Worldcom Case Study

noted that this was not out of the ordinary at WorldCom. In your opinion, was this a proper

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

The Molex Corporation is an electronic connector manufacturing firm, which is based in Illinois. This company is facing a financial reporting problem in which the financial statements were overstated. Joe King ,the CEO of the company, was appointed in July of 2001, and was responsible for managing and inventory control, among other very important duties. Diane Bullock was hired in 2003, to replace the previous CFO. Both Bullock and King were being accused of what? by the external auditors, Deloitte & Touche, for not disclosing an 8 million pre-tax inventory valuation error.

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

3) What was the prime motivation behind the decisions of Arthur Andersen’s audit partners of the Enron, WorldCom, Waste Management and Sunbeam UDITS: Cite examples that reveal this motivation?

HealthSouth Corporation was one of the largest publicly traded owners of rehabilitative hospitals within the Untied States and paved the way for its industry. However, prior to 2003 the company had a very dark secret: fraud. In 2003 HealthSouth was accused of making $2.7 billion in false journal entries in the company’s system (Helios, 2013). These false entries allowed the corporation to inflate its earnings and revenue. While the corporation was dabbling in a fraudulent, aggressive account system, auditors were unable to detect the extent of the fraud occurring. If not for Michael Vines and Weston Smith, HealthSouth Corporation might have continued its false entries and continued deceiving shareholders and even Wall Street itself. HealthSouth serves as a historical example of how corporate culture can use fraud and deception schemes to not only rationalize what it is doing, which is an element of the fraud triangle, but also encourage fraudulent financial statements.

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.

The WMI accounting fraud case described a financial fraud committed by senior management of WMI, with the help of Arthur Andersen the external auditors. The case depicts the effort of several years to inflate profits at WMI, employing aggressive accounting practices which enabled the WMI to conceal $1.7 billion in form of expenses (Riley and Rezaee, 12). By eliminating or deferring expenses, WMI managed to meet earnings targets and improve

Records falsification was not the only illegal activity the Rigas family was wrapped up in. The family used company funds, unbeknownst to their investors, to finance personal endevours and interests. Examples include using corporate money to build a $12.8 million golf course on the Rigas property, using the company plane for personal vacation trips including a safari to Africa, and funding for two Manhattan apartments for his family (Markon, 2014). Not only this, but John Rigas purportedly used the company jet to fly a Christmas tree two times to his daughter in New York (Barlaup, 2009)! All of these incidents are just brief excerpts of the fraud and misuse of company funds that John Rigas and his family committed without any intention of ever paying back into the company. These actions, namely lying and stealing, prove to be the heart of the two moral issues that will be further analyzed.

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.

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

P., & Coulter, M. K., 2012, p. 152), although it seems none of WorldCom’s executive management team seemed to feel this way. Many steps could have been taken to prevent the collapse of the WorldCom empire, but only a few key managers held the power and none were willing to take action. One control that did not exist in WorldCom’s culture was allowing both internal and external auditors access to all necessary documents and statements. Without full disclosure of these items no one could see how many risks the company was taking by making fraudulent entries against their books. Also the external audit team, Arthur Anderson, held WorldCom as one of its best customers which was a major conflict of interest. This relationship lead to many fundamental mistakes from Anderson not keeping pressure on WorldCom and getting all vital information that would prove how poorly the company was being run. Had they been operating transparently, auditors and employees would have seen the accounting deception and could potentially have stopped it prior to the company’s collapse. In addition, by employing multiple auditing firms many of the mistakes being made may have been caught and discontinued from the beginning.

This research paper will explore the fraud at Tyco and focus primarily on accounting and auditing issues related to the fraud. One thing worth noting about this case is that fraudulent financial reporting was not at the core of the fraud, which was the case with majority other big frauds at the time, such as Enron and Waste Management. On the contrary, fraud consisted of misappropriation of assets, and fraudulent financial reporting came as a consequence of trying to hide misappropriation of assets and the use of corporate money for personal benefit.