The Security Exchange Commission Filed Charges Against Rite Aid

In 2005, private plaintiffs filed a class action racial discrimination lawsuit against Walgreens, their employer in the case Tucker v. Walgreen Co., Case No. 05-CV-440-GPM. The plaintiffs alleged that Walgreens Co. practiced a national, cultural discrimination against African American employees and managers. Walgreens did this by denying their rights to be selected for entry-level positions of Assistant Manager or Management Trainees, rejecting any promotions for African American employees in the retail or pharmacy career paths, and placing African American employees in predominately African American or lower income stores. The plaintiffs sought to receive declaratory and injunctive relief, as well as compensation and punitive damages. The plaintiffs also pursued class certification for all African American employees nationwide. In the fall of 2006, the plaintiffs filed a second complaint which the defendant moved to dismiss. In winter of 2006, the District Court denied the defendant 's motion to dismiss the complaint.

The case describes that, "...the accounting system could not be locked at the end of the month and there was no audit trail. Sachdeva and Mulvaney were thus able to make undetected post-closing changes to the books and bypass an internal control requiring Michael J. Koss to authorize those changes". These post-closing changes may be false entries done to hide theft during the accounting period. Further, because the reconciliations were done by the same people who initiated or recorded the transactions, the fraud could be covered up. For example, had one of them made an unauthorized purchase at a retail store where the expense were obviously not business related, they could have assigned the expense or expense description to a vendor where the transaction amount would have been normal. If the accounting system was not locked, they could have also just posted the transaction date back to a prior period that isn't likely to be reviewed.

The company’s revenues were not growing fast enough to meet these targets, so defendants instead resorted to improperly eliminating and deferring current period expenses to inflate earnings. They employed a multitude of imp roper accounting practices to achieve this objective. Among other things; the complaint charges that defendants:

2) Frank A. Tassone; the former business manager, Pamela Gluckin; and an accounting clerk, Debra Rigano, who is a niece of Ms. Gluckin embezzled money in a scheme in which Dr. Tassone and Ms. Gluckin and nine of their family members and friends charged $5.9 million for personal items and cash advances on 74 personal credit cards. Then Ms. Gluckin and Dr. Tassone used district checks to pay those bills. The audit found that Dr. Tassone and

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

One of the main defenses E&Y took during the early stages of the HealthSouth suit was the fact that the SEC had no well-defined rules with regards to audit-related practices. Another defense was the mere fact that E&Y never faced a criminal indictment for the HealthSouth fraud. This was mainly due to the statute of limitations placed on securities fraud. It sets it at the earlier of (a) 2 years after the discovery of the facts constituting the violation or (2) 5 years after such violation. Thus, the DOJ was unable to file criminal charges against the firm because the partner on the audit (G. Marcus Neas) was “unaware” of the fraud in 1993.

What steps should management, the Board of Directors, or the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors take in response to allegations of possible fraud or illegal acts?

Organizational misconduct is the chief cause behind corporate accounting scandals. The trusted executives of the corporation participation in actions during a scandal are corrupt and illegal. In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is typically the government agency that investigates such scandals. One of the most notorious corporate accounting scandals in the United States is the HealthSouth Corporation scandal of 2003. HealthSouth Corporation is one of the United States largest health care providers with locations nationwide. A deeper inspection of the HealthSouth scandal is needed to understand how it transpired by assessing how it was executed, the accounting issues and root of the issue, how it was exposed, the results to the company and its officers, and warranted ramifications as an outcome of the scandal.

The auditing firm Coopers & Lybrand was accused of failing to perform a proper GAAS audit. One strategy the auditors could have performed was to follow the trail of revenue vs expenses. The auditor should have notice large sums ($10 million) of revenue going into one particular expense (Suppliers/Inventory). Considering Phar-Mor filed that they lost money in fiscal year 1984 and 1985 and they never cleared

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

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.

Fraudulent financial reporting is one form of corporate corruption and may involve the manipulation of the documents used to record accounting transactions, the misrepresentation of accounting events or transactions, or the intentional misapplication of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) (Crumbley, Heitger, and Smith, 2013). Examples of fraudulent schemes befitting of this category abound and usually involve financial statement items that have been misclassified, omitted, overstated, undervalued, or prematurely recognized. One case involving CEO Bill Smith of Moonstay

The McDonald’s Monopoly game fraud was discovered in August of 2001, when it was revealed that certain employees of Simon Marketing and associates had colluded to

Due to this specific Rite Aid selling alcoholic beer and wine, a permit and/or license must be applied for and fees paid. The permit/license must be placed in a conspicuous place inside the store. Every employee must follow state regulations when it comes to the selling of alcohol to anyone under the age of 21. Violation of this can result in having the license/permit revoked. In the town of Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina no alcoholic beer or wine shall be sold between 2am and 6am Monday through Saturday. This specific Rite Aid is not open during those hours, but it is noted.

“Audit committee members or their agents may proactively examine areas, functions, and personnel where collusive fraud risk is reasonably likely to be perpetrated,” (Zmags). The search for fraud, even if performed in the same location multiple times, may continue until the audit committee feels confident that they have ruled out the probability that fraud is prevalent. One of the biggest risks of fraud is management override of controls, requiring the extensive search for risk in, “journal entries and other adjustments and reviewing accounting estimates for possible biases that could result in material misstatements,” (Nysscpa).