be determined by completing a ratio analysis of the financial statements. An analysis of key ratios over the period of 1984 to 1987 would have resulted in red flags. Crazy Eddie’s change in assets between this period is one red flag that an auditor should have noticed. Short-term investments had a zero balance until 1986 when it dramatically

A number of financial statement frauds went undetected from auditors in past and attracted a high profile attention. The businessmen add fake assets or transfer the assets of companies to their personal assets and result in accounting scandals when the affected companies are bankrupted or are even close of bankruptcy. Just to mention a few names, accounting scandals of Enron, AOL Time Warner and Xerox are among the hottest accounting scandals of the century. This means that despite presence of professional auditors accounting scandals happen and there is a need to learn from the mistakes of the auditors who overlooked these activities. In this report the case study of Xerox is analyzed in detail to highlight violations of accounting principles and present an example from which lessons can be learnt for the future.

According to ICAEW, auditor independence mainly refers to the independence of the external auditor from parties that have an interest in the financial statements of the business being audited. It requires having both integrity and an objective manner to the auditing process. In order for the concept to be deemed effective the auditor needs to carry out their work freely. One of the main purposes of auditing is to increase credibility of the entity’s’ financial statements, as they have expressed their own professional opinion on the truth and fair view in accordance with the proper accounting standards used. This is only possible if the audit is made with reasonable assurance that it has come from an independent source and has not been influenced by other parties, such as managers, directors or by conflict of interest.

The lack of independence for external auditors will lead to the neglect of auditing risks (William R.K., 2003), which are the main reasons for the failure of certified accountants and professional accounting organizations. The consequence of the external auditors deprived of independence would be very serious. And there are many cases, which aroused by the failure of external auditors and most are related to the lack of independence. One famous example is the bankruptcy of Enron and the role played by its external auditor, Arthur Andersen (Todd, S., 2003). Arthur Andersen was once one of the biggest accounting companies in the world, and was canceled for the involvement in the Enron bankruptcy scandal.