Accountants behaving badly
Here’s a crazy story about a former Deloitte employee, Alan Fowler, who was convicted of the attempted murder of his former boss, Kevin Lane, and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Deloitte fired Fowler in 2015 after discovering that he used his company credit card to “pay for family vacations and buy thousands of dollars’ worth of gift cards.”
After that, Fowler became fixated on Lane, who he blamed “for his demise at the firm,” according to prosecutors. And while Fowler’s lawyer says he “never had any intent to kill,” there was a lot of evidence to the contrary, including Fowler obtaining a background check on Lane, Google Maps searches of his address in Southlake, Texas, and some, um, pretty suspicious search history:
Police later found on Lane’s online search history the following words: Kevin Lane, Lisa Lane, Silencer, Suppressor, Gun, Guns, Berkshire, Southlake, Deloitte, Murder and Murderer.
Gah, just reading those search terms gives me the creeps. Anyway, last August, Fowler went to Lane’s home and “cut power to draw the boss outside” and then shot out a window with a 9mm handgun. That tripped an alarm that sent police to the residence and they discovered Fowler “hiding in the darkness.” Fowler wasn’t even home at the time.
This has to be the most chilling accountant behaving badly story of recent memory. All over a job at Deloitte.
Elsewhere in ABB: Former Oklahoma Beef Council accountant accused of stealing $2.6 million to fund clothing store
Compensation
Yesterday we debuted our first-ever accounting compensation survey. We’re hoping to collect lots of responses so your participation is greatly appreciated and will make for a better report.
You can go to the post on the site if you’d like to read more about it or you can simply go here to take the survey now.
Has Donald Trump released his tax returns?
Nope! Although interviewers from The Economist tried tempting him with a hypothetical:
Mr President, can I just try you on a deal-making question? If you do need Democratic support for your tax plan, your ideal tax plan, and the price of that the Democrats say is for you to release your tax returns, would you do that?
I don’t know. That’s a very interesting question. I doubt it. I doubt it. Because they’re not going to…nobody cares about my tax return except for the reporters. Oh, at some point I’ll release them. Maybe I’ll release them after I’m finished because I’m very proud of them actually. I did a good job.
It must pain DJT not being able to show us something that he’s so proud of.
Previously, on Going Concern…
Aside from the salary survey, Greg Kyte’s Exposure Drafts cartoon touched on one thing that keeps CPAs up at night.
In other news:
- Watchdog slaps PwC with record fine for Connaught audit ‘misconduct’
- Tax Headache in India Is a Bonanza for Global Accounting Firms
- This Apple Supplier Denies Allegations of ‘Dubious Accounting’ Practices
- Deloitte’s CEO had her son watch “The Jetsons” to show him we shouldn’t fear robots
- “I’d call and they were like, ‘Let’s just give him the hold monster.'”
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