CFO Fraud

CFO Fraud Or.... "How a CFO landed in prison" an article in Fraud Magazine (http://www.fraud-magazine.com/) Jan/Feb 2013 tells the story of a CFO whose misddeeds ended his career. "The perils of asset and revenue overstatements (and other schemes)... A CFO, bullied by the CEO, used creative accounting and fraudulent schemes to falsely improve a company's bottom line. Here's how he did it and what to keep an eye out for in your organization." Has this happend to you or someone you know and how did you/they deal with it? In my case it was so much as bullied but hair-brained scheming by the CEO. I just said no! I was lucky, he listened. Others, well as the article shows, are not so lucky....

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Keith Perry Director of Global Accounting • April 29, 2014

Wayne,

Thanks for the ref! Fun stuff. I grabbed a direct hyperlink below.
http://www.fraud-magazine.com/article.aspx?id=4294976271

Keith Perry Director of Global Accounting • April 29, 2014

Also, this is incidentally parallel to one of the key messages that my Accounting prof had when I was in Grad School. He'd be head of enforcement at the SEC; he wanted all us kids to be aware that a little judgement in the books, that you'll reverse out next month, results in doubling-down next month as you need to adjust for the reversal and the trend that you fudged....and you certainly don't want to take an "adjustment". Thus the slippery slope leads to ruin.

One of the sneaky things that the article bypasses is that it doesn't need to be a bully or a crook pushing this. It isn't uncommon to get the reasonable question, "we've made real progress, can't you show that somehow? I hired you to be creative....etc". Your job is to draw the line, because they might not know where it is.

My point is, this can happen without a villain in the room.

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