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Financial statements fraud cases
Some reasons for using a case study approach
Some reasons for using a case study approach
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Recommended: Financial statements fraud cases
WHAT IS FRAUD
In referring to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), fraud is “a deception or misrepresentation that an individual or entity makes knowing that misrepresentation could result in some unauthorized benefit to the individual or to the entity or some other party”. In fraud, groups of unconscionable individuals manipulate, or affect the activities of a specific business with the purpose of earning money. Fraud manipulates the financial position of the organization and results in a loss of goods, money, and even goodwill and reputation. It is essential that organizations establish procedures and controls that prohibit employees from committing fraud and detect fraudulent acts whenever it occurs. The fraudulent activities
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Although, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has enhanced corporate governance and lowered the incidence of fraud, recent studies reference that investors and management still have concerns about financial statement fraud. For example:
• The ACFE’s “2010 Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse” [1] found that financial statement fraud, which represent less than five percent of the cases of fraud in its report, was by the most costly, with a median loss of $1.7 million per incident. Some Surveys estimated that the standard organization loses 5% of its revenues by fraud each year. Gross World Product, estimated potential projected annual fraud loss of more than $3.5 trillion per year.
• According to “Annual Fraud Indicator 2012” made by the National Fraud Authority (UK), “The scale of fraud losses in 2012, against all victims in the UK, is in the region of £73 billion per
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2- Lesions can be learned from Satyam scandal?
4. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
We inspected documented behaviours in cases of Satyam corporate, using the evidence published on press articles, and also do a “content” analysis to them. Regarding information collection “methodology”, we obtained evidence from the press coverage contained in the “Factiva” database. This study is primarily based on “secondary” sources of data (EBSCO host database) collected from the related journals, newspaper, books, statements, reports. As stated earlier, the nature of study is “primarily qualitative, descriptive and analytical”.
5. CORPORATE ACCOUNTING SCANDAL AT SATYAM COMPUTER SERVICES LIMITED: A CASE STUDY OF INDIA’S ENRON.
5.1
Fraud is one of Canada's most severe acts of financial criminality as the economic impact of this crime could potentially handicap an entire society. According to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre Annual Statistic Report (CAFC), a report established to monitor fraud with the aid of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and Competition Bureau of Canada, it reported an annual loss of 74 million dollars affecting over 14,472 victims (Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, 2014). Given this alarming statistic, it is worrisome that we as a society still ignore or turn a blind eye towards those who commit fraud as seen in the low conviction (Canada Revenue Agency, 2014), and focus our efforts on petty thefts as seen with the high rate of convictions
I believe that asset misappropriation by accounts payable fraud is occurring at Wayland Manufacturing Company due to a lack of proper internal controls. Making the company’s Chief Accountant responsible for additional day-to-day functions provides him with opportunity to commit by creating fictitious vendors with his information and then creating fictitious invoices. Newbaker can then conceal his fraud by approving the invoices for payment. Employees working at an organization for more than five years are more likely to commit fraud. Therefore, Newbaker’s six-year history with the company has made him trustworthy and very knowledgeable, which could indicate involvement in asset misappropriation. The high employee turnover could represent a past fraudster leaving before getting caught or employees refusing to continue with the asset misappropriation. In addition, the varying monthly accounts payable transactions ranging from the lowest being April 2014 and
One of the most recent white-collar crime involved Wells Fargo, a banking and financial services provider. In 2016 San-Francisco based bank Wells Fargo (WFC) employees secretly created millions of unauthorized bank and credit card accounts without permission of their customers. Opening about 1.5 million fraudulent deposit accounts and submitting 565,443 credit card applications allowed Wells Fargo employees to boost their sales targets and receive bonuses. Consequently, customers were wrongly charged fees for accounts they did not know existed. In this business crime scenario, Wells Fargo involved to pay $185 million in fines and refund $5 million to affected customers. Also, around 5,300
Weld, L. G., Bergevin, P. M., & Magrath, L. (2004). Anatomy of a financial fraud. The CPA
Financial statement fraud makes up a marginal (less than 10%) percentage of occupational fraud cases, but the median loss is significantly higher at $975,000. A fraud scheme occurring over a significant amount of time will likely result in much higher median losses. For example, a fraud scheme lasting more than five years could result in median losses of $850,000. Larger companies are more likely able to implement strong anti-fraud controls due to size and finances, therefore, smaller companies become more susceptible to fraud schemes due to lack of proper preventive controls. Preventive controls include: implementing internal controls, continually updating the company’s Code of Conduct, rotating jobs/duties, and
...The Sarbanes-Oxley Act deals with the proper filing of financial paperwork along with rules and regulations to follow while working as a top business (The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 2002). Some of the consequences that derived from the Act include fines and possible imprisonment up to 20 years for destroying documents. It also made it a crime to destroy corporate audit records. Since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was in place at the time Bernie Madoff was charged with security fraud, he received 25 years in prison for his wrong-doings (Bernard Madoff, 2014). These crimes by Madoff and Enron have made for safer business practices and stricter laws. However, to ensure cases of this magnitude do not occur again, companies must not only abide by mandated law, they must develop a culture deeply rooted in strong ethics. Character matters in a business just like it does in people.
A possible flaw of Sarbanes-Oxley is it failed to put up any resistance in thwarting the financial crisis. While the degree to which fraudulent behavior can be traced to the roots of the Great Panic of 2007 will likely be up for eternal debate, it might be telling that Sarbanes-Oxley effectively did nothing. It seems this could indicate that stronger incentives for whistleblowers (such as Dodd-Frank and perhaps other whistleblower protection regimes) are very necessary given the extreme social costs. This conclusion may be hasty, however, given the short time period between the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley and the crash. Not only is the status of Sarbanes-Oxley still in flux over a decade later, but one has to consider the substantial learning and switching costs associated with a regime with such a substantial ruach. Certainly, this is not to say that additional protections may in fact be necessary given the putative reluctance of lawyers to report fraud, but Sarbanes-Oxley likely needed more time to really crystalize and provide some level of predictability before it can be declared a bust.
Throughout the past several years major corporate scandals have rocked the economy and hurt investor confidence. The largest bankruptcies in history have resulted from greedy executives that “cook the books” to gain the numbers they want. These scandals typically involve complex methods for misusing or misdirecting funds, overstating revenues, understating expenses, overstating the value of assets or underreporting of liabilities, sometimes with the cooperation of officials in other corporations (Medura 1-3). In response to the increasing number of scandals the US government amended the Sarbanes Oxley act of 2002 to mitigate these problems. Sarbanes Oxley has extensive regulations that hold the CEO and top executives responsible for the numbers they report but problems still occur. To ensure proper accounting standards have been used Sarbanes Oxley also requires that public companies be audited by accounting firms (Livingstone). The problem is that the accounting firms are also public companies that also have to look after their bottom line while still remaining objective with the corporations they audit. When an accounting firm is hired the company that hired them has the power in the relationship. When the company has the power they can bully the firm into doing what they tell them to do. The accounting firm then loses its objectivity and independence making their job ineffective and not accomplishing their goal of honest accounting (Gerard). Their have been 379 convictions of fraud to date, and 3 to 6 new cases opening per month. The problem has clearly not been solved (Ulinski).
The reasons for fraud all surrounded Satyam attempted to meet investor’s expectations. As Raju wrote in his letter to the board of directors, the gap between actual operating profit and the one listed in the books began to grow exponentially. As mentioned earlier, promoters owned a small percentage of Satyam, where foreign and domestic investors owned the greatest percentage. If Satyam slightly revealed its poor performance, it could result in a takeover revealing the company’s poor
Although Hollate introduced a compliance program and code of conduct when it went public, the programs were put on “the back burner”. This outcome is not surprised for that the company does not pay attention to the programs. It is, therefore, important to “reinforce the values” and “employee a boundary system when actions are inconsistent with the code of conduct” for the purpose of early detection. Tyco provides a good example after its scandal, by initiating “mandatory annual compliance training for all its employees worldwide” and creating the Tyco Guide to Ethical Conduct to familiarize employees with company expectations and help them make ethical decisions. As tips is the most useful method for internal and external sources to detect frauds, the whistleblower hotline should be well communicated with encouragement on reporting any suspicious activity. In addition, to improve the effectiveness of the compliance program and code of conducts, Hollate should implement management monitoring and evaluation on a regular
Fighting abuse is not an easy prospect. Elected officials, executives, managers, staff, and the public must be vigilant and thorough. In this project we will review some specific cases of FWA. We will also explore why enacting laws and regulations isn’t enough to stop people from committing fraud. Educating people about what FWA is and why they should not commit these crimes should be an integral part of any FWA program. The Department...
150 Ponzi schemes collapsed in 2009 alone, resulting in more than $16 billion in losses to tens of thousands of investors. These victims confront the challenge of calculating their losses for recovery claims as well as tax purposes. Ponzi scheme investigations currently account for approximately 21% of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) enforcement workload — up from 17% in 2008 and 9% in 2005
Deception is sometimes used by researchers when they conduct psychological experiments. Deception occurs when the participant is misled about the purpose, design, of the experiment, or when the researcher uses deliberate misleading to persuade the subject into believing a certain view (McLeod). Many people believe deception is ethically wrong, and psychologists should not use it to obtain important information. I believe psychologists should be able to use deception if the participant is not psychologically harmed. It is believed that deception is the only way we can obtain true information (Connolly). The knowledge we are able to obtain about psychological tendencies outweighs the temporary effects of deception.
Giroux, G. (Winter 2008). What went wrong? Accounting fraud and lessons from the recent scandals. Social Research, 75, 4. p.1205 (34). Retrieved June 16, 2011, from Academic OneFile via Gale:
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”.