Former Auditor Sues Bank Of Internet

In California, eight Wells Fargo employees were convicted of committing fraud facing a maximum penalty of 30 years in federal prison, also each employee is charged with at least one count of aggravated identity theft, which carries another two years in prison (https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/eight-people-charged-bank-fraud-scheme-allegedly-used-information-stolen-wells-fargo). In the wake of the scandal, over 5,300 employees were fired over the course of five years for their involvements in the creation of the fake accounts. Some of the initial whistleblowers of the scandal faced retaliation by being terminated for speaking out against the orders to open fake accounts. CNN Money correspondent Matt Egan spoke with Bill Bado, a former employee of Wells Fargo, who has not been able to security another banking securities job since his termination for calling the Ethics Hotline to report the fraudulent activities.

In this instance, Griffith would not be sheltered from retaliation under the traditional state and federal whistleblower laws. Federal laws generally protect those that disclose fraud against the government and state law NY Code 740 covers private sector and only when the complaint has been brought to the supervisor first. In the complaint against the State of New York et al the District Court ruled that Griffith’s first amendment rights and first amendment retaliation claims would not be summarily dismissed.

Overview of the Case: The Securities and Exchange Commission claims Mark D. Begelman misused proprietary information regarding the merger of Bluegreen Corporation with BFC Financial Corporation. Mr. Begelman allegedly learned of the acquisition through a network of professional connections known as the World Presidents’ Organization (Maglich). Members of this organization freely share non-public business information with other members in confidence; however, Mr. Begelman allegedly did not abide by the organization’s mandate of secrecy and leveraged private information into a lucrative security transaction. As stated in the summary of the case by the SEC, “Mark D. Begelman, a member of the World Presidents’ Organization (“WPO”), abused

While Pao may have been motivated in part by the desire to increase public awareness, one of her primary interests must have been to the desire resolve her personal grievance, which resulted from the way she’d been treated during her tenure at Kleiner Perkins. That Pao had her day in court to address these issues is somewhat rare. Evidence suggests that attorneys accept few of the cases brought forward by employees (Mahony & Klaas, 2007). Most who find themselves with a grievance are left to the dispute resolution processes established by their companies, or with no course of action at all.

This paper has gone over the lawsuit that was filed by the EEOC. It also went over who the EEOC is and what their role is in the lawsuit. It also went over how the EEOC’s press release and the Minneapolis/ St. Paul Business Journal articles different. I have learned that

On May 8, 2013, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff issued a two-page ruling that dismissed the claims in the lawsuit seeking penalties under the False Claims Act, but allowed the claims that sought penalties under Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA) to advance. The relevance of the False Claims Act and the FIRREA Law will be further explored in this case. (Viswanatha, Aruna, 2013)

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.

Jackson and Raftos (1997) referred to whistle blowing as an avenue of last resort. Employees find themselves in these situations when the authorities at their organisations have failed to take actions on reported issues affecting that organisation. Wimot (2000) likened whistleblowing to a spectrum. At one end of this spectrum whistleblowing would only cause minimal pain and scars on the stakeholders and organisation while on the other end is the worst scenario where the whistleblowing effects are turbulent and often experienced to be negative to all those involved (ibid).

It is not my recommendation that ABC wait for the EEOC to perform investigation and file suit against the company. In recent history these proceedings become public affairs and will reflect poorly on ABC and its management regardless of the court’s ruling. ABC’s management should begin mediation with David to prevent suit being filed with the goal of settlement outside of court with ABC’s remedial options including:

In this paper, I will identify security threats that Bank of America faces today. In addition, I will describe the techniques and processes used to identify the vulnerabilities and threats, describe risks to the information and related vulnerabilities within Bank of America when utilizing components of the web. Discussions on BoA safeguard against legal issues will be addressed followed by the types of social data that potentially cause problems for this bank institute. In conclusion, I will explain the legal, ethical, and regulatory requirements Bank of America utilize for the protection of the organization.

The statements below are the impacts of the internet on the competitive landscape of corporate banking:

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.

WorldCom was the ultimate success story among telecommunications companies. Bernard Ebbers took the reigns as CEO in 1985 and turned the company into a highly profitable one, at least on the outside. In 2002, Ebbers resigned, WorldCom admitted fraud and the company declared bankruptcy (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, &Wright 2007). The company was at the heart of one of the biggest accounting frauds seen in the United States. The demise of this telecommunications monster can be accredited to many factors including their aggressive-defensive organizational culture based on power and the bullying tactics that they employed. However, this fiasco could have been prevented if WorldCom had designed a system of checks and balances that would have

From the time of WorldCom’s inception there always seemed to be a tradition in management as if the company was only 100 or so employees. There was a “good old boys” mentality among the limited few running the company and if you were outside that circle then were told only what they wanted you to hear. An unspoken rule among employees was to do what you were told without questions or risk the consequences. One example of this situation occurred when senior management member Gene Morse told an employee “If you show those damn numbers to the f****ing auditors, I’ll throw you out the window” (Kaplan, R.S., & Kiron, D., 2007, p. 3).WorldCom showed no concern regarding an employee’s need and obligation to voice concerns on matters related

The company faced issues related to the methods it used in investigating the unauthorized disclosure of nonpublic information to the press by the members of its board of directors. Apparently, Hewlett Packard hired some investigators in the case. The investigator used various techniques such as pre-texting- calling the telephone company and pose as someone else with an aim of obtaining that person’s information or records. The company and the board chairman, Patricia Dunn, were defending the company’s investigations about the director and the journalist. They cited that there were aggressive efforts to note the core source of leaks that were fully justified by the investigators