We hear almost daily reports of companies engaging in accounting shenanigans to boost their apparent performance. As of late, companies like Diamond Foods (DMND), Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) and Avon Products Inc. (AVP) are grabbing headlines for their alleged bad behavior.

Avon has been under the shadow of bribery allegations, in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), since at least 2008. The company has spent hundreds of millions of dollars conducting internal investigations, has lost at least four executives linked to bribery in China, and has been suffering from poor financial performance. And now it appears that Avon may have been aware of bribes being paid as far back as 2005, meaning the company’s problems may soon get even worse.

Prior to Groupon’s IPO last year, I wrote a few articles that were critical of the company. In one of my articles, I noted problems with loyalty of customers and merchants:

• It’s expensive to get new customers. Sure, a large email list is nice. But how much does it cost to get people on it, and more importantly, how much does it cost to get buying customers on it?
• Only about 21% of subscribers have purchased a Groupon since January of 2009. The company has nearly 143 million subscribers, but less than 30 million of those have actually made a purchase. Worse yet, only 16 million (or 11%) are repeat customers, buying more than one Groupon since January of 2009.

Guest Post by Keith Paul Bishop

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on Keith Bishop’s blog, California Corporate & Securities Law on November 23, 2011. It offers us a different view from that of Tracy Coenen regarding the SEC’s action against Michael Koss and Koss Corp. for the embezzlement perpetrated by Sujata Sachdeva.

In this week’s issue of Compliance Week, Tammy Whitehouse writes about the SEC’s recent enforcement action against Koss Corporation and Michael J. Koss, its Chief Executive Officer and former Chief Financial Officer.

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:

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.

Rob Shuter, known as “Naughty But Nice Rob,” has been busy over at Huffington Post, trashing Bethenny Frankel for her sale of the Skinnygirl cocktail line to Fortune Brands earlier this year. In an October 11 story, Bethenny Frankel’s Skinnygirl Business Was Not Sold For $120 Million, Rob claims that the drink line was actually sold for $8.1 million.

He states the following based on his reading of the 10-Q for Beam Inc. (formerly called Fortune Brands Inc.) for the period ended June 30, 2011:

A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission quarterly report form clearly shows that the Fortune Brands, Inc. acquisition of the Skinnygirl ready-to-drink cocktail business was for $8.1 million.

The problem is, that’s not what the filing says. The 10-Q reports on page 10 that the company booked $8.1 million in intangible assets related to the sale:

In July, critics attacked Groupon (GRPN) and it use of a made-up accounting measure management called Adjusted CSOI. I suggested that the company made up the measure to exclude many of the company’s expenses to make the company look more successful.

There was more to the story, however, as the Grumpy Old Accountants revealed Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) violations in reporting revenue. Essentially, Groupon was recording more than twice the amount of revenue it should have been reporting under GAAP. The Grumpies explained: