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Fraud Case Studies

Decent Essays

Bridget Carter
July 30, 2010
ACCT 461
Mid-Term

Regina Company, Inc.

1. Please find the attached excel spreadsheet showing the financial statements, and key ratios.
Given the data computed, there are some interesting numbers that seem to appear. Firstly, in the income statement, while sales seemed to rise over the 3 years, the percentage of cost of goods sold to those sales went down. It would be an important point to look at inflation, to see if sales prices went up, and people were still willing to buy expensive items, while the cost of making those items decreased. From researching that information, it would be smart to think that if a cheaper made product goes out, it has a greater chance of being faulty, and to then look at …show more content…

This involves checking sales that occur at the end of a quarter against inventory, shipments, accounting records and methods. This would uncover certain sales that are put into the books but are not shipped until the next quarter, and improper sales recognition.
In the Regina case, this testing of end of period sales would have uncovered not only the bogus invoices, but also the ship-in-place transactions which were incorrectly accounted for. These last minute additions to the sales records would have been investigated for confirmation, as well as proper controls once things seemed strange.
4. The Peat Marwick auditors were not justified in relying on their client’s affirmation that the ship-in-place orders were isolated. This would have been an obvious red flag as to the fact that basic accounting methods were manipulated, and deserved further investigation into other areas of the company’s accounting records. The client had started by giving Peat Marwick materially incorrect documents leaving it difficult to trust other items. The last minute recordings of sales would have led to the investigation of motives to reach certain goals set out by the CEO, which then would have led to investigating other areas that in previous quarters or months seemed to be lacking in hitting those goals, and understanding how Regina was able to catch up so

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