Waste Management Fraud
Waste Management, Inc. today is dedicated to serving our communities by collecting and disposing of garbage and recycling. Over the years they have had to deal with a rise of issues such as environmental and global warming. Waste Management has also tried to reduce its waste collections while turning any valuable resources it can into clean and renewable energy. Waste Management has been around since the late 1800’s, and is a holding company that has all its daily operations conducted through its subsidiaries. Since there are relatively few garbage disposal companies around, Waste Management has been able to grow and advance into a huge corporation that has built an employee base of 45,000. And with any growing
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He was the one that actually set the numbers for earning targets. He persuaded the others to use aggressive accounting practices and he was the spokesperson who announced fake numbers for the Company. Rooney was in charge of overseeing the profitability of the solid waste operations and sometimes actually used accounting decisions that resulted in a negative impact on the operations. Koenig was reported as having the primary responsibility for accomplishing the scheme. Not only did he mislead the company’s own audit team and internal accountants, he also withheld important information to outside auditors. He did this by destroying evidence. The SEC report also states that Hau was an expert at manipulating and carefully constructing the false disclosures. The other two just abetted in the scheme because of their roles within the company.
Many people wondered how the executives were able to continue with this scheme for so long. Why didn’t the auditors notice it and take action? And the answer is not so simple. The fraud was actually discovered years before the public found out. Arthur Anderson who is Waste Management’s outside auditor, discovered the fraud, or at the time the “improper accounting practices”. Arthur Anderson didn’t really take action and instead presented the company with a set of proposed adjusting journal entries to cover up the improper accounting practices. And this was done after Arthur Anderson issued the company an
Buntrock did not act alone in this scandal. Many of his upper-level associates had a hand in this fraud. Other key players included: Phillip Rooney (President, COO and CEO for a period of the scandal), James E. Koenig (CFO and Executive VP), Thomas C. Hau (VP and Chief Accounting Officer), Bruce D. Tobecksen (VP of Finance), and Herbert Getz (Senior VP, General Counsel and Secretary). Each member of this scandal greatly profited in some way. Buntrock made over $16.9 million during the scandal. Rooney earned $9.2 million, Koenig over $900,000, Hau reaped over $600,000, Tobecksen over $400,000 and Getz gained $450,000.
Meghan Henry, Dr. Alvaro Cortes, and Sean Morris, “The 2013 Annual Homeless Assessment Report(AHAR) to Congress” Hudexchange.com
Worker's Compensation is a service that provides reimbursement for lost wages to employees who have sustained injuries from work or work-related tasks. It is also one of the services that is most often the victim of fraud. Each of the three types of fraud, claimant, employer, and provider, is defined by the same characteristics, outlined by the Ohio Board of Workers Compensation:
Without a question the BOD should have placed a high degree of reliance on Andersen, which at the time was one of the most prestigious worldwide accounting firms. The auditors should have known the kind of accounting taking place in Enron. In my opinion, Andersen knew, at least to some extent, the company’s financial condition. However, Enron was already too deep under water that blowing the whistle so late would have created problems for Andersen as well. According to the case, on 02/05/01, Andersen held internal meeting during which it addressed the company’s accounting from and oversight of the LJM partnership. Andersen never discussed these concerns with the Audit and Compliance Committee. Although the BOD has its faults, it should have been able to rely on Andersen’s work.
Since their prices were way too low, eventually profit margins began to decline very fast, this resulted in millions of losses. Instead of disclosing and recording these losses, President Monus along with the CFO Pat Finn and two other high ranking officials, decided to cross out the correct numbers insert highly inflated numbers, during this a sub ledger with the real numbers was also being kept. After a few months of this practice Pat Finn the CFO took on the responsibility of altering the numbers. By mid 1990 Monus's refusal to raise prices led to even more cover ups and eventually more members of the organization began to get involved in the fake reporting including the manager of accounting and the Controller. By the time the fraud was discovered executives at Phar-Mor had misstated financial statements by over $500 million.
The amount listed is the enrollment agreement was 10,020.00 which gives a difference of :
A) A contemporary problem raised in “On Dumpster Diving” by Lars Eighner Is the amount of wealth spent by consumers, and the effect of that. Consumers spend too much money and waste even more when they throw food and clothing away. In the essay he explains the way of life as an scavenger and how to demonstrate how people are able to live by the minimal resources although most consumers continue to buy things they do not need and continue to waste resources that may be valuable to others. Aside from food, he additionally describes the emotional impact that living out of a dumpster can have on a person. He describes finding sad things such as "abandoned teddy bears, shredded wedding books, and pets lying in state." Seeing the pets makes him think about his dog Lizbeth and how she is likely to end up with a dumpster as her final resting place, as Eighner does not see himself having a place for her before she passes on. Rummaging causes Eighner to consider how much individuals underestimate, including the way that they can purchase something new to replace something old that they have discarded. He feels frustrated because of the individuals who don 't have that extravagance.
As the WMI accounting fraud case shows, change exposes organizations to considerable financial fraud risks. The top officials used acquisitions and merger as means to perpetuate this fraud. This financial fraud took place due to the organizational breakdown of internal and external audit controls. As a result, the top management was able to commit this massive fraud without facing any resistance. It never occurred to them that they were violating the law because what mattered to them was pocketing as much as they could.
Further, the bucket account was to steal money and direct those funds to other services outside of normal company business. “The whistle was blown when a Phar-Mor check was written to cover the World Basketball League expenses of the private investment of CEO Monus” (Williams,2011, p58). Furthermore, the senior financial officers were previous auditors of the organization external auditing firm.
Combating fraud in the private sector is a difficult task. Trying to combat fraud in the public sector is daunting. In 1999 15.7% of the American workforce were employed by a government entity (federal, state, and local).[1] Mirroring society, government will have its share of perpetrators. The difference from the private sector is in the scope of the fraud committed, the loss of the public trust, the blaring headlines from news media, and difficulty in making necessary changes to combat the problems.
Hazardous waste and its proper disposal have become a major sociological problem today due to its capability of contaminating the area in which we live and its potential to be lethal to all living things. In order for the United States and the rest of the world to save itself from a potentially life threatening problem they must fix the causes which lead to the improper disposal of hazardous wastes and like materials. Some reasons that hazardous waste has become a problem in the United States today is due to the breakdown in enforcing laws for the proper disposal of such wastes, a lack of initiative on big companies behalf to spend money on proper disposal, and the ease of disposing of such wastes illegally.
Tom Padgett made the affirmations and management of the company gave the papers, yet every source was included in the fraud.
Assigned auditors were more than aware of the accounting misrepresentation of financial statements, overstating net income. Still instead of walking away from the client and resign, Andersen in pursuing short-term goals stayed with the company and moreover played by the Giant’s rules. More and more accounting firms at that time started to provide consulting services along with auditing to the same companies which always indicates a conflict of interests. Auditors are the guardians and rules players where consultants are giving advices and showing how to avoid some accounting oversights. Andersen also in order to make good profits stepped on the side of combining two contradicting to each other services. Waste Management had lots of former Arthur Andersen employees which also led to close ties between two companies. That situation undoubtedly led to inability to turn down fraudulent accounting practices Waste Management was exercising at that time for a long period of time.
The average resident produces seven and a half pounds of garbage every day that is buried down in landfills and litters lands costing a great amount of money. Nowadays, people face no more critical trouble than the need to save the weakening environment, mainly in urban areas, where solid wastes are uselessly dumped. It has been observed that cities have no controlled structure for garbage disposal. Each year, millions of dollars are spent picking up litter and more is thrown away in valuable materials that could be recycled. As humanity develops new technology and equipment, the level of waste increases every day. Due to the fact that there is a huge problem with garbage disposal, government representatives must contribute to resolving
A business can not work out without an account system, which includes internal. Internal controls are used by companies to make sure financial information is accurate and valid. Strong internal controls are signs of a financially healthy company and protect the company’s integrity. Strong internal controls can also increase a company’s profitability. There are several types of internal controls that companies used to protect themselves such as: Segregation of duties, asset purchases, supervisor review, internal audits and adequate documents and records. This paper will discuss several topics from a case study about And the Fraud