Ethics Assignment: Worldcom Case

The problem solving methods that might be helpful to assist Jerry in making an ethical decision would be to establish trust with the patient and become aware of the problem. Then analyze the problems and decide on a plan with the patient. He will then want to make sure he reinforces the commitment to the patient and activate the plan. Last, he will follow through with the task and monitor everything until the situation is taken care of.

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

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

In addition, associated with the misapplication of accounting methods, the financial industry has been plagued with one disaster after another involving numerous scandals from top leading American companies. Consequently, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed in 2002 compromising eleven sections that are generated to insure the responsibilities of the company’s managers and executives. This act identifies criminal penalties for particular unethical practices and currently has new policies that a corporation must follow in their financial reporting. The following examples describe some of biggest accounting methods as a result of the greed and the outrage of the ethical and financial misconduct by the senior management of public corporations.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act and the Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act, was signed into law on July 30, 2002, by President George W. Bush as a direct response to the corporate financial scandals of Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco International (Arens & Elders, 2006; King & Case, 2014;Rezaee & Crumbley, 2007). Fraudulent financial activities and substantial audit failures like those of Arthur Andersen and Ernst and Young had destroyed public trust and investor confidence in the accounting profession. The debilitating consequences of these perpetrators and their crimes summoned a massive effort by the government and the accounting profession to fight all forms of corruption through regulatory, legal, auditing, and accounting changes.

Nurses are faced with ethical issues and dilemmas on a regular basis. Nurses must understand his or her values and morals to be able to deal adequately with the ethical issues he or she is faced with. Some ethical issues nurses are exposed to may be more difficult than others and the ethical decision making process is learned over time.

The word “fraud” was magnified in the business world around the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002. No one had seen anything like it. Enron, one of the country’s largest energy companies, went bankrupt and took down with it Arthur Andersen, one of the five largest audit and accounting firms in the world. Enron was followed by other accounting scandals such as WorldCom, Tyco, Freddie Mac, and HealthSouth, yet Enron will always be remembered as one of the worst corporate accounting scandals of all time. Enron’s collapse was brought upon by the greed of its corporate hierarchy and how it preyed upon its faithful stockholders and employees who invested so much of their time and money into the company. Enron seemed to portray that the goal of corporate America was to drive up stock prices and get to the peak of the financial mountain by any means necessary. The “Conspiracy of Fools” is a tale of power, crony capitalism, and company greed that lead Enron down the dark road of corporate America.

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.

Build a mirror CRM production system over the next two weeks so that a rebuilding of the main CRM system could occur to plug security holes and assure that another DoS attack would not be successful.

When looking at the IMA Statement of Ethical Professional Practice, there were some steps that Betty Vinson could have taken to avoid any of the punishments that were given to her. Before following any of the IMA’s recommended actions of recourse, Vinson should have referred to WorldCom’s recognized policies on ethical behavior and follow the actions that they have written and approved to take. If WorldCom’s executives still were demanding her to falsify the journal entries after following her company’s policy, then the IMA would state that she should have discussed the issue with your immediate supervisor or the next level of management if her supervisor was involved in the unethical activity. One important thing to note with this, however, is that “Contact with levels above the immediate superior should be initiated only with your superior’s knowledge, assuming he or she is not involved (Institute of Management Accountants, 2005).

Issue 3: Has Patricia improperly used company information to gain advantage for herself and/or her sister?

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.

c) Why had other Max & Co. accountants, specifically Kate Conrad, not perpetuated fraud at Rusher prior to Anna’s hiring?

The CFO Scott Sullivan forced his henchman, David Myers to see to it that accruals were released from various business units including UUNET. When Myers ordered the accrual release from UUNET’s CFO, David Schneeman, he met resistance. Myers got angry with Schneeman and ultimately found another person to complete the accrual release in order to appease Sullivan, who worked for Ebbers (Kaplan & Kiron, 2007). Bullying was another tactic of this company. Workplace bullies typically target independent employees who refuse to be subservient (Weidmer, 2011). For instance, when Cynthia Cooper, an internal auditor, was made aware of a questionable transfer, she brought it up at an audit committee meeting. After the meeting, Sullivan screamed at her and told her to stay away from that account (Kaplan & Kiron, 2007). Additionally, victims of workplace bullying may experience various symptoms such as weight loss and difficulty sleeping (Namie, 2003). This is exactly what happened to accounting manager Betty Vinson. Sullivan bullied Vinson into releasing accruals. Vinson was eager to maintain her status and did as requested, more than once. Vinson began to lose weight and sleep due to the bullying she experienced and the guilt she carried (Kaplan & Kiron, 2007).

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.