Month: January 2018

Herbalife Manipulates Distributor Earnings Numbers

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When Herbalife settled the case brought against it by the FTC, it appeared the company may change how it was doing business. It was said that the company was going to start making truthful claims about earnings. But the most recent earnings disclosure from Herbalife does anything but that.

Until 2017, Herbalife published statements of average gross compensation that covered an entire year. Like all other MLMs, they provided selected information that ended up being misleading in various ways, but ultimately it still showed a pretty dismal picture and showed that few people made much money as a distributor.

But with the 2017 statement, Herbalife made a curious change. An in-depth analysis was written up by Christine Richard at Seeking Alpha. Here is the short story. In a November 2107 conference call, Herbalife president Des Walsh said the company had about 215,000 distributors. In this earnings disclosure statement published in November 2017, Herbalife said:

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Working With Expert Witnesses

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A competent expert witness is vital to cases involving economic damages and other financial calculations. However, the expert must be much more than just a mathematician, market analyst, economic guru or forensic accountant. The job of the expert is far from over once the facts are analyzed and the calculations are completed.

Traditional accounting and finance skills are not enough when it comes to litigation. A financial expert witness must qualify as an expert in court and must convey the findings to non-accountants on paper and on the witness stand.

Probably one of the most important yet difficult parts of being a financial expert is relaying the findings without using accounting lingo. Accountants often forget that not everyone speaks their language. They are not used to explaining their findings to people outside the finance environment. Creating a meaningful understanding for readers and listeners can be an art form unto itself, and the best financial expert witnesses do it easily.

Although attorneys are educated in many facets of the law, they are not necessarily numbers experts. That is why it is so important to find the right expert who can help legal counsel fully understand the financial data and its implications. A competent forensic accountant or other financial expert is mindful of the needs of non-accountants when reporting on the findings of a financial examination.

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How to Detect Billing Schemes

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Employees may commit fraud against their employers by getting the employer to improperly disburse funds. One way this could happen is through an improper check or electronic disbursement. Another way is through a shell company scheme, whereby the employee sets up a fake vendor which issues invoices to the company for products or services that are not actually provided to the company.

These types of billing schemes could be detected with some of the following techniques:

  • Analyze disbursements, looking for many large round amounts, or amounts falling just below a threshold that requires additional approval for payment.
  • Look for unusually large expenses, unexplained variances in expenses between years, or expenses that exceed budgeted amounts. Billing schemes may inflate expenses enough to cause one or all of these comparisons to yield questionable results.
  • Examine the financial statements for variances in expenses that should track predictably with revenue. Cost of goods sold is a popular account in which to conceal theft via billing schemes because of the high level of activity in this account. If the account varies significantly from expected values when compared to revenue, however, this might indicate a billing scheme.
  • Cross-check addresses of employees and vendors, looking for exact matches or close matches.
  • Compare vendor addresses to mail drop address databases to check for businesses that may not have a legitimate location.

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Protecting the Spouse’s Financial Interest in Divorce

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When a spouse knows that a divorce is imminent, there are obvious steps to secure his or her financial future. First, a competent divorce attorney must be retained. Next, the division of assets and income should be considered. Yet when it comes to the financial details, clients often do not know what to do.

An uncertain financial future may scare the client, but the fear of the unknown makes it more important than ever to focus on protecting the client’s financial interests. The divorce attorney can provide this list of simple (but sometimes overlooked) tips to the client to help aggressively fight the financial case in divorce court:

1. Secure funds for living expenses, attorneys, and other professionals. A spouse who does not control the family’s finances may find it difficult to get access to funding during the divorce. It is not uncommon for the moneyed spouse to cut off access to money to force a quick (and possibly unfair) divorce settlement. It is important for you to legally get access to and secure money that will only be available to him or her. Relying solely on family court to award funding for living expenses and divorce professionals is far too risky.

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Financial Statement Fraud in Public Companies

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How prevalent is financial statement fraud in public companies? In this video, Tracy Coenen talks about the most recent COSO report on fraudulent financial reporting at U.S. public companies. The most common financial statement fraud that companies engaged in was improper revenue recognition, followed by the overstatement of asset or the improper capitalization of expenses. … Read more Financial Statement Fraud in Public Companies

Documents Needed to Conduct a Business Lifestyle Analysis

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Last week I talked about doing a lifestyle analysis on a business during a divorce. This can be very important to find out the truth about the numbers. It involves going down to the detailed transaction level to look for clues about what has really happened with the money.

What documents do you need? When a closely held business is being evaluated in connection with a family law case, the following business-related documents may be requested:

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