ZZZZ Best Case
ZZZZ Best was founded in 1982, by Barry Minkow who was 16 at the time. ZZZZ Best was a carpet cleaning business that was operated by going door-to-door. The business operated out of San Fernando Valley, Southern California in his parent’s garage. The business experienced drastic growth the first three years, bringing an income of no less than $200,000 however no more than $5 million. Prior to going public, ZZZZ Best experienced many struggles such as complaining customers, bank account closures, and bad checks. Therefore, in 1986, ZZZZ Best went public, the owner and his associates were millionaires immediately. Due to Barry’s immediate success he was sought after by many television networks. He appeared on Oprah and many other famous television shows. He sent a message to people that “the sky was the limit” and they could achieve anything. He was an attractive man and very charming. About two years after his appearance on Oprah, Barry was in prison serving a 25 year sentence, he was found guilty on 57 charges of security fraud. Once he was exposed, he was viewed as a fast talking swindler who took people’s money. Barry used his extensive social background to get what he wanted. He realized that his social connection could be used to his advantage. Many of his social connections came from the Los Angeles health club. One of his acquaintances, Tom Paige in particular was a claim’s adjuster, he came up with a scheme to use his relationship to his advantage. Barry created fraudulent insurance contracts to have proof of profit on paper to convince bankers to lend him money. Once he obtained loans he began to expand his business in Southern California. He used his falsified financial statements to attract wealthy indiv...
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...ities Exchange Commission to be made publicly.
In conclusion, Barry Minkow was a thief from the beginning well before the incorporation of ZZZZ Best. He committed security fraud and left many investors without any money. He was a conniving thief since he was 16, and founded the business. He never conducted business in a legit matter. He ignored customer complaints, wrote bad checks and created false insurance contracts. The false insurance contracts were made up to have a paper trail of his revenues and profits. Barry had one motive and that was to make money by any means necessary. Everything that he portrayed about the business was false and in violation of several laws. He violated Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and Auditing standards. Barry should have been punished to the fullest extent of the law. He robbed his own friends for personal gain.
So just how did Scott Welch fit the profile of the average perpetrator? Based off the information reported by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ (ACFE) 2010 Report to the Nation, Welch fit directly into the median for a perpetrator – he was male, between the ages of 46 – 50, had a tenure of at least 6 – 10 years, an executive position as a Vice President. According to the ACFE’s report a perpetrator’s position within the company, age, tenure, gender and education level all have a have consideration in a fraud. In the 2010 report, it is noted that 66.7% of all frauds are perpetrated by men, more than likely due to the fact that more men hold a position of authority. Of the cases studied, 74% of all managers and 88% of all owners/executives were men (Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), 2010). The combination of Welch’s tenure and authoritative position may have exacerbated the losses suffered by Wachovia and may also have helped him hide the fraud from detection for an extended period of time of eight years (“Former Wachovia,” 2011). This period is well above and beyond the 24 months reported by the ACFE as the median time frame in which frauds perpetrated by executives/owners were detected (ACFE, 2010). Taking into consideration all the kn...
The Fastows headed to Mrs. Fastow's native Houston in 1990, both taking jobs at a young company called Enron. Just five years old, Enron was starting to evolve from a natural-gas and pipeline company into a trading firm. Mr. Fastow was one of the first managers hired by Mr. [Jeffrey Skilling], who himself had only recently arrived, from management consultants McKinsey & Co. Brought into Mr. Skilling's inner circle, Mr. Fastow returned the loyalty, telling colleagues he had named a child after his mentor. When Mr. Skilling became Enron's president and chief operating officer in early 1997, he and Mr. [Kenneth Lay] promoted Mr. Fastow to lead a new finance department. A year later, Mr. Fastow became chief financial officer.
“Bernie Madoff began investing in penny stocks in 1960, and due to his impressive work ethic, received several big breaks. The first of which was his father in-law loaning him $50,000 to invest, and soon after, Carl Shapiro, a man who made his fortune in women’s clothing gave Madoff $100,000 to invest on his behalf” (Collins 2011). With this kick-start, Bernie quickly began making a name for him, especially as he promised clients a guaranteed 20% annual return on investment. This, coupled with his firm’s adoption of the latest technology made them a tour-de-force in the investment world. But what makes his eventual downfall more interesting is that he was not just a crook, Madoff did manage a successful, and legitimate brokerage firm. To some extent, the credibility he earned from these legitimate busines...
Out of the three examples he wrote about, one’s motto was to ‘eliminate excuses’. In 1980, John Paul DeJoria (who was then living in his car) and Paul Mitchell (a hairdresser) started their company, John Paul Mitchell Systems, of selling shampoos and conditioners. Their starting capital was only $700. It was a rather unpromising time to start a business, with inflation at 12.5 percent and interest rates at 18 percent. Previous to the start of the company, DeJoria grew up poor in the Los Angeles area. He did not have the money to attend college, so he took numerous sales jobs, including a succession of positions at hair-care firms. In fact, he got himself fired from most of them. This had a profound effect on him as he told Charles Payne on his radio show. “When people fire you for not being their kind of manager, it makes you want to be your own manager,” DeJoria said. DeJoria later teamed up with Paul Mitchell. Unfortunately, a European investor pulled out of their business before they were able to launch. This left Dejoria and Mitchell with practically nothing. So before the first bills were due, DeJoria packed his new hair product in his trunk and found his own buyers going door to door. Perseverance pays off, as DeJoria and Mitchell’s privately held company makes 90 hair-care products that are sold in 100,000 salons nationally and in 80 countries today. DeJoria’s advice to
- If all of the options were explored, and patient is given antibiotics and is treated without any pain or suffering than the treatment identifies with the ethnical principles of autonomy, non-maleficence, and veracity. In turn, Mrs. Dawson will be happy with the outcome of the procedure.
Throughout history, the swindler has financially plagued society. Whether it is the get rich quick scheme or the carnival worker’s impossible challenge, people have been cheated out of uncountable sums of money. In the 1920’s a man named Victor Ludsig, posing as a French official, sold the Eiffel Tower to a gullible scrap ironworker for $50,000. Even today con artists are thriving using the Internet to borrow from Peter to pay Paul. This is a scheme made famous by a crook so successful that his name now graces the age-old fraud, the Ponzi scheme. Webster’s Dictionary defines Ponzi Scheme as
Spokane Industries has contracted Franklin Electronics for an 18 month product development contract. Franklin Electronics is new to using project management methodologies and has not been exposed to earned value management methodologies. Even though Franklin and Spokane have worked together in the past, they have mainly used fixed-price contracts with little to no stipulations. For this project, Spokane Industries is requiring Franklin Electronics to use formalized project management methodologies, earned value cost schedules, and schedules for reports and meetings. Since Franklin Electronics had no experience with earned value management, the cost accounting group was trained in the methodology in order to bid for the project.
Jordan Belfort is the notorious 1990’s stockbroker who saw himself earning fifty million dollars a year operating a penny stock boiler room from his Stratton Oakmont, Inc. brokerage firm. Corrupted by drugs, money, and sex he went from being an innocent twenty – two year old on the fringe of a new life to manipulating the system in his infamous “pump and dump” scheme. As a stock swindler, he would motivate his young brokers through insane presentations to rile them up as they defrauded investors with duplicitous stock sales. Toward the end of this debauchery tale he was convicted for securities fraud and money laundering for which he was sentenced to twenty – two months in prison as well as recompensing two – hundred million in restitution to any swindled stock buyers of his brokerage firm (A&E Networks Television). Though his lavish spending and berserk party lifestyle was consumed by excessive greed, he displayed both positive and negative aspects of business communications.
Disputes are almost unavoidable between people when there are disagreements or misunderstandings. In the construction industry, contractual relationships could lead to dispute. To resolve disputes, construction disputes are most likely encouraged to use Alternative Dispute Resolutions such as arbitration, mediation, and mini-trials to resolve their disputes faster and keep the dispute confidential and at lower cost (Ray, 2000). The construction case presented in this paper first resorted to negotiation; however, it could not give the parties a resolution which led to a mini-trial.
This case illustrated that there were real consequences to white collar crime. In addition to paying the fifty million dollar fine, he relinquished another fifty million dollars of his illegal trading profits. (He still had millions remaining, however, from his illegal gains.) His actual prison sentence was three years, yet he served only twenty-two months in the federal prison at Lompoc, California, which was known to have a “country-club” atmosphere.
Barry gross is the founder and president of billcutterz.com Billcutterz.com was launched in May 2009 when Barry gross decided to pursue a business opportunity presented to him by a close friend. BillCutterz has been helping people save money on
Leonard Prescott, vice president and general manager of Weaver-Yamazaki Pharmaceutical of Japan, believed that John Higgins, his executive assistant, was losing effectiveness in representing the U.S. parent company because of an extraordinary identification with the Japanese culture.
The XYZ Corporation was established in 2004 and their main office is located in Vancouver, BC. The company’s main objective is to create new innovating technology for media devices, computers, and digital music players. They deal with the design, manufacturing and marketing of the products. XYZ Corporation has been providing Canadians with groundbreaking technology throughout the years and continues to create new technology to provide others with top-level technology. Although, recently their success rate has appeared to drop rapidly due to a number of factors that will be explored throughout this case study. Their main objective is to target the problems so that they can work towards having the issues resolved as quickly as possible. If they do not take any course of action, the state of the company may be in extreme danger. This case study is designed to explore the areas of the company and discover the problems blocking the XYZ Corporation from success.
Jordan Belfort is the notorious 1990’s stockbroker who saw himself earning fifty million dollars a year operating a penny stock boiler room from his Stratton Oakmont, Inc. brokerage firm. Corrupted by drugs, money, and sex, he went from being an innocent twenty – two year old on the fringe of a new life to manipulating the system in his infamous “pump and dump” scheme. As a stock swindler, he would motivate his young brokers through insane presentations to rile them up as they defrauded investors with duplicitous stock sales. Toward the end of this debauchery tale he was convicted for securities fraud and money laundering for which he was sentenced to twenty – two months in prison as well as recompensing two – hundred million in restitution to any swindled stock buyers of his brokerage firm. Though his lavish spending and berserk party lifestyle was consumed by excessive greed, he displayed both positive and negative aspects of business communications.
Later that year, Dennis Kozlowski resigned. In September of 2002 then-former CEO Dennis Kozlowski, former CFO Mark Swartz, and former General Counsel Mark Belnick were sued for accounting frauds. In 2005 both Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz were sentenced to 8 to 25 years in prison.