Understanding Corporate Fraud: SOX, PCAOB, (AICPA)

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.”

2 Managing fraud risk: The audit committee perspective Fraud in a fi nancial statement audit

After reviewing the financial information of the Tech Tennis, USA, there was a concerned due to some unusual changes in the company’s accounts. Financial statements play a crucial part in the determination of the progress of an organization. It assists the relevant personnel to identify whether the company is making profits or making losses. Although unethical, some companies will tend to deliberately misrepresent some of their financial statement information to create a false impression of the company’s success. There are various techniques that organizations utilize to manipulate their financial statements such as overstating their revenues (Bierstaker, Brody, & Pacini, 2006). In addition, some organization will tend to inflate their sales without considering their cash flow amount that the organization has acquired which will be a red flag to investigate. Consequently, financial statements provide vital information that helps both internal and external users to understand the position of the organization. Some companies in an attempt to continue in the market, they end up manipulating their financial statements that create an illusion of the success of the organization.

Internal fraud consists in “a type of fraud that is committed by an individual against an organization. [Furthermore], a perpetrator of fraud engages in activities that are designed to defraud, misappropriate property, or circumvent the regulations, law, or policies of a company”[8]. Not only has the incidence of internal fraud increased in frequency because of the availability of sensitive information such as client details or confidential business documents; moreover, this type of fraud is found in various types of organizations, ranging from corporations, public service institutions and financial institutions. Our analysis will concentrate on the most common and prolific types of internal fraud, namely identity theft, insider trading, loan fraud and wire fraud. Interestingly, PriceWaterhouseCooper conducted a survey that revealed that the “demographics of a typical fraudster are as follows: males (85% of cases), 31-50 years (72% of cases), reached high-school level (50%), Bachelor’s or post graduate degree (50%) and middle or senior management (52%)”[9].

In fraud committed against organizations, the victim of fraud is the employee’s organization. In frauds committed on behalf of an organization, executives usually are involved in some type of financial statement fraud; typically, to make the company’s reported financial results appear better than they actually are. In this second case, the victims are investors in the company’s stock. A third way to classify frauds is via the use of the ACFE’s occupational fraud definition, “the use of one’s occupation for personnel enrichment through the deliberate misuse or misapplication of the employing organization’s resources or assets” (ACFE, 2010). The ACFE includes three major categories of occupational fraud: asset misappropriations involves the theft or misuse of the organization’s assets, corruption involves the wrongful use of influence in a business transaction in order to procure benefits contrary to their duty to their employer, and fraudulent financial statements involving falsification of an organization’s financial statements for personal gain.

Fraudulent activities and embezzlement are more prevalent in organizations than most people think. Because of the multitude of previous scandals, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has required all publicly traded U.S. companies to have internal auditing and internal controls to check for fraudulent activity and embezzlement. While the Sarbanes-Oxley Act only applies to public businesses, the requirements of it should be applied to all types of businesses, even universities. In the Case of the City University of New York, having internal controls and auditing would have halted the embezzlement occurring there.

Descriptions of the main aspects of the regulatory environment which will protect the public from fraud within corporations are going to be provided in this paper. A special attention to the Sarbanes – Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) requirement; along with an evaluation of whether Sarbanes-Oxley Act will be effective in avoiding future frauds based on their implemented rules and regulations.

AICPA Code of Professional Conduct principles prevents vises such as fraud that are experienced in accountancy field. Audit is the best measure of the effect of the fraud that are imposed to investors by accountants. The relationship of the investors and account holders are supposed to be affirmed through auditing to ensure accounting principles are upheld(Weirich, Pearson, & Churyk, 2010). Improper loss of the funds through propagation of the accountant officer should be treated as fraud and criminal activity that should lead to prosecution. Therefore, the paper seeks to relate two fraud cases that have been audited and presenting AICPA Code of

This subject company in this case study is WoolEx Mills. The top management team at the Mills had to act fast to prevent the accusations charged upon them, so that they may venture deep into the United States market. In the process, they had to act in a way that will present the company’s financial statements; cash flows in a way that they did not show any suspicious fraudulent activities. The type of fraud in this case study is known as manipulation of accounts which involves the act of offering the accounts in the way they are not in reality.

The video “Cooking the Books” discussed the ZZZZ Best case of fraud, it tells how and why fraud was perpetrated by Barry Minkow and why it was undetected for so long. According to the video, ZZZZ Best was founded by Barry Minkow in 1982; when he was sixteen years old, it started as a carpet cleaning company. But, due to high competition in the industry, low entry barriers, and bad internal control, this young entrepreneur started to have cash flow problems, thus creating a shortage of working capital. As a result of the financial pressure, he started to commit fraud by creating false accounts receivable and sales, false documents (using photocopies of real

Financial statement fraud is usually a means to an end rather than an end in itself. When people cook the books they may doing it to buy more time to quietly fix business problems that prevent their entities from achieving its expected earnings or complying with loan covenants (Fraud Magazine, 2014. It may also be done to obtain or renew financing that would not be granted or would be smaller if honest financial statements were provided. People intent on profiting from crime may commit financial statement fraud to obtain loans they can then siphon off for personal gain or to inflate the price of the company 's shares, allowing them to sell their holdings or exercise stock options at a profit (Fraud Magazine, 2014). However, in many past cases of financial statement fraud, the perpetrators have gained little or nothing personally in financial terms. Instead the focus appears to have

According to the Certified Fraud Examiners’ 2012 Report to the Nations, organizations typically lose five percent of revenues to fraud annually (Laxman, Randles, & Nair, 2014). Fraud impacts more than just a bottom line; it can cause significant damage to a firm’s reputation, seriously hurt investors, and degrade morale and opportunities for employees. As evidenced by recent highly publicized cases, internal controls are an important function of business and government and are necessary in reducing the negative impact of fraud in our economy (Brucker & Rebele, 2010).

Financial statement fraud is usually a means to an end rather than an end in itself. When people "cook the books" they may doing it to "buy more time" to quietly fix business problems that prevent their entities from achieving its expected earnings or complying with loan covenants (Fraud Magazine, 2014. It may also be done to obtain or renew financing that would not be granted or would be smaller if honest financial statements were provided. People intent on profiting from crime may commit financial statement fraud to obtain loans they can then siphon off for personal gain or to inflate the price of the company 's shares, allowing them to sell their holdings or exercise stock options at a profit (Fraud Magazine, 2014). However, in many past cases of financial statement fraud, the perpetrators have gained little or nothing personally in financial terms. Instead the focus appears to have been preserving their status as leaders of the entity - a status that might have been lost

The course Fraudulent Financial Reporting and Corporate Governance of professor Hermanson is the great oversight of financial reporting and governance issues. The students are able to understand the roles of the board of director and board committees, the critique research on fraudulent financial reporting and the cycle of fraud through real fraud cases over the world. Indeed, I recognize the importance of corporate management over financial reporting. The three main things I took away from this class is understanding of the effect of board of directors on fraud decisions, the elements of fraud, and the roles of accountants and auditors in corporate governance.

Over the past two years, corporate America has endured a plethora of fraudulent acts committed by those of high status within their respective corporations, most of which involve internal fraud. Internal fraud has two main aspects, misappropriation of assets and fraudulent financial reporting, with the focus of this discussion lying within the former. Misappropriation of assets is defined as fraud for personal gain. It is the most common type of fraud found among employees and frequently includes theft of cash and inventory.