Recent Articles & Press
| 23 August 2010
The Federal government wields a big stick when it comes to business-related crimes. Violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), fraud in the delivery of health care services or in the receipt of federal money for those services, and other whitecollar crimes can open up companies and their executives to harsh penalties under the United States Sentencing Guidelines.Companies and executives can get reduced sentences if certain mitigating factors have been identified. One of those mitigating factors is having an effective compliance and ethics function within the company that attempts to prevent fraud and proactively identify criminal activities.
| 21 June 2010
Forensic accounting has been around for decades, but only in the last ten years have people become aware of the profession on a wide scale. Many of the techniques used by forensic accountants to investigate fraud and analyze the numbers are the same today as they were decades ago.Computers have made things easier, as we can track, sort, and manipulate data faster. While software solutions for analyzing data, managing documents, and following the money are being used in investigations, they're not being used to their full potential. This is obviously a missed opportunity for clients.
| 26 April 2010
It’s hard to believe that a Ponzi scheme as massive as the one perpetrated by Bernard Madoff got by anyone. Surely he was the most clever criminal alive, and was ingenious at hiding his fraud. There couldn’t have been any signs of the scam he was running. Or were there?It turns out there were plenty of red flags pointing squarely at the scheme Madoff was running. It was clear years ago to Harry Markopolos, the author of “No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller.” Markopolos was the whistleblower who went to the Securities and Exchange Commission on several occasions with his suspicions about Bernie Madoff. But he wasn’t an investment expert who was “just jealous” of Madoff’s apparent success in generating high earnings for his clients quarter after quarter. He was a numbers wizard who had concrete proof the Madoff’s “investment strategy” couldn’t be anything like what he (or others) said it was.
29 March 2010
Cary Spivak - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
As investigators, attorneys and accountants sift through the aftermath of the $31 million alleged embezzlement at Koss Corp., a question lingers:
Where was Grant Thornton, the national auditing firm that collected more than $625,000 from 2004 through 2009 to audit the books of the small Milwaukee headphone manufacturer?
"That fraud is so large, in relation to the size of the company, that I have got to believe that is going to make it very difficult for Grant Thornton to prove that they conducted an audit in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards," said Richard Brown, a veteran of 36 years with accounting firm KPMG, who now teaches accounting at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Concordia University.
15 March 2010
Compliance Week - Melissa Klein Aguilar
A large school of thought has developed to support the argument that non-accelerated filers should be exempt from compliance with Section 404(b) of Sarbanes-Oxley, which requires external auditors to review and attest to the strength of a company’s internal controls.
But as much as non-accelerated filers denounce the burden of Section 404(b) compliance, they’re still confronted with one stubborn counter-argument: fraud happens.
| 28 February 2010
Both civil and criminal cases often involve an element of proving or disproving income of an individual or business. It is not unusual for a divorce case to include allegations of hidden income or assets. In contract disputes alleging the loss of sales or profits, an accurate determination of income is critical.
| 22 February 2010
Anyone with a decent credit history fears having his or her good name tarnished. We hear stories of other people’s credit problems finding their way onto our credit reports. We’re familiar with data breaches that expose our private details to criminals. But the scariest form of identity theft is true name fraud, in which someone opens credit accounts using your name and personal details.
08 February 2010
Jane Pribek - Wisconsin Law Journal
Beaver Dam attorney James H. Olson, of Olson Law Offices LLC, got a sick feeling when a letter from a nearby community bank arrived at his home. The letter was from the bank vice-president, who told Olson that his assistant had been cashing checks on an account that Olson never created. The VP tried to contact Olson at his office, but the calls never went through.
How could one corporate executive make more than $30 million in unauthorized transactions over four years without anyone else on the company’s leadership team or its third-party accounting firm being aware of the embezzlements?
The number of securities class-action claims made in 2009 declined 24% from the previous year, according to a recent study by the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse and Cornerstone Research. A total of 169 claims were made in 2009, compared with 223 in 2008. However, the dip could be short-lived, depending on the outcome of regulatory-reform bills working their way through Congress.
Sue Sachdeva clearly had gained the confidence and trust of Koss Corp.’s top management and she allegedly used that relationship to commit possibly the nation’s largest corporate embezzlement case of 2009.