Yes, there actually are accountants who behave badly who don’t work at KPMG U.S. or Deloitte U.K.:
X Factor star’s accountant is banned from his profession [Essex Echo]
Here’s an update to an article Adrienne wrote earlier this year:
A south Essex accountant who defrauded X Factor winner James Arthur of almost £600,000 has been discredited from the profession – and ordered to pay £7,750.
Mark Livermore was jailed for four years in January after being convicted of fraud he had carried out to fund a gambling habit.
Livermore, 39, faced disciplinary proceedings by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and has been discredited and excluded from the profession.
Shocking footage shows drink-driving accountant speeding off with his bonnet blocking his windscreen after he ploughed into another car – but he avoids a jail term [Daily Mail]
U.K. accountant John Kavanagh was given a suspended prison sentence on June 14 and banned from driving for two years after admitting to dangerous driving, excess alcohol, and failing to stop in an accident he caused.
Kavanagh, 26, was driving near Boldon, South Tyneside, in his VW Golf despite downing glasses of wine that left him more than twice the legal limit. Kavanagh struck James Fleck’s car, a Renault Megane, as he was pulling away from a traffic light.
The collision caused extensive damage to both cars, setting off the VW Golf’s airbags and leaving the hood sticking up. But instead of pulling over, Kavanagh panicked and fled the scene of the accident, weaving across the road as he struggled to see where he was going.
Kavanagh didn’t stop for five miles and eventually crashed into a utility pole.
Local accountant charged with $100K theft [Newnan Times-Herald]
Hello, Newnan …
An accountant accused of embezzling more than $100,000 from a client was arrested on a felony charge, according to records obtained Monday [June 10].
Rhonda Dee McClendon, 61, is charged with one count of theft by taking.
The victim told investigators with the Newnan Police Department in Newnan, GA, that McClendon, a CPA, had taken money from bank accounts she was in charge of monitoring. He hired McClendon and her firm in 2014 to perform a forensic audit of his various companies but failed to present him with billings on a weekly basis, totals which he said grossly exceeded the anticipated range.
Between June and July 2015, McClendon reportedly signed over $120,000 from the victim’s bank accounts and deposited the money into “dormant” bank accounts.
Canmore accountant charged with fraud set for 2020 trial [Rocky Mountain Outlook]
James Russell Neilson, an accountant based in Canmore, Alberta, who is accused of defrauding nearly 40 people of approximately $5.5 million, appeared in a Calgary courtroom on June 7.
Neilson is facing fraud charges in relation to a business he set up, Abaca Solutions, and the investors who put money into the venture.
In 2016, Neilson was charged with fraud over $5,000, uttering a forged document, and laundering the proceeds of crime, which are alleged to have occurred between January 2009 and October 2014. That was in addition to three counts of fraud over $5,000, one charge of theft over $5,000, and one count of laundering the proceeds of crime that were laid against Neilson in May 2015.
He has pled not guilty. His trial is scheduled to begin in 2020.
Plea date set in embezzlement case in Cabell [The Herald-Dispatch]
Here’s an update to a story we included in Accountants Behaving Badly on May 20:
A Huntington accountant accused of embezzling tens of thousands of dollars from a client’s account is scheduled to change her plea to guilty later this month in federal court.
Kimberly Dawn Price, also known as Kimberly Swann, 59, is expected to enter a guilty plea June 17 in the Huntington court for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, according to court documents.
Price was indicted on 28 counts of bank fraud allegedly committed during her time as a staff accountant at the Huntington-based firm Hess, Stewart and Campbell PLLC.
Price was originally arrested in January 2016 and charged with more than 900 counts of embezzlement, forgery, and uttering in Cabell County after the executor in charge of the trust for Elizabeth Caldwell, a Huntington woman who died in the fall of 2015, went to the West Virginia State Police after noticing the account was lower than expected.
According to a criminal complaint, Price “paid off (a) vehicle, went on trips, helped her son start a business, paid off her (son’s) student loans, supported her boyfriend and supported her gambling habit.”
Greensboro woman sentenced to 10 years in prison for stealing money from former employer in Alamance County [News & Record]
Angelia Louise Vaughan of Greensboro, NC, pleaded guilty on June 10 to multiple counts of obtaining property by false pretense of $100,000 or more and felony accessing computers.
Between 2015 and 2018, Vaughan used her position handling payroll at Front Edge Marketing to change her pay in QuickBooks after her bosses, Jerry Stewart and Charles “Chase” Brooks, approved the expenses from $18 per hour to as much as $97 per hour, according to authorities, and then changed the entries back after the altered payroll information had been sent to the bank and she had received her augmented paychecks.
The scheme got past an IRS audit of the company and its payroll, and more than one accountant Stewart and Brooks hired to figure out why they were losing money.
