I just heard the most ridiculous thing on the news. They were, of course, talking about today’s snowstorm. The news reporter said that the City of Milwaukee had some “contingency funds set aside” for snow removal… but that with the snow storm a couple of weeks ago and with today’s snow, that money is gone.

HELLO!!!! We live in Wisconsin. It snows. Routinely. You mean to tell me that this isn’t factored into the city’s budget?

Of course it is. And my guess is that these tearful words from city employees are just setting the stage for next year’s tax increase.

I suppose in the grand scheme, it’s not much of a hit for Deloitte & Touche to receive a $1 million fine, but the publicity ramifications could prove far more costly.

The fine comes along with a censure from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) for a 2003 audit. The San Diego partner on an audit of the financials of drug maker Ligand Pharmaceuticals, James Fazio, was deemed not competent to head the audit team.

According to PCAOB, employees at Deloitte had concerns about Fazio in 2003 and thought he might not be qualified to even work for the firm at all. Nonethless, he stayed as partner on the Ligand 2003 audit, and into 2004. There were revenue recognition problems on the 2003 audit, and even the basic accounting rules weren’t followed. PCAOB said that Fazio failed to “…exercise due professional care, exercise professional skepticism, obtain sufficient competent evidential matter … and supervise assistants.”

Ultimately, Ligand had to restate three years of financials, all of which had been audited by Deloitte. For 2003 alone, revenue was adjusted downward by 52%.

Of course, Deloitte isn’t admitting or denying PCAOB’s charges, but is paying the fine and is promising to make some procedural changes. Fazio is also prohibited from being associated with any public accounting firm for the next two years.

In addition to my new gig blogging for AOL at WalletPop.com, I am now also going to be writing for AOL’s BloggingStocks.com. I’ll be writing about fraud and scams for them when the stories related to stocks and investments. Post about  consumer-related schemes, scams, and rip-offs will be over at WalletPop.

Skybus has just started offering service out of Milwaukee’s Mitchell International Airport. One flight per day to Columbus, Ohio. In just an hour, you’ll get there while squeezed in like a sardine and no frills. And I mean none.

The Skybus strategy goes like this: Stuff as many people as you can into one airplane and just get them there. Offer really low prices, and consumers won’t care. There are 144 to 156 seats available on each flight. 10 of them are sold for $10 each. The rest are sold at higher prices, but are relatively cheap compared to other carriers. Seating is three wide on each side, and the seats are unassigned, so expect a cattle call and a mad dash to get the best seats.

Want to check a bag or two? $5 please.

Want something to drink? $2 for a soda.

Need something to eat? A relatively putrid “cheese plate” is available for $8.

Flights are only sold online at the Skybus site. You can’t buy them at the airport, and they’re not offered on sites like Travelocity. Flight attendants wear t-shirts instead of traditional uniforms, and they’re paid a commission on every “extra” they sell on the flight. That’s why the flight is turned into a mall in the air, with flight attendants selling all sorts of odds and ends to passengers.

The company increases revenue by having advertisers “sponsor” the flights, and they will soon be selling advertising space on the overhead bins and seat backs.

Welcome aboard the no-service airline…

Now clearly this guy didn’t read my website very carefully. (Did he even read it at all???) Suddenly Ladd McNamara is an employee of Sequence Inc. and he should come to this lunch meeting to learn how to take Usana (NASDAQ: USNA) to the next level. Haaaaaaa…..

Subject: Lunch?
Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2007 13:32:03 -0500
From: Jonathan Rouhafzai ps2007@cvent.com
To: Ladd McNamara ladd@sequence-inc.com

Ladd,

Can we meet over lunch to discuss how to take USANA Inc’s events, surveys, and marketing campaigns to the next level? Please join me for a complimentary lunch and educational seminar hosted by Cvent, the leading provider of online software tools in the events and surveying industries.

Where: Hilton Salt Lake City Center , 255 South West Temple Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Date: Thursday, December 20, 2007
Time: 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM Mountain Time

We can discuss how you can accomplish the following:

EVENTS –> Increase attendance and reduce expense

- Market your events via email
- Create an easy online registration process for your invitees
- Eliminate time-consuming data entry
- Auto-cleanse your database by verifying contact information
- Tailor marketing messages to distinct groups
- Track event and meeting expenses to maximize ROI

SURVEYS –> Collect data effortlessly via the web

- Automate survey invitations, reminders, and confirmations
- Attract responses with professionally designed survey templates
- Customize reports to augment your findings
- Establish consensus on sensitive topics within your organization
- Report on industry and prospect trends
- Track email open rates and campaign success in real time

More than 2,000 Cvent users have managed over 100,000 successful campaigns on our online software system. Your staff can be trained in 90 minutes on the Cvent technology or our team can help you setup and manage your events, surveys, or marketing campaigns.

Please click the link below, and choose the Yes or No button at the bottom of the invitation.

Click here to respond

Ladd, if you are not the best contact, please forward this to the appropriate person.

You can also sign up for an online demonstration on our website by clicking below:
Event Product Webinar Schedule
Survey Product Webinar Schedule

Sincerely,
Jonathan Rouhafzai
Account Executive, Cvent
866.318.4358

This was written by Sara Gilbert, who was in charge of the launch of AOL’s new personal finance blog, WalletPop.

Welcome to WalletPop

Modern man and woman? We’re stressed out, dude. And more and more it’s obvious the chief source of our stress is money. It’s one of the leading causes of divorce. Financial problems are a main source of depression, and one especially depressing study noted that a family’s financial woes causes behavioral problems and mental health issues in children. And it’s no wonder; after all, many Americans are losing their homes due to expensive loans; food prices are rising; it’s more and more expensive to get around thanks to the soaring cost of fuel. If I can’t sleep, it’s a good bet I’m worrying about the check that might bounce, the bill that’s overdue, how I’ll pay for the next bag of groceries.

Stop stressing and start doing something about it. Start doing something about it here. We at WalletPop are dishing up a daily dose of financial wisdom, mixed with a cupful of fun and a dash of irreverence. We’ll provide you news and facts about the world of finance, from the ups and downs of interest rates to the cost of a barrel of oil — and what that means for your gas tank.

We’ll provide you with tips on buying more for less, finding bargains, and saving money. We’ll explore the concepts of budgeting, frugal living, simplification — but without putting on that hair shirt and cooking the same meal every Wednesday for the rest of our lives. We’ll talk about managing your credit and wonder, should you really pay your rent with your credit card? We’ll answer your questions, we’ll tell you our stories, we’ll find the nuggets of wisdom in the soporific self-help books.

Here’s why we started WalletPop: because we really love money. It’s true! But more than we love money, we love figuring out how it can make our lives better. Not how the TV commercials suggest — by having things we can all stare at together as a family — but how we can pick which things make our life wonderful, buy them for as little as possible, and leave all the rest off our Visa balance. How we can plan for the future, whether that future is tax season or our children’s education or retirement. How we can one day look over the fence at the neighbor’s new toy and instead of thinking, “I want one!” say to ourselves, “I wonder if he financed that, and if I should show him WalletPop to learn more about money.” Yeah.Some of WalletPop’s features include:

• The Daily Deal, a post to help you navigate for the best bargains on the things you could really use;
• Straight Talk with Ken & Daria Dolan, “America’s First Family of Finance”;
• Key interest rates updated minute-by-minute thanks to BankRate;
• Links to our favorite AOL financial calculators;
• Useful, fun modules, beginning with the home value module you see in the right hand column — and we’re making new ones all the time exclusively for our audience.

AOL is expanding its professional blogging empire with a new personal finance blog called WalletPop. After months of planning and development, the site has finally gone live!

The site features several bloggers who are in-the-know about a variety of personal finance issues including, credit cards, mortgages, consumer scams, taxes, entrepreneurship, saving money and more.

An article in today’s Vancouver Sun makes some interesting points about auditing firms and their OTC company clients. OTC companies aren’t very good investments for shareholders, as many have shaky businesses or are really shell companies for other planned business ventures.

Yet for auditing firms, they might seem like good clients. They need audits before they can register to be sold on the OTC Bulletin Board or pink sheets, and they’re willing to pay.

But OTC companies have become such a problem that the B.C. Securities commission is warning accountants and lawyers that if they knowingly aid and abet fraud schemes they could be in trouble.

One audit firm with lots of OTC clients is Manning Elliot. Case in point with the OTC problem is Heavy Metal Inc. Mannin Elliot audited it and gave the company permission to use the audit report when registering to become an OTC issuer. Heavy Metal is supposedly in the “exploration” business, but it is run out of the home of one David Harapiak, who has no experience in exploring and is the company’s only officer or director. The company acquired on property in July, but hasn’t done any work on it and hasn’t even had a geologist give it the thumbs-up, so it has zero value on the balance sheet.

Clearly, Heavy Metal is a questionable business and doesn’t appear to have any value. So what’s it’s real business? Or is it a shell for a planned business?

Manning Elliot has several such clients. Companies with weak financial positions, questionable business plans, owners and executives with little relevant experience.

So what is the value of these audits? Manning Elliot gives a clean audit opinion says it’s okay to use the opinion in the registration process. But outside evidence suggests that these companies are questionable at best, and a total scam at worst. Is it time to reevaluate the purpose of audits and their real value to the marketplace? Yes.

Google Search:

commercial insurance fraud

Answer:

Yes, I do analysis of commercial insurance claims, particularly ones that have been identified as potentially fraudulent, or ones that are deemed to be more complex. More information about the services I provide for commercial insurance matters can be found here.

This year, Patrick Byrne and company have taken a liking to discussing the Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) financials using non-GAAP measures. This means that they present certain financial figures that are not computed in accordance with GAAP (accounting rules).

Who cares? As long as they disclose that they’re non-GAAP measures, it doesn’t matter, right? Wrong. You see, companies use non-GAAP measures for one of two things: