Month: September 2012

Green Mountain Inventory Buildup: Fraud or Mismanagement?

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gmcr green mountain coffee roastersSam Antar, former CFO of Crazy Eddie (massive fraud in the 1980’s) has been systematically uncovering fraud at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (NASDAQ: GMCR) for years. In spite of this, investors continue to run up the price of the stock, believing the hype and the numbers put out by management.

Yesterday, Sam exposed even more about the potential fraud, targeting suspected inventory manipulation that could fraudulently inflate GCMR’s earnings. The overstatement of inventory improperly inflates earnings, and Sam surmises that Green Mountain may be doing exactly that.

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Hiring a Private Investigator

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Several times a year, I work on cases which also require the work of a private investigator. They simply do certain work that I don’t, such as “deep dive” background checks, database searches, and surveillance.

But how does a client choose one? There are over 50,000 licensed private investigators in the U.S., and finding the right one is often tricky. You need to be sure that the investigator has three characteristics:

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Book Review: Bribery and Corruption: Navigating the Global Risks

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Originally printed in The Value Examiner

Bribery and Corruption: Navigating the Global Risks focuses primarily on the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), but also provides information on the U.K. Bribery Act and some other key international regulations.

For the uninitiated, the early chapters of the book provide a good overview of the laws, their application, and related regulations. For those already familiar with the laws, these chapters are a good review of the high points of the regulations.

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Chicago Public School Teachers: It’s Not About the Children

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I’ve written several times here about Milwaukee Public Schools and the problem with the teachers, the administration, the pay, and the cost structure in general. MPS is not alone. Today Chicago teachers are on strike because city officials won’t agree to raise their salaries 19% or 25% or 30%.

Teachers often complain about their working hours and their pay. But the bottom line is that when you factor in the hours they work, teacher compensation is at or above that of many other professional positions.

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