The Le-Nature Inc. scandal is the largest financial fraud that the Western District of Pennsylvania has ever seen (Gallagher, 2011). This elaborate pyramid scheme fraud was very similar to a loan-Ponzi scheme that cost lenders and investors $685 million when the company collapsed in 2006 (The U.S. Attorney’s Office, 2011). 4.1 THE COMPANY Le-Nature was a privately-held company based in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and headed by its founder, chairman, and CEO, Greg Podlucky. It was mainly run by the Podlucky family and a few other trusted employees in high positions. A variety of fruit drinks, teas, and flavoured bottled waters were some of its specialty products on offer. The company was forced into a Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2006 by its minority stakeholders, which was the primary reason for its collapse (Lippard, 2006). The creation and manipulation of fraudulent financial and accounting documents and misappropriation of funds are viewed as some of the main reasons that the company collapsed. 4.2 THE FRAUD The Le-Nature fraud was similar to the Madoff Ponzie scheme, where Gregory Podlucky took money from new participants and investors to pay off longer-standing investors. A combination of various forms of frauds committed from January 2000 to October 2006, including but not limited to, accounting and money laundering, were the primary causes of the company’s ultimate demise. However, unlike Madoff, the Le-Nature collapse was an internal failure that was not related to external economic conditions. The lack of transparency in financial and accounting records to stakeholders was the reason for the investors to force Le-Nature into an involuntarily bankruptcy in 2006. This step led to the discovery of the fraud committed and the company’... ... middle of paper ... ...e to inflate its equipment and product prices and assisting the CEO in a transfer pricing scheme. 5 CONCLUSION Consistent accounting and financial frauds in the U.S. alerted the SEC to the imperative need for policy and corporate governance changes. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 was enacted to encourage financial disclosures, enhance corporate responsibility, and combat fraudulent behaviour. This Act also helped create the PCAOB, which oversees the auditing practice (Stanwick & Stanwick 2009). As continuation to improving this Act, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board proposed amendments, in December 2013, to the SEC (PCAOB, 2014). The Dodd-Frank Act was a major financial regulatory reform brought in by the Obama government in 2010 primarily to protect consumers and to improve financial transparency and accountability within businesses (Amadeo, 2013).
Throughout the past several years major corporate scandals have rocked the economy and hurt investor confidence. The largest bankruptcies in history have resulted from greedy executives that “cook the books” to gain the numbers they want. These scandals typically involve complex methods for misusing or misdirecting funds, overstating revenues, understating expenses, overstating the value of assets or underreporting of liabilities, sometimes with the cooperation of officials in other corporations (Medura 1-3). In response to the increasing number of scandals the US government amended the Sarbanes Oxley act of 2002 to mitigate these problems. Sarbanes Oxley has extensive regulations that hold the CEO and top executives responsible for the numbers they report but problems still occur. To ensure proper accounting standards have been used Sarbanes Oxley also requires that public companies be audited by accounting firms (Livingstone). The problem is that the accounting firms are also public companies that also have to look after their bottom line while still remaining objective with the corporations they audit. When an accounting firm is hired the company that hired them has the power in the relationship. When the company has the power they can bully the firm into doing what they tell them to do. The accounting firm then loses its objectivity and independence making their job ineffective and not accomplishing their goal of honest accounting (Gerard). Their have been 379 convictions of fraud to date, and 3 to 6 new cases opening per month. The problem has clearly not been solved (Ulinski).
The overall view clarification of the issue illustrates the evolution of Enron’s innovations and fraud. The business records of the company financial economists and accountant’s uncovered considerable number information and incentive issues. The issues both complicate and potentially resolve the appraised valuation questions such as; earnings growth, stock splits, dividend changes, free cash flow limitations, share price-based compensation and hedging of market risks. The Enron Company contributed large sums of money to non-profit organizations for the purpose of acting on probable ethical issues before they become legal dilemmas. The company failed to inform its consumers of the business decisions made even though they had knowledge that the person at the other end of the business deal did not. The Enron Company filed a Chapter 11 to seek bankruptcy protection. The uncertainty of the company’s standings impacted the market’s confidence in...
The Phar-Mor case again involves a retail enterprise, inventory overstatements, and both fraudulent financial reporting and misappropriation of assets. The auditors completely failed to discover the fraud, missing the many warning signs and ignoring the high-risk elements of the engagement. Yet again, the scrupulous, yet dedicated, fraudsters showed that they were capable of fooling everyone for an extended period of time. Until recent years, remained one of the largest US corporate frauds of all time.
The schemes are estimated to have caused a loss of approximately $11.6 million. The scheme to defraud the company of millions of dollars is alleged to have started with Shakouri and Torino. They later recruited Quon, Hong, and Skaire and rewarded them with a portion of the misappropriated funds. All of the defendants conspired with others to defraud the Company through false employee expense reimbursements, receiving kickbacks from vendors, stealing Company portfolios, and creating fictitious sales representatives and paying the commissions. The quintet's schemes came to a halt in August 2012 when another Company executive revealed the scheme the then-Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer. The Company then had to correct and refile multiple Annual
In this essay, I will be examining the financial events surrounding Bernie Madoff, and the events surrounding Enron. Bernie Madoff, “a former American stock broker, investment advisor, non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, and the admitted operator of what has been described as the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of the world”. Bernard Madoff, 2011, para. 78. 1) Bernie was able to convince investors to give him large sums of money with the promise that they would receive between eight percent and twelve percent return a year.... ...
Enron was a Houston based energy, commodities and services company. When people hear the name Enron they automatically associate their name with one of the biggest accounting and ethical scandals known to date. The documentary, “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” provides an in depth examination of Enron and the Enron scandal. The film does a wonderful job of depicting the downfall of Enron and how the corporate culture and ethics were key to Enron’s fall. As the movie suggests, Enron is “not a story about numbers, it is a story about people.”
150 Ponzi schemes collapsed in 2009 alone, resulting in more than $16 billion in losses to tens of thousands of investors. These victims confront the challenge of calculating their losses for recovery claims as well as tax purposes. Ponzi scheme investigations currently account for approximately 21% of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) enforcement workload — up from 17% in 2008 and 9% in 2005
There were two executives named Jeremy Blackburn and Anthony Bansa from Canopy Financial that orchestrated financial fraud in order to steal $93 million from investors. In order for this scheme to work Jeremy and Anthony devised a plan to steal $75 million from private equity investors by providing them with bogus auditor’s report and falsified bank statements. Thus, it was through the use of stating to investors that their financial statements had been audited and approved by KPMG that gave creditability to their fictitious financial statements. For example, “Canopy was absolutely making up their financial statements, even forging audited statements with fake KMPG letterhead” (Arrington). For that reason, Jeremy and Anthony were able to fool investors
The scandals have made some big implications on the profession as a whole. One being the decision from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOA) of 2002, in April 2003 they voted to assume the responsibility for establishing auditing standards. The Auditing Standards Board of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) previously played this role.
In 1995 The Bayou Hedge Fund Group, referred to as the fund, was founded by Samuel Israel III in Stamford, Connecticut with the intention to produce high returns for investors. Good intentions were not enough when the fund began to experience losses almost immediately and Mr. Israel resorted to fraudulent activities to keep the appearance of success alive. The resulting life of the fund was filled will illegal, fraudulent, and unethical activities that finally brought the fund to bankruptcy and landed Mr. Israel and some of his key associates in prison. The objective of this paper is to overview the history of the case and to highlight some of the major issues that should have alerted investors and other outside parties to the wrongdoings being perpetrated.
This Ponzi scheme by Bernard Madoff had cheated his clients out of 65 billions on paper (Stephanie Yang, 2014), and he had to face a maximum sentence of 150 years even though 20 years was more likely for him to be in the prison. (FRANK, R., EFRATI, A., LUCCHETTI, A., & BRAY, C., 2009) So what was really going on? How the former NASDAQ
The Tyco accounting scandal is an ideal illustration of how individuals who hold key positions in an organization are able to manipulate accounting practices and financial reports for personal gain. The few key individuals involved in the Tyco Scandal (CEO Kozlowski and CFO Swartz), used a number of clever and unique tactics in order to accomplish what they did; including spring loading, manipulating their ‘key-employee loan’ program, and multiple ‘hush money’ payouts.
Enron was on the of the most successful and innovative companies throughout the 1990s. In October of 2001, Enron admitted that its income had been vastly overstated; and its equity value was actually a couple of billion dollars less than was stated on its income statement (The Fall of Enron, 2016). Enron was forced to declare bankruptcy on December 2, 2001. The primary reasons behind the scandal at Enron was the negligence of Enron’s auditing group Arthur Andersen who helped the company to continually perpetrate the fraud (The Fall of Enron, 2016). The Enron collapse had a huge effect on present accounting regulations and rules.
...products and services while their mission is to sustain growth through efficient services and prudent cost competitive application of resources exceeding the expectation of their customers and shareholder .
The Enron Corporation was an American energy company that provided natural gas, electricity, and communications to its customers both wholesale and retail globally and in the northwestern United States (Ferrell, et al, 2013). Top executives, prestigious law firms, trusted accounting firms, the largest banks in the finance industry, the board of directors, and other high powered people, all played a part in the biggest most popular scandal that shook the faith of the American people in big business and the stock market with the demise of one of the top Fortune 500 companies that made billions of dollars through illegal and unethical gains (Ferrell, et al, 2013). Many shareholders, employees, and investors lost their entire life savings, investments,