Peregrine System's Accounting Fraud
Wall Street's demand for high growth motivated Peregrine Systems' executives, to fraudulently inflate revenues and stock prices. According to the SEC, "Peregrine filed materially incorrect financial statements with the commission for 11 consecutive quarters." Steven Spitzer, a member of Peregrine's sales team admitted to meeting regularly with senior management near the end of the quarter to determine how much revenue was needed to exceed Wall Street's expectations. The primary fraud committed by Peregrine was done by inflating revenue by booking revenue when sales never occurred. By recognizing revenue from sales that never occurred, the accounts receivable balance and net income were fraudulently overstated; the accounts receivable would never be collected, because the merchandise was never sold. To cover up their high, outstanding, accounts receivable balance as a result of booking sales that did not occur, Peregrine fraudulently engaged in financial agreements with banks.
Evidently, Peregrine Systems increased its revenues by pressuring distributors and resellers to build up their inventories (known as "parking" their inventory). Through secret side or oral agreements Peregrine distributors and resellers were not obligated to pay Peregrine for their software inventories. This conduct obviously became a problem. If they could not sell Peregrine's software, they would receive their money back. According to GAAP, revenue recognition on the sale of software requires evidence that an arrangement must exist, delivery must have occurred, vendor's fees must be fixed or determinable, and collectibility must be probable before recognizing revenue. Peregrine falsely recorded this tra...
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... tempted to falsely inflate earnings is to take away their personal gains, if the company's stocks go up. I believe that when upper level management has too much incentive based on personal financial gain, which is directly based on the performance of the company; it compromises their judgments. I think that upper level management should not be allowed to receive stock options or to even own stock in the company as the financial statements would provide a neutral, bias-free report. Management would have no reason to "cook the books." I also feel that any management who still decides to falsify documents needs to be held more accountable for their actions and receive tougher punishments. I think that these strict guidelines would help the people in the United States and people all over the world feel more confident in investing their money into the stock market.
It began with a written press release of the preliminary financial results for the quarter and year ended March 31, 1999. According to the release, the quarterly revenue was $6.4 billion, which was later discovered to be false. Hawkins himself approved the release, knowing that the numbers were materially overstated due to the inclusion of an alleged sale contract with Data General. For the purpose of meeting the expectations of the analysts, the software sales growth was exaggerated by 20%. The revenue goals for the March 31 quarter were $120 million, which both Hawkins and Albert Bergonzi, HBOC's Chief Operation Officer knew were very hard to be met.
...not have occurred (again the out-dated accounting system shortfall). Further, analytical procedures could be used to compare budgets / forecasts to actual results and variations could be investigated (i.e. expenses higher than anticipated or profit less than anticipated). The following is article by Tracy Coenen is more critical of KOSS' management than of the auditor, Grant Thorton. She contends that while auditor should have caught this fraud, management is more to blame because of not addressing internal control issues. http://www.sequenceinc.com/fraudfiles/2010/01/koss-corp-fraud-defending-grant-thornton-no/
Case 4: In this case, The PCAOB found that Ligand Pharmaceuticals restated the financial statements for the year 2003, and recognized around $59 million less in revenues from product sales than originally recognized and reported a net loss more than 2.5 times the net loss originally reported. As a result, PCAOB ordered that James was prohibited from associating with any registered public accounting firm for at least two years from the date of its order.
Phar-Mor was known as one of the major discount chain retailers in the late 1980’s - early 1990’s. It was founded by Mickey Monus, a gambler in nature, who with the help of senior management was “cooking the books” for years to cover up his loses. The reason why senior management agreed to do this fraud is the belief in unique ability of their leader to fix everything later on. This case is known as one of the biggest accounting frauds in the corporate history of the U.S. This paper will analyze who was affected by this fraud, the motives behind it and what systems of control failed to prevent it.
The CFO, Andrew Fastow, systematically falsified there earnings by moving company losses off book and only reporting earnings, which led to Enron’s bankruptcy. Any safeguards or mechanisms that were in place to catch unethical behavior were thrown out the window when the corporate culture became a situation where every person was looking out for their own best interests. There were a select few employees that tried to get in front of the unethical accounting practices, but they were pushed aside and silenced. The corporate culture at Enron became a place where if an employee would not make unethical decisions then they would be terminated and the next person that would make those unethical decisions would replace them. Enron executives had no conscience or they would have cared for the people they ended up hurting. At one time, Enron probably was a growing company that had potential to make a difference, but because their lack of social responsibility and their excessive greed the company became known for the negative affects it had on society rather than the potential positive ones it could have had. Enron’s coercive power created fear amongst the employees, which created a corporate culture that drove everyone to make unethical decisions and eventually led to the downfall and bankruptcy of
The Pardoner is the best representation of an allegorical character in “The Prologue” of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The Pardoner is the perfect personification of fraudulence. He shows this in three basic ways: his appearance, speech, and actions. If one just glances through the reading of the Pardoner than one will think that he is a good religious man, but if one look further into it than he will find the small double meanings that he is the exact opposite. Chaucer likes to use an allegorical style to add some comedy and sophistication to his writings.
Madura, Jeff. What Every Investor Needs to Know About Accounting Fraud. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004. 1-156
Sandberg, J., Solomon, D., & Blumenstein, R. (2002, June 27). Accounting Spot-Check Unearthed A Scandal in WorldCom's Books. Retrieved from The Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB102512901721030520.html
In today’s day and age, there is a lot of news that is related to corporate accounting fraud as companies intentionally manipulate their financial statements to show a better picture of their financial health. The objective of financial reporting is to provide financial information about a company to its various stakeholders such as investors and creditors so that these stakeholders can make decisions accordingly. Companies can show a better image of their financial well being by providing misleading information. This can be done by omitting material information from the books or deceitful appropriation of assets such as inventory theft, payroll fraud, check forgery or embezzlement. Fraudulent financial reporting will have an effect on the This includes but is not limited to; check forgery, inventory theft, cash or check theft, payroll fraud or service theft.
...ss. As fraudulent audit reports were presented to investors showing above market returns to keep capital coming in, actual losses kept compounding and Samuel Israel could not do anything to reverse them. The situation finally became too dire to handle and the fund entered bankruptcy while Mr. Israel and his two closest associates were sentenced to some of the harshest white-collar punishments of the time period.
For those who do not know what fraud is, it’s basically deception by showing people what they want to see. In business it’s the same concept, but in a larger scale by means of manipulating figures that will be shown to shareholders and investors. Before Sarbanes Oxley Act there was “Enron Corporation”, a fortune 500 company that managed to falsify their statements claiming revenues over 101 billion in a span of 15 years. In order for us to understand how this corporation managed to deceive the public for so long, the documentary or movie “Smartest Guys in the Room” goes into depth by providing viewers with first-hand information from people that worked close with or for “Enron”.
The Tyco accounting scandal is an ideal illustration of how individuals who hold key positions in an organization are able to manipulate accounting practices and financial reports for personal gain. The few key individuals involved in the Tyco Scandal (CEO Kozlowski and CFO Swartz), used a number of clever and unique tactics in order to accomplish what they did; including spring loading, manipulating their ‘key-employee loan’ program, and multiple ‘hush money’ payouts.
One of the primary methods that Autonomy used to falsify their revenue was selling low margin hardware and cooking those hardware sales as high-margin software sales and labeled some of the cost as marketing expense. This reflects a massively intentional and meticulous method to increase the bottom line of the company and potentially a lack of internal controls and compromised internal auditors. Another method that Autonomy utilized is selling software to value-added resellers, typically known as the middlemen in transactions, and did round-trip transactions that effectively inflated revenue. Lastly, Autonomy hosted application for its customers on a subscription basis, and labeled that into short-term licensing deals. The revenue that would come from the subscription was booked all at once, rather than being deferred or recorded as coming as a receivable in the future.
Moreover, the auditors had looked out the attitude or rationalisation of the company to justify the fraudulent action. The top management may behalf on their own interest but not the behalf of shareholders to maintain or raise the stock price of the company. In Cendant case, the CUC’s management allegedly inflated earnings by recording increasing revenue and reducing expense to meet expectation.
Dowd (2016) runs above and beyond with the clarification to state accounting fraud incorporates the change of accounting records in regards to sales, incomes, costs and different components for a profit motive, for example, boosting organization stock prices, getting ideal financing or maintaining a strategic distance from obligation commitments. Dowd is of the feeling that covetousness, absence of straightforwardness, poor administration data and poor accounting interior controls are a couple of explanations behind accounting fraud. (Dowd,