When a major fraud is discovered in a company, one of the key targets of litigation is usually the independent auditors. Two well-publicized cases in which management or shareholders suing the auditors after fraud was uncovered involve Koss Corp. (auditors Grant Thornton) and Navistar International Corp. (Deloitte & Touche).

Plaintiffs look to the auditors for potential recovery since the auditors typically have deep pockets and large insurance policies. Auditors (and their attorneys) need to know how to defend themselves in these suits.  Naturally, the auditors recognize that audits are supposed to provide reasonable assurance that the financial statements are fairly stated.

Last week, Reuters printed an interesting and enlightening interview with Steven Thomas, the managing partner of Thomas, Alexander & Forrester … an attorney known for suing large auditing firms for malpractice… and winning!

Recent big wins include $520 million and $130 million judgments against BDP Seidman, on behalf of Espirito Santo and Batchelor Foundation, respectively. Auditors Ernst & Young (E&Y) and KPMG have been on the losing sides of large cases, and Deloitte, E&Y, KPMG, and McGladrey & Pullen are all current defendants.

So how does Thomas (or any plaintiff’s attorney) win a case against an auditing firm when there is a sizeable fraud (such as the Koss Corp. embezzlement) or the collapse of a Ponzi scheme (such as the Bernie Madoff case)?

My article in the AICPA Corporate Finance Insider Newsletter

Reasonable accountants can disagree about whether a move to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) will improve financial reporting. One key concern is that principles-based financial statements are much more susceptible to fraud. Rather than relying on strict rules, management’s judgment will guide much of the reporting. Clearly this creates a risk of fraud, but how big is the risk?

J2 Global Communications (NasdaqGS: JCOM ), better known as eFax, is under fire. Yesterday, Sam Antar tore into the company for an accounting gimmick that the company (and its auditors) had to know was wrong. The issue involves revenue and deferred revenue.

In the 10-Q for the first quarter of 2011, J2 reported an upgrade to its accounting system. The new system gave J2 the ability to properly calculate unearned revenue from annual contracts with customers:

Today’s Compliance Week article, “SEC Pursues Small Company Over Lax Internal Controls,” [subscription required] discusses the SEC settlement with Koss Corp over the $34 million embezzlement by former Vice President of Finance Sujata (Sue) Sachdeva.

The article explains the settlement, which is essentially a clawback of some of Michael Koss’s compensation:

Guest Post by Brian Mahany

Here is a new twist. A hedge fund sues an accounting firm for its failure to uncover a Ponzi scheme operated by one of the hedge fund’s traders. That might sound farfetched, but its not. New York accounting firm Rothstein Kass was sued by two hedge fund managers in San Francisco Superior Court after the fund lost millions of dollars to one of its traders who was allegedly running a Ponzi scheme.

The plaintiffs in the case, two hedge fund managers from Nevada based Paron Capital, claim that Rothstein Kass was hired to verify the trading results from one of their traders. They claim the accountants were specifically hired to perform due diligence and insure the trader was not a fraudster. The accountants, however, say they did nothing wrong and were never asked to verify the trader’s alleged 20% rate of return.

What is a company to do when it wants to hide losses? Manipulation of the financial statements is the obvious first choice. It’s not hard. Sure companies have “internal controls,” which are supposed to include policies and procedures which ensure that financial information is properly recorded. But companies of all sizes have problems with their internal controls, such that it’s not terribly difficult to issue fraudulent financial statements.

Michael Woodford was dismissed in October as CEO of Olympus, and subsequently disclosed that he was fired because he raised questions about some acquisitions by the company. He alleges that Olympus paid incredibly high prices for companies it acquired, and also paid huge “advisory fees” to agents who supposedly represented Olympus in the transactions. The purpose behind these transactions? To cover up investment losses that were decades old without drawing any attention to the issue.

It’s crunch time for Groupon (GRPN). The roadshow for the company’s Initial Public Offering went live last week, and Groupon’s offering will happen this week. Demand for the shares is apparently through the roof. The company was hoping to sell 30 million shares at $16 to $18 each, but word is that Groupon is now looking at increasing the offering price.

You can see the slide deck for the roadshow here. The presentation highlights the company’s massive growth, marketplace penetration, and ability to earn revenue.

A couple of weeks ago, David Einhorn bashed Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (NASDAQ:GMCR) in a 110-slide presentation called “GAAP-uccino” at the Value Investing Conference, sending the company’s shares down. The stock opened at $91.66, and closed at $82.50 the day of his presentation. Over the next two weeks, the stock closed as low as $61.59, with the stock ending last week at $70.99.

The stock had been hovering between $100 and $110 a share in September, despite warnings by others that Green Mountain has been manipulating numbers and could become the target of a full-blown investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.  Sam Antar, the former CFO of massive fraud Crazy Eddie, has been critical about Green Mountain for some time. He has been vocal about the company’s disclosures, accounting irregularities, and GAAP violations.

Lately, there has been talk of more requirements for auditors:  more disclosures, more discussion, more information on who is doing the audits.  Would a narrative by the auditors add more meaning to audit reports?

One problem with audits is that they don’t provide a whole lot of information to users of the audit reports. The financial statements and the notes to those statements are somewhat useful, but the auditor’s report really amounts to nothing more than a pass or fail grade.

I spend a lot of time educating people on the real purpose of an audit. It is to determine whether the numbers add up and whether the company has followed Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).