Say, that rings a bell
Thursday, February 19th, 2009 By Mike MaurerBrowsing an accounting text last night-wild times, wild times-I came across an excerpt of an article, “Financial Shenanigans: How to Detect Accounting Gimmicks and Fraud in Financial Reports,” which gave these seven:
- Recording revenue too soon or of questionable quality
- Recording bogus revenue
- Boosting income with one-time gains
- Shifting current expenses to a later or earlier period
- Failing to record or improperly reducing liabilities
- Shifting current revenue to a later period
- Shifting future expenses to the current period as a special charge
Fraud, you say? The stuff that made us want to throw Enron in jail, and Madoff, and sure-you-betcha those oil people, and what about those hotshot jet-flying GM executives? This does sound familiar, yes it does . . . now where have I heard things like this being done . . . maybe here, here, and here?
