Phar Mor Case

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.

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.

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.”

Compare the primary auditor objectives in auditing historical financial statements to auditing internal controls over financial reporting. Identify at least two (2) objectives that are the most significant in reducing the risk of reporting errors or misstatements in financial statements. Provide a rationale for your response.

The Model of Trust Enhancement was established to enhance and maintain the public’s trust in the accounting profession. Over the last two decades, the ethics of the accounting profession has been questioned and public trust destabilized, in particular for auditors, due to the Enron debacle. The fact that an auditing firm would assist their clients with publishing an inadequate set of financial statements shows their willingness to violate laws and regulations (Sims & Brinkmann, 2003). According to the textbook, “Because trust is essential, even the appearance of an accountant’s honesty and integrity is important. The auditor, therefore, must not only be trustworthy, but he or she must also appear trustworthy” (Duska, Duska & Ragatz, 2011, p. 116). The majority of statements filed inadequately have a substantial impact on the credibility of the accounting profession as a whole. Sullivan (n.d.10) states that a CPA must possess a high level of trust, by applying professional judgment and enhancing the three trustworthy characteristics (ability, benevolence, and integrity) when resolving accounting ethics dilemmas (slide 3).

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)

3) Analyze the legal responsibility a forensic accountant has while providing service to a business.

List the fraud risk factors that the CPA firm might encounter if they accept this audit engagement. Be sure to include a discussion of all items that will probably require special attention during the audit. For each of these fraud risk factors, indicate how the auditor should follow up on each potential problem if the engagement is accepted. Use the following format:

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.

Phar-Mor was operated as an American discounted drug and variety store opening its first doors in Youngstown, Ohio in 1982. It came to be when the heir to Giant Eagle; David Shapira and the former Tamarkin VP Michael Monus established the well-known drug store. (Press 1996) Between the years 1985-1992 it expanded from 15 to 310 stores in 34 different states and the sales of the stores at hit virtually $1.5 billion dollars. The low priced drugs and all of the different locations of the stories were the reason the public was so attracted to the countrywide company. (Gilpin 1993) The five hundred million dollars in fraud led the company to bankruptcy. Top management and auditor members were convicted of the big scandal.

Phar-Mor Inc. fell prey to greed from the top. Unfortunately, the auditing firm assisted the organization with the conspiracy to defraud the users of financial reporting, the government, and the stakeholders. The chief officers used the funds for personal usage and appropriated funds to functions that were not related to the organization business. The financial statements were riddled with material misstatements and fraud acts of theft were blatant. For example, the senior financial officers including the CEO grossly over stated inventory to hide losses.

As requested I have completed an analysis of the accounting fraud case at Computer Associates (CA) in preparation of your speech at the American Accounting Associations annual meeting. I have structured my analysis to correspond to six key questions that arose from the case and Stephen Richards actions while Head of Global Sales at Computer Associates.

This case study will analyse the ethical dilemmas faced by David, audit manager at C & A who is hired to do the financial year-end audit for MAL. The six step ethical framework will be adopted to gain an understanding of principles and obligations for analysing the situation faced by David and arrive to a professional and responsible resolution.

Cable provider Adelphia was one of the major accounting scandals of the early 2000s that led to the creation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. A key provision of the Act was to create a stronger ethical climate in the auditing profession, a consequence of the apparent role that auditors played in some of the scandals. SOX mandated that auditors cannot audit the same companies for which they provide consulting services, as this link was perceived to result in audit teams being pressured to perform lax audits in order to secure more consulting business from the clients. There were other provisions in SOX that increased the regulatory burden on the auditing profession in response to lax auditing practices in scandals like Adelphia (McConnell & Banks, 2003). This paper will address the Adelphia scandal as it relates to the auditors, and the deontological ethics of the situation.