Corporate Finance Commons^™

Fixed Assets Accounting: How It Can Impact Employees, Auditors & Shareholders, Zach Markey

Accounting Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this thesis, I demonstrate how the proper, or improper, accounting of fixed assets can distinctly impact employees, auditors, and shareholders of publicly traded companies. As a foundation for this thesis, I give an overview of fixed assets accounting by explaining its magnitude on the balance sheet and income statement in addition to the differences between financial and tax accounting for fixed assets. Next, I focus on three areas relating to fixed assets accounting that I find the most compelling for this thesis: capital expenditures, auditing and fraud. Each of these subtopics will share studies, procedures, and stories on how …

Conditions For Increased Fraud Risk: A Case Study By Restaurant Segment, Elizabeth A. Yost

Journal of Hospitality Financial Management

Risk factors leading to fraud is an important issue for restaurant operators. This paper identifies and evaluates the financial and non-financial characteristics of different restaurant segments through the lens of the fraud triangle. Using probit modeling and time series data from 2004 to 2014, it investigates different factors that significantly impact the increased risk of fraud in four types of restaurant segments—quick service, fast casual, casual dining, and fine dining. As such the findings of this study provide a better understanding of internal and external risk factors leading to increased fraud in the restaurant industry.

Misreading Menetti: The Case Does Not Help You Avoid Liability For Your Own Fraud, Val D. Ricks

St. Mary's Law Journal

Several decades ago, an incorrect legal idea surfaced in Texas jurisprudence: that business entity actors are immune from liability for fraud that they themselves commit, as if the entity is solely responsible. Though the Supreme Court of Texas has rejected that result several times, it keeps coming back. The most recent manifestation is as a construction of Texas’s unique veil-piercing statute. Many lawyers have suggested that this view of the veil-piercing statute originated in Menetti v. Chavers, a San Antonio Court of Appeals case decided in 1998. Menetti has in fact played a prominent role in the movement to …

Chief Loophole Officer Or Chief Legal Officer: Inside Lehman Brothers—A Film Case Study About Corporate And Legal Ethics, Garrick Apollon

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

This Article discusses the continuing legal education (CLE) visual advocacy documentary-style program, which Garrick Apollon (author of this Article) researched and developed. The case study for this CLE documentary-style program is the film Inside Lehman Brothers—a documentary film by Jennifer Deschamps which chronicles the story of the Lehman whistleblowers. The film presents Mathew Lee, former senior vice president overseeing Lehman’s global balance sheet; Oliver Budde, former in-house counsel (associate general counsel) of the Lehman Brothers; and the racialized female mid-tier manager whistleblowers, who all paid a steep price in the 2008 American subprime mortgage crisis, while many of the …

Mitigating Financial Fraud Risk With Data Analytics, Clarence Goh, Gary Pan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The risks associated with financial fraud that modern CFOs face today is particularly high. The same report examined Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAERs) issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US from 2014 to 2019 and found that while the SEC frequently charged the person directly responsible for perpetuating the financial fraud, the CFO was among the most commonly charged employees. Data analytics techniques can play an important role in mitigating the risk of financial fraud for CFOs.

Essays On Financial Institutions And Advisors, Joseph D. Farizo

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

In my first chapter, I examine how index funds vote their proxies on firms in its index that their family does not hold in its actively managed funds. For a given proxy proposal at a given point in time, I find that an index fund is more likely to oppose management on shares its family does not hold in its active funds than on shares its family does hold in its active funds. I further demonstrate that index fund governance has positive effects on the probability a proposal passes and on shareholder value. In my second chapter coauthored with Will …

Private Company Lies, Elizabeth Pollman

All Faculty Scholarship

Rule 10b-5’s antifraud catch-all is one of the most consequential pieces of American administrative law and most highly developed areas of judicially-created federal law. Although the rule broadly prohibits securities fraud in both public and private company stock, the vast majority of jurisprudence, and the voluminous academic literature that accompanies it, has developed through a public company lens.

This Article illuminates how the explosive growth of private markets has left huge portions of U.S. capital markets with relatively light securities fraud scrutiny and enforcement. Some of the largest private companies by valuation grow in an environment of extreme information asymmetry …

Chief Financial Officer Demographic Characteristics And Fraudulent Financial Reporting In China, Jinghui Sun, Pamela Kent, Baolei Qi, Jiwei Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We investigate whether management's cognitions, values and perceptions are associated with fraud for 18 863 firm-years for Chinese listed firms from 2000 to 2014. Demographic characteristics of the chief financial officer (CFO) are used as proxies for management's cognitions, values and perceptions. We find that fraudulent financial reporting is higher when CFOs are younger, male, and have lower education backgrounds. An analysis of inflated earnings, fictitious assets, material omissions and other material misstatements provide similar results, with the exception that CFOs with higher education levels are associated with more inflated earnings. Accounting and Finance

Cryptocurrency Fraud: A Look Into The Frontier Of Fraud, Stafford C. Baum

Honors College Theses

This research project was conducted to look into what sort of frauds can be committed to steal unsuspecting investors’ cryptocurrencies. The inspiration for this research came in the form of the fact that millions of dollars are lost to cryptocurrency fraud each day, and many of these frauds are successful due to the public’s naivete towards the dangers of investing in cryptocurrencies. After researching many different cryptocurrency fraud cases, the frauds could be categorized into four major categories. These categories include Ponzi schemes, fake initial coin offering schemes, pump and dump schemes as well as cryptocurrency theft.

Procurement Fraud, Lisa Mcnamee

Economic Crime Forensics Capstones

The 2016 Global Economic Crime Survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (2016), states that twenty-two percent of companies have experienced procurement fraud. The statistics have actually decreased since 2014 when twenty-seven percent of companies had experienced procurement fraud. However, procurement fraud is still one of the most costly fraudulent schemes. Despite the reduction, the Department of Defense continues to experience large procurement fraud cases, both in number and dollar value. A recent example is the Supreme Foodservice fraud case, which cost the Defense Logistics Agency $757 million dollars in fraudulent charges. (Jahner, 2014) The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General …

Data Mining Journal Entries For Fraud Detection: A Replication Of Debreceny And Gray's (2010) Techniques, Poh Sun Seow, Pan, Gary, Themin Suwardy

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The alarming frequency of fraud occurrences suggests that corporations continue to face persistent threat of fraud (Cecchini et al., 2010a; Summers and Sweeney, 1998). According to Association of Certified Fraud Examiner (ACFE)’s 2014 Report, a typical organization may lose five percent of its revenue to fraud every year. As such, the consequences of fraud may impact the shareholders, creditors, auditors and the public’s confidence in the integrity of corporations’ financial systems (Rezaee, 2005).

Counteracting Fraud, Waste And Abuse In Drug Test Billing, Allison Walton

Economic Crime Forensics Capstones

Medicaid, Medicare, and major insurance companies are being faced with increased costs for drug test screening. These costs are not caused by a spike in the use of narcotics by subscribers, but from unnecessary testing and overbilling by doctors and drug screening companies. Recovering drug addicts are required to have random drug tests during their treatment program, but instead of being random, the drug tests have become prescriptive. Testing is performed at specific times weekly on a single patient, for substances that return results that are unimportant to the doctors. Doctors are given drug testing kits by large drug testing …

Corporate Revenue Miscalculations & The Impact On Stakeholders, Karen Cascini, Alan L. Delfavero, Ryan Bezner

WCBT Faculty Publications

Corporate earnings restatements are regarded as one of the most significant issues in accounting today. While there are various factors that can influence profitability, revenue is the key contributor to a business’ net income. During the 2000s, a multitude of domestic and multinational corporations faced significant issues with their revenue recognition practices. Although the investing public might regard any revenue restatement as laden with possible fraud, this is not always the case. Multinational firms face dual accounting systems, such as U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Currently, similarities and differences between the accounting systems …

Nonprofit Funding Agencies’ Review Of Grant Recipients, Siobain Mcilvain

Honors Theses - Providence Campus

Nonprofits need to be just as responsible as public corporations. Nonprofit funding agencies have the responsibility for evaluating the organizations they fund to make sure that they are operating with high integrity, maintaining strong internal controls, remaining financially stable, and overall being good stewards of the funds received. This paper will explain the criteria that a funding agency should follow in order to affect this process, as well as how a recipient nonprofit will benefit from following the criteria.

Falling Short: Has The Sec’S Quest To Control Market Manipulation And Abusive Short-Selling Come To An End Or Has It Really Just Begun?, Richard Ramirez

Richard E. Ramirez, J.D. | CFCS

No abstract provided.

Examining The Challenges In The Regulation Of Value Added Tax (Vat) In Nigeria, Joseph Femi Adebisi Phd

Joseph Femi Adebisi PhD

The paper examines the challenges in the regulation of value added tax (vat) in Nigeria. It hypothesizes on the Tax Laws and Fraudulent practices, VAT fraud and Effect on the Government revenue, Whistleblowers and effects on fraud detection, prevention and eradication. Based on primary data from questionnaire and personal interviews, the chi-square analysis was employed. Is was fund that tax laws relating to VAT facilitate frauds, frauds on VAT have negative effects on the government revenue, and that the Introduction of Whistleblowers has effects on fraud detection, prevention and eradication. There should be more enlightenment campaign on the right on …

Wherefore Art Thou Guidelines? An Empirical Study Of White-Collar Criminal Sentencing And How The Gall Decision Effectively Eliminated The Sentencing Guidelines, S. Patrick Morin

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “Until the passage of the U.S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines in 1984, federal judges had relatively wide discretion in sentencing federal offenders up to the statutory maximum. This judicial discretion led to a disparity in the sentences of similarly situated offenders, particularly in white-collar cases. The Guidelines attempted to eliminate this disparity by establishing maximum and minimum sentences for certain offenses based on the characteristics of the crime. An important feature of the Guidelines system was its mandatory nature, which decreased and structured the judiciary‘s discretion within bounds set by Congress.

The mandatory application of the Guidelines resulted in stiff …

An Assessment Of The Impact Of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act On The Investigation Violations Of The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Karen Cascini, Alan L. Delfavero

WCBT Faculty Publications

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, a plethora of corporate scandals occurred. Due to these corporate debacles, corporate executives have been placed under fire. In response to such unethical conduct with regard to internal practices and financial reporting, legislation has been passed in order to ensure that corporations conduct their business in an ethical manner. The purpose of this paper is to assess the connection between the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 (FCPA) and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOx), to determine whether SOx has influenced the FCPA’s investigative violation activities by examining the number of such investigations …

Gatekeeping, Peter B. Oh

Articles

Gatekeeping is a metaphor ubiquitous across disciplines and within fields of law. Generally, gatekeeping comprises an actor monitoring the quality of information, products, or services. Specific conceptions of gatekeeping functions have arisen independently within corporate and evidentiary law. Corporate gatekeeping entails deciding whether to grant or withhold support necessary for financial disclosure; evidentiary gatekeeping entails assessing whether expert knowledge is relevant and reliable for admissibility. This article is the first to identify substantive parallels between gatekeeping in these two contexts and to suggest their cross-treatment. Public corporate gatekeepers, like their judicial evidentiary analogues, should bear a duty of reliable monitoring.

Preventing Fraudulent Financial Reporting, Mark S. Beasley, Joseph V. Carcello, Dana R. Hermanson

Faculty and Research Publications

Provides information on a study conducted by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations regarding the detection and prevention of financial fraud. Discussion on the nature of financial frauds; Characteristics of unreliable financial reporting; Views on the role of auditing firms in the prevention of fraud.

Just Say 'No', Mark S. Beasley, Joseph V. Carcello, Dana R. Hermanson

Faculty and Research Publications

The article discusses the prevention of financial fraud within corporations and businesses in the United States. The types of individuals named in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) files are examined. Different fraud techniques are looked at, including sham sales, the recording of conditional sales, and unauthorized shipments. The author discusses the status of firms after fraud disclosure and the implications it has for finance professionals.