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 …
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 …
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 …
The story of the alleged $31 million fraud at Koss Corp by the company’s former VP of Finance, Sue Sachdeva, hasn’t gotten much air time over the last month or so. Aside from the usual class action lawsuits when there is a fraud discovered at a public company, the only …
Francine McKenna at re: The Auditors has an interesting post and set of comments about internal audit functions at public companies and the importance of internal auditors. External auditors look at a company’s financial statements and a small amount of underlying transactions in order to issue a report that the …
Beazer Homes USA has completed an internal investigation into accounting problems and will restate its financials from 1999 through 2007. The results of the investigation: Employees in the mortgage unit violated HUD rules on downpayment assistance since at least 2000. Beazer might have to reimburse some losses on federally insured …
