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Illuminating The Limits Of Auditor Accountability For Fraud Detection Through A Historical Study Of Internal Control Evaluation, Stephanie D. Moussalli, O. Ronald Gray, Gokhan Karahan

Journal of Business, Industry, and Economics

Messner (2009) and Roberts (2009) argue that there are limits ofaccountability and transparency for accountants. We study the 20 th -centurydevelopment of independent auditors’ evaluation of internal controls as aU.S. example of attempted limits on auditors’ fraud detectionresponsibilities. While internal controls provide market value, theirevaluation during an audit has value largely to auditors themselves, whoshift some of the costs of the audit and much of the responsibility for frauddetection to management. A content analysis of the Montgomery’s Auditingseries from 1912 to 1998 demonstrates that the percent of text devoted toboth internal control techniques and their evaluation was a positive functionof …

The Department Of Justice Chases Mice While Lions Roam The Campsite: Why The Department Has Failed To Prosecute The Elite Frauds That Drove The Financial Crisis, William K. Black

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Encouraging Litigation: Why Dodd-Frank Goes Too Far In Eliminating The Procedural Difficulties In Sarbanes-Oxley, Jessica Luhrs

UC Law Business Journal

This note reviews the whistleblower protections in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. These sweeping protections decrease the barriers and increase the incentives for corporate whistleblowers, in part by decreasing procedural hurdles and providing potentially staggering cash bounties. This note argues that these whistleblower protections go too far and are likely to increase the number of false and meritless claims filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This note concludes that the Securities and Exchange Commission should address these shortcomings and supplement its regulatory efforts by incentivizing corporate transparency, penalizing those who file false claims, and encouraging …

How The "Unintended Consequences" Story Promotes Unjust Intent And Impact., Martha T. Mccluskey

Journal Articles

In the guise of critical analysis of the limits of law reform, the familiar phrase “unintended consequences” serves to rationalize rising inequality and to undermine democratic accountability. This paper examines how the phrase promotes a story of disentitlement, using the recent financial crisis as an example. By naturalizing inequality as power beyond law’s reach, this phrase’s message that benign law is likely to bring unequal consequences dovetails with a seemingly contradictory message that benign intent, rather than harmful impact, is what primarily counts for evaluating inequality.

As part of a LatCrit XV symposium taking a “bottom-up” view of the recent …

Common Fraud : A Guide To Thwarting The Top Ten Schemes, Glenn L. Helms

Guides, Handbooks and Manuals

No abstract provided.

Keep Your Friends Close But Your Auditors Closer: Corporations Risk Waiver When Independent Auditors Request Work Product, Daniel M. Reach

University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Assessing Companies Allowance For Doubtful Accounts: Earnings Management And The Recession, David Mcarthur Neyhart

Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to determine if the economic downturn from 2007- 2009 had any significant influence on company’s ability to estimate bad debt expense, and to examine if there were any noticeable trends of earnings management. The estimates that companies use for their estimated allowance for doubtful accounts are largely unregulated and subjective, and therefore are more easily manipulated. This point is illustrated in the Statements on Auditing Standards number 57.4 by saying, “As estimates are based on subjective as well as objective factors, it may be difficult for management to establish controls over them. Even when …

Market Reactions To Publicly Announced Privacy And Security Breaches Suffered By Companies Listed On The United States Stock Exchanges: A Comparative Empirical Investigation, Adolfo S. Coronado

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Using a sample of security and privacy breaches the present research examines the comparative announcement impact between the two types of events. The first part of the dissertation analyzes the impact of publicly announced security and privacy breaches on abnormal stock returns, the change in firm risk, and abnormal trading volume are measured. The second part of the dissertation analyzes differential impact between security and privacy breaches on abnormal stock returns, the change in firm risk, and abnormal trading volume are measured.

Using a sample of 114 security (65) and privacy (49) breaches on average, security breaches resulted in more …

On The Development Of A Digital Forensics Curriculum, Manghui Tu, Dianxiang Xu, Samsuddin Wira, Cristian Balan, Kyle Cronin

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Computer Crime and computer related incidents continue their prevalence and frequency, resulting in losses approaching billions of dollars. To fight against these crimes and frauds, it is urgent to develop digital forensics education programs to train a suitable workforce that can effectively investigate computer crimes and incidents. There is presently no standard to guide the design of digital forensics curriculum for an academic program. In this research, previous work on digital forensics curriculum design and existing education programs are thoroughly investigated. Both digital forensics educators and practitioners were surveyed and results were analyzed to determine the industry and law enforcement …

Further Perspectives On Corporate Wrongdoing, In Pari Delicto, And Auditor Malpractice, Deborah A. Demott

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Another Madoff Masquerade?: Questioning “Securities Fraud” In The Crime And Its Cleanup, J. Scott Colesanti

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

In December 2008, broker-dealer CEO Bernard Madoff confessed to a massive Ponzi scheme. Days later, he was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the United States Attorney for, among other things, securities fraud. The theory of prosecution proceeded on the premise that Madoff's illicit investment advisory activities (which stemmed from his reputation in the industry) operated wholly apart from his broker-dealer activities. Subsequently, both the SEC and FINRA (the industry's largest self-regulator) concluded studies affirming that no securities transactions took place at the broker-dealer —for years, the man with the famous investment firm and his employees had simply …

Piercing The Veil Of Secrecy: Securing Effective Exchange Of Information To Remedy The Harmful Effects Of Tax Havens, Hedda Leikvang

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The enforcement of tax laws abroad has long posed problems for authorities. However, that enforcement becomes increasingly more problematic when the information necessary for proper enforcement is located within an impenetrable system whose sole purpose is to protect that information from tax authorities in other countries. Although much effort has been expended to remedy the harmful effects of tax havens, few strategies have succeeded. But with the prospects of a record federal deficit and an ever-increasing tax gap, U.S. authorities have begun to look for new ways to strengthen the enforcement of U.S. tax laws abroad. The most prominent of …

Toward A Public Enforcement Model For Directors' Duty Of Oversight, Renee M. Jones, Michelle Welsh

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article proposes a public enforcement model for the fiduciary duties of corporate directors. Under the dominant model of corporate governance, the principal function of the board of directors is to oversee the conduct of senior corporate officials. When directors fail to provide proper oversight, the consequences can be severe for shareholders, creditors, employees, and society at large. Despite general agreement on the importance of director oversight, courts have yet to develop a coherent doctrine governing director liability for the breach of oversight duties. In Delaware, the dominant state for U.S. corporate law, the courts tout the importance of board …

The Effect Of Password Management Procedures On The Entropy Of User Selected Passwords., John D. Enamait

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Maintaining the security of information contained within computer systems poses challenges for users and administrators. Attacks on information systems continue to rise. Specifically, attacks that target user authentication are increasingly popular. These attacks are based on the common perception that traditional alphanumeric passwords are weak and susceptible to attack. As a result of attacks targeting alphanumeric passwords, different authentication methods have been proposed. Nonetheless, traditional alphanumeric-based passwords remain the most common form of user authentication and are expected to remain so for the foreseeable future. This study provided empirical data to determine if the entropy of user-selected passwords was affected …

Overcriminalization For Lack Of Better Options: A Celebration Of Bill Stuntz, Daniel C. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

The unity of Bill Stuntz's character – his profound integrity – makes it easy to move from a celebration of his friendship (which I’ve treasured since we first met back in 1985) to one of his scholarship, for creativity, wisdom, and humility are strengths not just of Bill himself but of his work. Even as his broad brush strokes have fundamentally advanced our understanding of the interplay between substantive criminal law, criminal procedure, and criminal justice institutions over time, Bill's work – like Bill himself – welcomes and endures sustained engagement. Humility is appropriate for me, too, as I offer …

Automated Human Screening For Detecting Concealed Knowledge, Nathan W. Twyman

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

Screening individuals for concealed knowledge has traditionally been the purview of professional interrogators investigating a crime. But the ability to detect when a person is hiding important information would be of high value to many other fields and functions. This dissertation proposes design principles for and reports on an implementation and empirical evaluation of a non-invasive, automated system for human screening. The screening system design (termed an automated screening kiosk or ASK) is patterned after a standard interviewing method called the Concealed Information Test (CIT), which is built on theories explaining psychophysiological and behavioral effects of human orienting and defensive …

Institutionalization, Investment Adviser Regulation, And The Hedge Fund Problem, Anita K. Krug

UC Law Journal

This Article contends that more effective regulation of investment advisers could be achieved by recognizing that the growth of hedge funds, private equity funds, and other private funds in recent decades is a manifestation of institutionalization in the investment advisory context. That is, investment advisers today commonly advise these “institutions,” which have supplanted other, smaller investors as advisory clients. However, the federal securities statute governing investment advisers, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, does not address the role of private funds as institutions that now intermediate those smaller investors’ relationships to investment advisers. Consistent with that failure, investment adviser regulation …

An Examination Of The Fraudulent Factors Associated With Corporate Fraud, Ronald Zmuda

HIM 1990-2015

Between the years 1998 and 2002, the United States suffered a time in which several large companies engaged in fraudulent behavior which eroded investor confidence in the stock market and to some extent destabilized the economy. Audits, which were conducted to assess the validity and reliability of a company's financial statements, were not detecting the material misstatements in the statements. As a result, both the US Government and the accounting profession needed to come up with a way to prevent these immense frauds from occurring in the future. As a response to these large frauds, in 2002, the US Government …

An Original Take On Originalism, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The argument that Professor Orin Kerr proffers in An Equilibrium-Adjustment Theory of the Fourth Amendment' is simple: Fourth Amendment law ought to be structured to ensure that the balance of power between government and citizenry remains constant. This equilibrium-adjustment theory is elegant and, because it rests on a relatively "neutral" historical foundation, might be attractive to judges and scholars from different perspectives. Contrary to Kerr's assertion, however, it does not easily explain many of the Court's cases, nor does it help address the most difficult Fourth Amendment issues facing the Court today. The historical foundations on which it rests are …

How To Navigate Public Accounting Recruitment, Jill Heather Aoki

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

For many accounting graduates, public accounting is an excellent place to start a career. However, recruitment at accounting firms is highly competitive. The majority of personnel are hired through internships, and competition for these positions is fierce. The process usually spans over multiple years and involves participating in leadership seminars, attending social events, and much more in addition to interviewing. Successful placement requires not only exceptional academic achievements but also strong relationships with personnel at the firm. One primary differentiator among the numerous public accounting firms is their people and culture. Other factors include local clients and specializations. Thus, candidates …

Do Not Track Me Online: The Logistical Struggles Over The Right "To Be Let Alone" Online, Stephanie A. Kuhlmann

DePaul Journal of Art, Technology & Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Risk Factors For Fraud In Elderly Americans, Antonia M. Jensen

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

Americans over age 65 comprise approximately one eighth of our population, but about one third of scam victims. The risk of fraud in this population is of particular concern because it is increasing and the damage is greater; losses have been reported in billions of dollars, and elders typically cannot return to the work force to recoup their losses, which can amount to their life savings and even their independence. This project details the results of an unobtrusive research project consisting of a content analysis of more current literature to identify and examine risk factors of elder fraud.

Improving The Culture Of Ethical Behavior In The Financial Sector: Time To Expressly Provide For Private Enforcement Against Aiders And Abettors Of Securities Fraud, Mark Klock

Dickinson Law Review (1908-2003)

Financial markets do not function well when fraud is pervasive. It has been well documented that financial fraud has increased following changes in securities law that occurred in the 1990's. Also around September of 2009, the investigations into the SEC examinations of Bernard Madoff Investment Securities, LLC were completed and released to the public. The simple facts reveal an alarming level of incompetence and lack offinancial literacy on the part of the guardians of the integrity of our financial markets. I suggest two important tools for addressing these problems. One is to supplement enforcement of anti-fraud rules with more private …

Board Reputation And Financial Reporting Quality, Dan Segal

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study uses a new measure of board reputation that is based on the market value of other companies on which board members serve, and examines whether board reputation has a causal effect on monitoring as reflected in financial statement reporting quality. A negative causal effect is expected if reputable directors are ineffective monitors because they are too busy or they choose to cater to management, whereas a positive causal effect is expected if reputable directors are more experienced and subject to significant reputation penalties in the case of a financial reporting failure. An alternative explanation is that reputation does …

Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation Annual Report 2010, Philippines: Deposit Insurance Corporation (Pdic)

Documents

No abstract provided.

A Comparative Analysis Of Effective School Board Leadership: The Case Of Gwinnett County And Atlanta City Public Schools, Joshua Allen Garner

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

A quality education is essential in determining the success of future generations. All too often K-12 school systems fail to meet the expectations of success held by students, parents, and the community. On the other hand, there are school systems that surpass expectations of success held by stake holders of the school system. Exemplifying this phenomenon is the case of Atlanta Public Schools, who were placed on probation by the accreditation agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, and the case of Gwinnett County Public Schools, who were awarded the 2010 Broad Award for minority student achievement (Torres 2011) …

Improving The Culture Of Ethical Behavior In The Financial Sector: Time To Expressly Provide For Private Enforcement Against Aiders And Abbettors Of Securities Fraud, Mark Klock

Penn State Law Review (2003 - Present)

No abstract provided.

The Agency Problem, Corporate Governance, And The Asymmetrical Behavior Of Selling, General, And Administrative Costs, Hai Lu, Hai Lu, Theodore Sougiannis

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) costs represent a significant proportion of thecosts of business operations. On average, the SG&A costs to total assets ratio is 27 percent,compared to the research and development (R&D) to total assets ratio of 3 percent(Banker, Huang, and Natarajan 2011). Due to the importance of SG&A costs, practitionerspay close attention to controlling SG&A spending. Understanding SG&A cost behaviorand the role of managers in adjusting the costs is thus important to researchers andpractitioners. Recent empirical research indicates that SG&A costs behave asymmetrically,that is, they increase more rapidly when demand increases than they decline when demanddecreases (Anderson, Banker, …

The George-Anne, Georgia Southern University

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The George-Anne, Georgia Southern University

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