• Compliance Week: Koss Embezzlement and Small Company Internal Controls

    Today’s Compliance Week article, “SEC Pursues Small Company Over Lax Internal Controls,” [subscription required] discusses the SEC settlement with Koss Corp over the $34 million embezzlement by former Vice President of Finance Sujata (Sue) Sachdeva. The article explains the settlement, […]

  • SEC Pursues Small Company Over Lax Internal Controls

    Compliance Week By Tammy Whitehouse The Securities and Exchange Commission is sending another warning about fraud prevention by pursuing top executives at a small company for failing to stop a massive fraud, although legal experts are divided on whether it […]

  • Financial Statement Fraud: Olympus Makes It Look Easy

    What is a company to do when it wants to hide losses? Manipulation of the financial statements is the obvious first choice. It’s not hard. Sure companies have “internal controls,” which are supposed to include policies and procedures which ensure […]

  • FCPA Guidance to be Released by Department of Justice

    Guest Post by David Quinones, Executive Director, International Association for Asset Recovery While it was just a brief comment during a lengthy speech, United States Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer’s mention of impending guidance on the resurgent Foreign Corrupt Practices […]

  • Michael Volkov on Internal Investigations: Best Practices

    Guest Post by Michael Volkov In-House counsel and corporate compliance officers dodge bullets everyday as they stare down the barrels of aggressive prosecutors, regulators, civil litigants, whistleblowers, disgruntled employees and shareholders prodded by trial attorneys to file derivative suits at […]

  • Groupon IPO: Investors Beware the Unaudited Financial Statements

    It’s crunch time for Groupon (GRPN). The roadshow for the company’s Initial Public Offering went live last week, and Groupon’s offering will happen this week. Demand for the shares is apparently through the roof. The company was hoping to sell 30 […]

  • Green Mountain Coffee: Accounting Irregularities and Other Concerns

    A couple of weeks ago, David Einhorn bashed Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (NASDAQ:GMCR) in a 110-slide presentation called “GAAP-uccino” at the Value Investing Conference, sending the company’s shares down. The stock opened at $91.66, and closed at $82.50 the day […]

  • Exposing Auditors’ Work

    Lately, there has been talk of more requirements for auditors:  more disclosures, more discussion, more information on who is doing the audits.  Would a narrative by the auditors add more meaning to audit reports? One problem with audits is that […]

  • The Myth of Government Budget Cuts (The Austerity Myth)

    We hear over and over that there are “big budget cuts” and that government budgets have been “cut to the bone” and that there is “nothing left to cut.” What is the truth behind government budgets? The cuts are a […]

  • MacIver Institute: Underpaid Public Employees Getting Screwed Again

    I am a firm believer that government employees are too highly compensated. While the perception is that these people are public servants, doing work out of the goodness of their hearts for little pay…. the reality is that they are  […]