Almost two years ago, I wrote about a PCAOB proposal that would require companies to rotate auditors every 5 to 10 years. The theory was that forcing companies to change auditors regularly would make audits better, because fresh eyes on the books every few years would mean a more skeptical …
It has been almost four years since the massive fraud committed by Sujata Sachdeva against her employer, Koss Corp., was uncovered. A year after the discovery, Koss sued Park Bank for failing to find the fraud. The company says that Park Bank should have known that a fraud was occurring …
Yesterday Financial Executives International (FEI) ran a guest post by me on their Financial Reporting Blog. The introduction is below, and you can read the entire article about the expectation gap between auditors and the users of financial statements here. One of the greatest problems with the process of traditional …
Cary Spivak – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Koss Corp. collected $8.5 million from Grant Thornton, the accounting firm that audited Koss’ books during a portion of the time that Sujata “Sue” Sachdeva was stealing millions from the company. The payment made Wednesday settles a lawsuit filed in Cook County, Ill., in …
Former KPMG audit Partner Scott I. London brought great shame to the accounting profession this week by being charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud through insider trading. After nearly 30 years with KPMG, London went down in flames after being caught passing insider information on audit clients of the …
Anyone who is being honest will tell you that financial statement audits don’t find fraud. On the rare occasion they do, but by and large audits are not designed to detect fraud and the auditors don’t have enough fraud detection training. One solution to this problem is the engagement of …
In the last week Big Four auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has been sued over its performance of audits of companies with massive frauds. First, PwC was named as a defendant in a suit filed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as the receiver for Colonial Bank. Colonial Bank went under thanks …
One year after MF Global “misplaced” $1.6 billion in customer funds, those funds still haven’t been recovered for investors. The money has allegedly been found, but that still doesn’t help customers who would like to get their misappropriated funds back. Francine McKenna, a contributor at Forbes, notes there is another …
In the current issue of Forbes magazine, accounting watchdog Francine McKenna has written an article about the SEC’s failure to take a hard line on accounting fraud in public companies. Despite all of the high profile accounting frauds uncovered in the past decade, the Securities & Exchange Commission appears to …
This was left as a comment to an article here, but I didn’t want it to get lost in the shuffle. It gives good insight on becoming a partner at a Big Four firm. I joined PwC as a director, with explicit expectations that I’d have a leadership role building …
