The Accounting Fraud At Worldcom Essay

WorldCom could not have failed as a result of the actions of a limited number of individuals. Rather, there

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

External auditors at the time failed to expose the fraudulent financial practices taking place at WorldCom. Although internal auditors expressed concern about the classification of operating expenses as capital expenditures, their efforts were purposely neglected by top level financial executives allowing the fraud to continue (Lyke,2002) WorldCom's financial standing was manipulated to show that the company was profitable when in reality was on the brink of bankruptcy; on top of that, WorldCom's CEO got a $400 million personal loan with lack of oversight from the board of directors (green 2004, p37 paper). The Sarbanes–Oxley Act brought about a series of financial regulations that could have prevented WorldCom's fraudulent practices. Sarbanes–Oxley requires principal executive and financial officers to certify the accuracy of financial statements and the effectiveness of internal controls for the compilation and disclosure of these statements with enforcement provisions such as fines or imprisonment. The Act prohibits the boards of directors from granting loans to executives. The Sarbanes–Oxley Act also established the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to oversee the audits of publicly traded companies and regulate accounting practices. If all

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.

While, Theranos has appeared recently in the news and is definitely a sign that whistleblowers are needed and companies are still willing to bend the rules with complete disregard of the consequences, which are much larger than simply fines. The Worldcom whistleblower case is incredibly important because it is often viewed as one case that a whistleblower changed corporate America. The Worldcom case led to legislature changes and the creation of Sarbanes-Oxley Act and even the creation of many internal controls within corporate America's organizations. I think the Worldcom whistleblower was not only a positive for that business, which closing of a business can be a positive in the light of poor ethics, but the effects were a positive essentially for corporate America across the board.

Due to these criminal activities, many top executives were convicted fraud and sentenced to spend time in prison. WorldCom activities did not align with the company's overall mission and goals. The actions taken by management were not in the best interest of the customer instead they were consumed with acquisitions and increasing the value of WorldCom Shares. The management also should have considered general accounting practices during their strategic planning. Furthermore, create procedures that protect all stakeholders within the firm.

The break up of AT&T opened the long distance service market to small companies during the mid- to late-1980s and 1990s. Long Distance Discount Service (LDDS) opened in 1983 with moderate growth until its stock went public in 1989. CEO Bernie Ebbers decided to grow the organization through acquisitions (70 companies over the course of its lifetime) with its largest in 1998, the acquiring of MCI for $37 billion. The acquisitions caused the company’s stock to increase and WorldCom used this strategy to fund additional acquisitions. Each company came with vast amounts of debt until the

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.

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.

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

During the decline of the company’s bottom-line, WorldCom upper-level management feel the financial pressure to provide favorable results to the shareholders. In addition, WorldCom’s acquisition of Sprint is temporarily halted. Two of WorldCom’s mid-level managers, Troy Normand and Betty Vinson rectify part of the problem with decreasing line costs by increasing assets. The pair feels guilty about their transgression as well nervous over the impending deadline. An additional problem emerges and the two reach out to CFO Scott Sullivan for further instructions. He instructs Normand and Vinson to fix the remaining errors with using the company’s excess reserves. Sullivan mentions that the error can fix itself over time as long as everything matched up with the expectations of auditors and Wall Street. The guilt between the two mid-level managers continues to grow, but Sullivan praises their work and loyalty to the company. In fear of losing both their jobs and financial security, the pair complies with Sullivan’s order despite their better judgement (Alvarez 2013).

WorldCom Group, was a telecommunications company that filed for bankruptcy protection on July21, 2002. Between 1999 and 2002, WorldCom had overstated its pretax income by at least $7 billion through the use of accrual releases and the capitalization of line costs. The corporate culture which was in part established by CEO Bernard J. Ebbers, the pressure to maintain an expense-to-revenue ratio that showed growth, and the lack of internal controls, corporate governance and individual responsibility, all helped contribute to the fall WorldCom.

Employees of a company are the drivers for its growth and success. In the report of World Com It shows that In less than a decade Ebber helped the company grew with small investment of 30$ billion revenue which indicates: Misappropriation of using monetary assets because Ebber got easy access of cash and cash equivalents as World com lacked poor internal controls which helped him to gain a lot money.

WorldCom acquired Arthur Andersen as the independent external auditing for the company. As WorldCom grew after the merger with MCI, Andersen began to invoice less than they should have. The charges were defended as an opportunity to prolong business with WorldCom. (Kaplan and Kiron, 2007). This is an immediate red flag for a company. Where were the ethical practices of the independent auditor? If the auditor has no ethics, how can one possibly be assured that the company is performing its intended function appropriately? The board of directors should have immediately been informed of Andersen’s practices and made a decision to confront Andersen’s practices and possibly obtain new independent auditors.

There were several people responsible for the WorldCom scandal, as well as, whistleblowers that first discovered the accounting fraud. The former CEO, Bernard Ebbers was found to be the main offender of the fraud. He did it by capitalizing inflated revenues with phony accounting entries and he was eventually sentenced to 25-years for fraud, conspiracy and filing false documents with regulators. Scott Sullivan, the former CFO, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and was sentenced to 5-years after testifying against Bernard Ebbers. The former Director of General Accounting, David Myers, pleaded guilty to