Financial Statement Fraud: Lessons Learned from Selected U.S. Legal Cases in the past Twenty Years

• 作者: Stephen Errol Blythe
• 来源期刊: 现代会计与审计:英文版
• 学科: 经济
• 关键词: FINANCIAL STATEMENT FRAUD LEGAL cases
• 年，卷（期）: 2020,（1）
• 页码范围: 1-18
• 页数: 18页
• 分类号: F42

摘要

The researcher analysed selected U.S.court cases of financial statement fraud from the past twenty years and concluded:(1)U.S.laws used to prosecute financial statement fraudsters include the Securities Act,Securities Exchange Act,S.E.C.Rule 10b-5,Investment Advisers Act,Private Securities Litigation Reform Act,and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act;(2)financial statement fraud schemes included use of unconsolidated special-purpose entities to conceal debt,improper revenue recognition in leasing of bandwidth in the telecom industry,improper accounting for goodwill in a merger,failure to write off a large amount of bad receivables,excessive recognition of revenue in bundled leases in the photocopier industry,use of loss contingency reserves to inflate current income,use of fictitious revenue to overstate earnings,and capitalising a project’s operating expenses to hide cost overruns;(3)to be liable for financial statement fraud,a corporate officer must have knowledge;and(4)employees discharged for reporting financial statement fraud may sue under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.