Sec and Waste Management

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

The Securities and Exchange Commission has the mission of protecting investors by maintaining fair, orderly and efficient markets. The SEC does this in a number of ways, and firms need to pay attention to these ways in order to ensure SEC compliance. The SEC has enforcement authority over a number of areas related to the nation's capital markets, including insider trading, accounting fraud, and providing false information. The SEC's jurisdiction extends to all securities that are traded publicly. Privately-held companies do not need to register with the SEC (SEC.gov, 2012).

This accounting scandal lasted from 1992 to 1997 and was the result of numerous improper expense adjustments to inflate Waste Management’s earnings. They also incorrectly recorded liabilities, depreciation, salvage value of assets and the useful life of those assets to meet projected earnings. Buntrock was

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

$8 mill needed to be deducted from net income on the income statement. They should have followed (Following) with disclosure notes to describe why this error occurred and how it impacted the statement and accounts that it touched. For instance, the notes would describe the presence of the correction on the current period of beginning inventory, and retainED earnings.

6 which states, “Assets are probable future economic benefits obtained or controlled by a particular entity as a result of past transactions or events”. However, as per GAAP, line costs must be reported as an expense in the company’s income statement as these are fundamentally, operating expenses. It was put in the Balance Sheet as an accrued liability rather than in the income statement as an accrued expense. This resulted in falsely projecting income and profits; and concealing huge losses by wrongly capitalizing the line costs.

- The methodology for selecting and evaluating did not meet government’s goal of demonstrating equal opportunity, was unfairly designed, broke government purchasing rules, did not follow

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.

In looking at the facts of the case PwC was the accounting firm to Anicom. Anicom was in an agreement to purchase Tricontinental Industries in exchange for cash and Anicom stock. During these negotiations Anicom was involved with improper accounting procedures which resulted in meeting sales and revenue sales. This included a fictitious sale. PwC became aware of the practices when investigating an Anicom branch. PwC altered the CFO of Anicom, noting that the issue at this branch could be occurring at other branches. However, PwC failed

* Expected that the asset will be sold or disposed of before the end of its estimated useful life

Nash also failed to consider the additional loss of consumer confidence and capital if the sale went through and Fledgling sued DAC for fraudulent misstatement about the condition of the property. Nash also failed to consider his social responsibility to the rest of the environment by not addressing the issue as soon as it was brought to his attention. Similarly the CEO failed to consider his responsibilities to the passengers that were flying on planes that could have lost power due to the malfunctioning product. I would have included these issues in a cost benefit analysis which would support my decision to management.

I immediately noticed that there was no accountability and no clear record retention. I saw bad debt and expenses totaling close to a million dollars been accrued for years. No wonder the profit and loss statement [P&L] always looked favorable. Bad debt is a financial exposure to the company. In this case, it consisted of unpaid customer invoices from two to four years. The company had done the work but hadn’t gotten paid. Those unpaid invoices were hidden in the balance sheet. The expenses were invoices that the company had paid but had not invoiced the customer. Those were also hidden in the form of re-accruals. Worst of all, the outstanding past due accounts receivable [AR] didn’t reflect the true picture. The understated past due percentage was at 19 percent, the company’s goal was at 15 percent but because they had a positive P&L it was not a

Probably fraudulent financial reporting. But it is also possible that the excuses she says are true. There is no direct evidence that she committed fraud because there are no guidelines how the financial reports should be.

The scandal that started the series of accounting scandals is Waste Management Inc. Waste Management Inc. is a publicly traded waste management company that reported 1.7 billion dollars in fake earnings (US Government Accountability Office, 2002). The accounting scandal was discovered in 1998 when a new chief executive officer took a look at the financial statements. The

For example: The financials could not coordinate with the procurement team to plan out purchases as per the availability of money.