The Fraud Triangle Consists Of Three Elements Perceived Pressures, Perceived Opportunity And Rationalisation

Phar-Mor, Inc was a thriving discount grocery store in the late 1980’s. Phar-Mor was moving product quickly but profit margins were not significant enough to pay the bills. By the early 1990’s, Phar-Mor declared bankruptcy due to fraudulent financial reporting and misappropriation of assets, making it one of the largest frauds in U.S. history. Below, we will use auditing standard AU 316.85 Appendix A in conjunction with the video “How to Steal $500 million” to analyze how incentives/pressures, opportunities, and attitudes/rationalizations allowed for fraud to start and continue at Phar-Mor.

1. The three aspects of fraud - Perceived pressure, Rationalization, and Opportunity were present in the CIT case as follows:

The company’s finance department had the chance to reduce the company’s weight in mortgage-backed securities. However, it chooses not to. The company’s financial adviser did not evaluate any risk that would emerge in the economic sector of the U.S during that year. Furthermore, the company had an opportunity to identify the consequence that would result due to the falling mortgages; somewhat the company neglected this risk and increased in value of portfolio.

fraud or chance in key states” (Best 22). A study conducted by John F. Banzhaf, III

The amount listed is the enrollment agreement was 10,020.00 which gives a difference of :

B. (Reason to Listen/Topic) This is not by any means a new phenomenon, it has just become

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.

This leads into my second pressure, which deals with personal lives. Employees were receiving tremendous benefits due to the company’s great performance. However, if the company did not improve, people’s salaries would be cut or even worse, their jobs would be cut. That is why so many people were willing to engage in the fraud, because they felt WorldCom was supplying a salary and benefits that other companies would not be able to match. Betty Vinson was a prime example. She knew that releasing line accruals was wrong, but needed to

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.

Some industry-specific factors, such as having valuable near-cash assets, can increase the organization's vulnerability. Also they will need to rationalize the actions as justifiable. The individuals committing the fraud must first convince themselves that their behavior is acceptable or will be temporary. For example, Barry Minkow’s believed that the lies and deceit are for the betterment of his company and that with time everything will eventually return to normal.

The second part is opportunity. The opportunity to commit fraud usually arises through weak internal controls.

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.

“The first leg of the fraud triangle represents pressure. This is what motivates the crime in the first place. The individual

Fraud is defined as a deliberate misrepresentation that causes a person or business to suffer damages, often in the form of monetary losses through deception or concealment. And Occupational Fraud as defined by the ACFE is the use of one’s occupation for personal enrichment through the deliberate misuse or misapplication of the employing organization’s resources or assets. Traditional fraud triangle theory by Donald Cressey explains that propensity of fraud occurring in an organization lies on three critical elements which are Pressure, Opportunity, and Rationalization.

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