Fraudulent Financial Reporting Schemes
Abstract
Routine examinations, audits, or internal control procedures, do not reveal most accounting fraud. Only 20% is revealed by way of auditing, however whistle blowing accounts for most revealed accounting fraud. Financial statement fraud will usually occur in such schemes as: fictitious revenues, timing differences, concealed liabilities & expense, improper asset valuation, or asset/revenue overstatements (just to name a few), (Frempong, 2012). It is essential one be educated and thoroughly understand the different types of financial statement fraud schemes and the accompanying accounting transactions in order to better identify fraud.
Fraud Schemes and Examples
Fictitious Revenue
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This is achieved by inflating the company’s assets, net earnings, and/or equity. To understate liabilities the company would not record accrued liabilities or accounts payable, service or warranty liabilities, loans (or keep liabilities completely off of the company books), contingent liabilities, and record unearned revenues as earned revenue.
Improper Asset Valuation
The more assets a creditor, lender, or investor can view on a company’s books the more appealing the companies are to the creditor’s, lender’s, or investors. Assets are used to earn the company money in order to pay or pay off its debt. This can cause improper asset valuation of such accounts as: accounts receivable, fixed assets, and or inventory. Considering the complexity of inventory records, management finds inventory as an attractive place to commit financial statement fraud. Inventory is sometimes comprised of larger number items and distributed from several locations making it easier for the improper creation of estimates for slow moving or dated goods. Additionally, management will create non-existing inventory, manipulate the physical count, fail to record the actual purchase, and improperly capitalize inventory, (Colby, n.d).
Asset and/or Revenue Overstatement
Last but definitely and by far not the least of some of the fraudulent
The amount listed is the enrollment agreement was 10,020.00 which gives a difference of :
First, the inventory account increased from 35.47% of total assets in 1996 to 58.01% in 1998, which was uncharacteristically large. Second, the cash accounts and marketable securities decreased significantly. Finally, long term debt increased enormously over the three years. These items are major red flags for business operations.
As you can see from this mock Balance Sheet of our business, it (1) has enough assets to pay our debts when they are due, and (2) the claims of short and long-term creditors on
As a firm's sales grow, its current assets also tend to increase. For instance, as sales increase, the firm's inventories generally increase, and purchases of inventories result in more accounts payable. Thus, spontaneous liabilities that reduce AFN arise from
The manipulation of accounts fraud scheme is generally fulfilled by employees in top management positions and it usually involves making understatements or overstatements on financial statements making it very hard to detect. The process followed as Troy Adkins, (2015) explains is very simple. The financial statements are either overstated to show different figures in the earnings on the income statements making them look better than they actually are or the earnings in the current periods are manipulated in such a way that the revenue is understated or they inflate the current year’s expenses. The second process includes making the financial statements look worse than they are in reality. Deloitte, (2009) explains a number of ways which the accounts are manipulated where as one of the ways is to manipulate the reported earnings directly. They further explained that overstating the
Moving onto the balance sheet, it is safe to assume that the cash position in the firm will increase the rate of the sales growth going forward. In actuality, cash has historically increased faster than the growth of revenue with 2004 being an exception. To calculate the assumption for accounts receivable, inventory, and accounts payable, we averaged the four years worth of data
11-2: The three main groups of people who commit financial statement fraud are organized criminals, mid- and lower-level employees, and senior management (Wells, 2013, p. 274). Senior management such as the CEO and CFO typically commit fraud to meet the expectations of Wall Street, preserve status, and/or receive performance bonuses (Wells, 2013, p. 274). Middle management will falsify financial statements in order to receive performance bonuses (Wells, 2013, p. 274). While organized criminals will try to obtain loans or engage in a pump-and-dump scheme (Wells, 2013, p. 274).
Excello Telecommunications was presented with a dilemma on how the company should report earnings so that they would appear to have met earning estimates for the 2010 financial year. The CFO, Terry Reed, was concerned with how failure to meet earning estimates would affect bonuses, stock options, and the share price of Excello stock. On December 201, 2010, the company sold $1.2 million of equipment to Data Equipment Systems. However, Data Equipment Systems requested that Excello hold on to the product until January 11, 2011, because they do not have the
Inventory often is one of the largest amounts listed under assets on the balance sheet which means that it represents a significant amount of the resources available to the business. The inventory may be excessive in amount, which is a needless waste of resources; alternatively it may be too low, which may result in lost sales. Therefore, for internal users inventory control is very important. On the income statement, inventory exerts a direct impact on the amount of income. Therefore, statement users are interested particularly in the amount of this effect and the way in which inventory is measured. Because of its impact on both
Congress has discovered that the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 that created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or CFPB is fatally flawed and dangerous to traditional banking interests, politicians and lenders. The Huffington Post reports that ther bureau has become everybody's favorite target for reform or abolishment, and these stakeholders include people from opposite asides of the political specturm like the American Bankers Association and banking-system critic Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Alaska). The CFPB, which was expected to target payday and predatory lenders,
Financial Statement is the heart and soul of the business industry as it provides the financial condition of the company and the going forward initiatives of the corporation, therefore it is critical that the financial statement is free from manipulation and misstatement to be material and useful for stakeholders and other earning statement users. Goel and Gangolly (2012) implied that top management knows the financial statement users will perceive the audited report as credible, and strategically writes under thorough guidance of corporate lawyers to cautiously position the company’s image positively (p.75). Goel and Gangolly argued that not only the financials metrics, but disclosure statements contain “linguistic cues” for investigation of accurateness and honesty of the writing and presentation style (p.75-76). Financial statement fraud has become a growing problem in the accounting profession and the business industry. According to Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO, 2010) 1998 to 2007 fraudulent financial reporting statistics, over 60% of the fraud cases were revenue fraud (p.5). Abbasi, Albrecht, Vance and Hansen (2012) emphasized the harmful effect of financial fraud to our economy, specifically to risk-averse investors, which could have crucial long-term consequences to company’s sustainability (p.1293). Abbasi, Albrecht, Vance and Hansen indicated that most companies that were
A statute of frauds act as a defense anytime a breach of contract occurs. This type of contract doesn’t create void, but it makes some type of contracts to be voidable. Also, it is important to understand that during statute frauds; contract writing doesn’t have to be formal the only purpose of this writing is to show and prove the agreement between the two parties who are in the same agreement. After the written agreement, the parties must sign in other for it to be affective, and enforceable if breach of contract happens. Furthermore, different states have their own statute of frauds laws which are enforce differently in jurisdictions. To the best of my knowledge, this law was created to prevent fraudulent behaviors from any parties. Statute
Financial statement fraud is any intentional or grossly negligent violation of generally accounting principles (GAAP) that is undisclosed and materially effects any financial statement. Fraud can take many forms, including hiding both bad and god news. Research shows that financial statement fraud us relatively more likely to occur in companies with assets of less than $100 million, with earnings problems, and with loose governance structures (Hopwood, Leiner, & Young, 2011).
The fraud accounting practice is the main problem incurred at WorldCom. The company had focus more on increasing the revenues and acquiring capacity sufficient. As the market conditions was worst in 2000, it severe the pressure on WorldCom’s E/R ratio closely monitored by analyst and industry observer. Thus, the management must find out the solution to overcome it. Unfortunately, WorldCom had chosen the wrong and illegal ways to solve their problems. Based on the article, there are 2 main accounting tactics used to achieve target performances which are accrual releases in 1999 and 2000 and capitalization of line costs in 2001 and 2002.
Assets in the financial statement are always required and show useful information to investors and understand where the information comes from. For instance, accounts receivable net which the organization does not expect to collect all of the money it is due from all patients and insurers, (Finkler, S.A., Ward, D.M. & Calabrese, I.D., 2013). The bad debts become about of the money due. Furthermore, accounts receivables, net represents gross charges less an allowance for poor debts, and many contractual allowances established with those third party payers. Typically, an example of a bad debt would show charges of a large sum of money delivered from a hospital. Then, the contractual allowances from