Category: News

Spending $1.25 Million on Bridges for Squirrels Isn’t the Worst Idea Arizona Has Ever Had

Okay, so Arizona is spending $1.25 million to build bridges for the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel and of course a bunch of people are in a big huff.

ABC News reports that without the bridges, approximately five squirrels would be killed a year and there are only 250 are known to be in existence.


Yes, that works out to $5,000 a squirrel but considering the fact that animals are far more responsible and respectful inhabitants of the planet than humans, we’ve got no beef with this.

Especially considering the fact that Arizona has had far worse ideas in its history including opposing Martin Luther King Day until 1992, its asinine immigration policy and the Phoenix Coyotes.

Arizona Spends $1.25M to Save 250 Squirrels [ABC News via Tax Policy Blog]

BKD Partner Found Dead at His Office

[caption id="attachment_12673" align="alignright" width="120" caption="Source: Springfield Business Journal"][/caption]

Fifty-one year old Daniel Hayworth was found dead at the BKD offices in Joplin, Missouri on Sunday afternoon.

The Springfield Journal Reports that Mr Hayworth had several leadership positions with the firm including the firm’s national construction and real estate group, national manufacturing and distribution group and chair of the manufacturing and distribution committee.


According to Newton County Coroner Mark Bridges told us that Mr Hayworth had a history of hypertension and high blood pressure, accordingly his office ruled that the cause of death was a massive heart attack.

Our email to a BKD spokesperson was not immediately returned.

John Wanamaker, the managing partner of BKD’s Souther Missouri unit was quoted by the SBJ, saying, “Dan was such a great guy, and this is such an unexpected and untimely event. He was clearly a great man, a great husband to his wife, Lynn, a great BKD partner, and a great friend, and he will be unbelievably missed.”

Accountant’s ‘Ridiculous Amount of Time’ Surfing the Web Not Ridiculous Enough to Warrant Firing

We realize that hardly any of you will be able to relate to this story but we’ll present it as a point of reference in case you know of anyone that gets jammed up in the future.

David Innes, 42, was fired from his job at Scottish and Southern Energy after TPTB decided that he was spending a little too much time surfing the web. In their words, a ‘ridiculous amount of time.’ And to get an idea of ridiculous, 27,500 website hits was the magic number.


This is quite a jump over the 16,000 hits that an SEC accountant spent looking at porn. This randy ne’er do well managed to keep his/her job as well as the other porn junkies. If you make the assumption that Innes had a SEC-esque porn habit, that still leaves a lot of surfing to be done.

Regardless, it’s safe to assume that somewhere in between 16,000 and 27,500 hits (presumably in a month) lies the threshold of you being thrown out on your ass.

However, a Glasgow tribunal found that Scottish and Southern didn’t really have a frame of reference for “a ridiculous amount of time” since David Pratt, the man who fired Innes, “made no attempt to obtain advice from the respondent’s IT department. His view was essentially that he was faced with this enormous report and this therefore showed an extraordinary amount of internet usage.”

In other words, a “ridiculous amount of time” is subjective, as is “a lot of time,” “quite a bit of time,” or “a metric ass-ton of time.” And even if you do reach your own perceived level of unacceptable web surfing volume, you still better check with the IT boys to see what their opinion on hella-web surfing is before you go firing people like Steinbrenner.

Meanwhile, for you do-nothings out there, it appears that your time wasted at work surfing the web can easily be defended, although you can safely assume that if you wade into the NSFW waters, your chances of survival are slim.

If You Were Expecting a Nice Breezy Internship with Plante & Moran, You’re Going to Be Disappointed

This is serious P&M interns. You probably thought this little summer jaunt at P&M would be just an easy way to get some overtime hours and blow all your money on booze. Well. Actually, it might be you’ll also be expected to walk in on Monday and pull your weight.

Coffee jockeys? No. Xerox duty? Of course but it will be only the important documents. But scavenger hunts? Forget it. The only scavenger hunt you’ll be going is for material misstatements.

Annually, more than 100 students experience a three to four month paid internship. The latest round of students will begin their internships on June 14 in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois firm offices. On the agenda? An Intern Summit, which is a two-day, off-site meeting focused mainly on team-building and community service projects. At the end, interns give a formal presentation on their reflections and lessons learned from the experience.
[…]
“As an assurance intern, I was given the opportunity to go into the field and perform real audit work, not just sit behind a desk or get people their coffee,” said Staci Tobe, a former Plante & Moran intern and Michigan University student. “I also appreciated the firm’s open door policy. I never expected to be able to walk into a partner’s office and seek advice, but Plante & Moran encouraged it.”

Presentations on team building! Real audit work! Getting a partner’s advice! Oh, and no short sleeves because you’ll be expected to roll them up and bare arms aren’t acceptable.

The Nasdaq Would Like to Know When Koss Is Going to Get Around to Submitting Some Financial Statements

Remember last month when Koss decided to file their 10-Q without financial statements? At the time the company said it was “due to delays relating to certain previously disclosed unauthorized transactions.”

In other words, we got ripped off so bad that we’re restating financial statements for half a decade and it isn’t exactly something you can whip up like a batch of maui wowie brownies.


The Nasdaq has taken note of the slight delay and has said if you don’t get us numbers by June 30, you’ll be on the pink sheets with the likes of Lehman Brothers.

CEO Michael Koss has assured everyone that it won’t come to this but obviously we’ll have to wait until the SEC posts the filing. If that doesn’t happen, you’ll be able to add “Koss Delisted by Nasdaq” to Suz’s list of destructive accomplishments.

Koss gets warning from Nasdaq [Milwaukee Business Journal]

Job of the Day: BlackRock Needs a Senior Manager of Financial Reporting

BlackRock is looking an experienced professional to join its iShares Fund Administration group as a Senior Manager of Financial Reporting in its San Francisco office.

Qualifications include 10 years experience in the investment industry with a CPA and management experienced preferred.


Company: BlackRock

Title: Senior Manager, Financial Reporting

Location: San Francisco, CA

Description: This financial reporting role will include project management, contribution to technical accounting interpretation and review responsibility in managing the development, production and distribution of the annual and semi-annual reports to shareholders for iShares products. The candidate will be responsible for the review and timely filing of various SEC regulatory filings, including Form N-SAR, Form N-CSR and Form N-Q.

Responsibilities: Manage development, production and timely distribution of fund regulatory/shareholder materials relating to financial reporting under the Investment Company Act of 1940, including annual and semi-annual reports, Form N-SAR, Form N-CSR and Form N-Q; Ensure that content and disclosure for regulatory filings related to financial reporting, are complete and current in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and relevant SEC rules; Manage audits for multiple fiscal year ends, including relationships with auditors, administrators and internal stakeholders; Proofread and serve as quality control for regulatory filings; Manage development and implementation of new SEC requirements as they relate to financial reporting; Seek continuous process improvement and maintain the financial reporting policies and procedures; Contribute to identifying, researching, and communicating recent authoritative pronouncements.

Qualifications/Skills: BS/BA degree in business administration or accounting, CPA preferred; 10+ years of investment industry and management experience preferred; In-depth knowledge of funds reporting under the Investment Company Act of 1940.

See the entire description over at the GC Career Center and visit the main page for all your job search needs.

It’s Ridiculous to Think That Enterprise Financial Dismissed KPMG Because of the Restatements

KPMG has been kicked to the curb by Enterprise Financial according to an 8-K that was filed on Friday by the company. The ubiquitous claim of “no disagreements with [insert firm]” was there along with a mention of a material weakness that was related to the restatements issued for both 2008 and 2007 but that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the dismissal of the auditors:

In connection with the identification of the loan participation accounting error described in Item 7, Management Discussion & Analysis and in Item 8, Note 2 of the consolidated financial statements and elsewhere in the Form 10K dated March 16, 2010, the Company also determined that a material weakness in its internal controls over financial reporting existed during the periods affected by the error, including as of December 31, 2008. The Company’s management concluded that the material weakness was the Company’s lack of a formal process to periodically review existing contracts and agreements with continuing accounting significance. To remediate this material weakness, during the fourth quarter of 2009 the Company implemented a formal process to review all contracts and agreements with continuing accounting significance on an annual basis. As a result of the review conducted in the fourth quarter, management did not identify any other errors in its previous accounting for such contracts or agreements. Management believes that this new process has remediated the material weakness in the Company’s internal control over financial reporting.

So in other words, “Yeah, maybe we should have been looking at these contracts but we weren’t and so some material misstatements slid through. We’ve slapped some duct tape on it and it’ll be fine from here on it. End of story.”

The esteemed pleasure of auditing Enterprise now belongs to Deloitte who has now snagged three clients from KPMG this year (by our count) – picking up Jefferies and Select Comfort back in March.

Enterprise Bank parent dismisses KPMG [St. Louis Business Journal]

GAO Audit Uncovers Fraud at Head Start Programs

The Head Start Program, under the Department of Health and Human Services, provides child development services to mostly low-income families and their children. Up to 10% of Head Start-enrolled families can be over-income, with an income 130% above the poverty line.

Of course, things don’t always work out as they are supposed to and the GAO has discovered problems with about half of the centers it examined through the investigation, just a small sample of the 1,600 nonprofit centers running 3,000 Head Start programs.


From the GAO:

GAO received allegations of fraud and abuse involving two Head Start nonprofit grantees in the Midwest and Texas. Allegations include manipulating recorded income to make over-income applicants appear under-income, encouraging families to report that they were homeless when they were not, enrolling more than 10 percent of over-income children, and counting children as enrolled in more than one center at a time. GAO confirmed that one grantee operated several centers with more than 10 percent over-income students, and the other grantee manipulated enrollment data to over-report the number of children enrolled. GAO is still investigating the other allegations reported. Realizing that these fraud schemes could be perpetrated at other Head Start programs, GAO attempted to register fictitious children as part of 15 undercover test scenarios at centers in six states and the District of Columbia. In 8 instances staff at these centers fraudulently misrepresented information, including disregarding part of the families’ income to register over-income children into under-income slots. The undercover tests revealed that 7 Head Start employees lied about applicants’ employment status or misrepresented their earnings.

GAO managing director for special investigations Gregory Kutz told a House education committee last month that “the system is vulnerable to fraud.” No kidding.

While unable to determine the motivation of Head Start employees to commit fraud by adjusting income levels on applications, Kutz theorized that management of nonprofit agencies receiving Head Start funds pressured staff to fudge, fiddle with, or straight up fake figures on applications in order to keep federal funds coming in.

Head Start has served over 25 million children since 1965 and there are currently over 1 million children enrolled in Head Start programs.

Adrienne Gonzalez is the founder of Jr. Deputy Accountant, a former CPA wrangler and a Going Concern contributor . You can see more of her posts here.

FASB Chair: Yeah, We’re Not Meeting That June 2011 Convergence Deadline

Yes, that’s your shocking headline of the day. Despite the retripling of efforts via videoconferencing and other fancy-schmancy technology, some Frenchman losing patience, and having a Knight spearheading 50% of the efforts, they will utlimately fall short of the June ’11 goal.

We know. Catch your breath or place yourself back in your chair, and then you can read Emily Chasan’s account from Reuters:

The Norwalk, Connecticut-based FASB and the London-based International Accounting Standards Board expect to announce changes to their convergence work plan in the next week or so that would delay the completion date by about six months and allow for greater public comment on the boards’ proposals, FASB Chairman Robert Herz said in an interview with Reuters.

“We’ve been working on a revised work plan with the IASB,” Herz said.

“We’d all like to see the work done as expeditiously as possible, but we don’t want to sacrifice proper due process.”

Herz said that to issue final standards by June 2011, the boards would have to release about 10 proposals in the next two months and rush through the public comment process.

It was nice of the FASB and IASB to say, “June? No problemo,” to the G20 BSDs but many organizations, including Financial Executives International, and even Chief Accountant Kroeker said that the overachieving might lead to some shoddy accounting standards.

Mr Herz is still optimistic about finishing up before 2012 telling Reuters that the two Boards will “get most if not all of [the accounting standard proposals] done by the end of 2011,” which is probably enough time for IFRS to be adopted by everyone. But then the world is on a strict deadline to end in 2012, so why are we bothering with this again?

FASB says will not meet 2011 convergence deadline [Reuters]

The Guy From Reading Rainbow Has a Small Tax Problem

A refresher:


If that doesn’t mean anything to you, he’s also the dude with the bizarro shades from Star Trek, The Next Generation.

But back to the RR for a sec – many of you would be an illiterate waste of space if it wasn’t for LeVar Burton, so the least you could do is pitch in so the man can pay the $34,000 he owes California. Or at least ask your parents to help out. It’s the least they can do since LB probably bought them some much-needed private time back in the day while you were zoning out on the shower in the toilet.

Tax resistance futile for Star Trek actor [Tax Watchdog]
See also (if you want the RR theme song stuck in your head):
LeVar Burton Owes $34,000 in State Taxes… “But Don’t Take My Word For It” [Tax Docket]

Barry Minkow Isn’t Buying Anthony Weiner’s Report That Says Goldline International Is More or Less a Fraud

Last time we saw Congressman Anthony Weiner, he was attempting to discuss the IRS’ role in the enforcement of healthcare with spin-hater Bill O’Reilly. While that particular encounter was quite fun (especially Weiner’s huffing and O’Reilly’s eye-rolling) the video of the Congressman’s recent appearance on Fox Business News is quite good.

But what we’d really like to see him have a conversation with Barry Minkow about how that Barry thinks the Congressman’s report on Goldline International is unmitigated bullshit:


Friend of GC, Tracy Coenen participated in the Minkow’s investigation and she presents the findings over at Fraud Files Blog. Here’s a sample:

• Allegation: Weiner criticizes Goldline because of complaints on the website Ripoff Report lodged by consumers who say Goldline representatives improperly hold themselves out as investment advisors.

• What Weiner didn’t tell you: Ripoff Report says (in response to the consumer complaints) that you can feel completely confident doing business with Goldline. Weiner gave us only half of the story in his report.

Allegation: Goldline grossly overcharges for its products

What Weiner didn’t tell you: Our sampling of coins listed in the Weiner report showed that Goldline’s prices were very comparable to those of six competitors. He also forgot to mention that companies are free to set whatever prices they like for their products.

Allegation: Goldline says they’ll buy back your gold and silver, but doesn’t “guarantee” that

What Weiner didn’t tell you: It is against the law for Goldline to offer a buyback guarantee. If they offered such a guarantee, they would be in violation of securities laws because their salespeople are not licensed broker dealers.

Regardless of how you feel about Glenn Beck, gold coins, or Anthony Weiner’s Fox News-esque ability for interrupting, it kinda sorta sounds like the Congressman’s investigators don’t know a non-fraud when they see one. Besides, we’ll take the word of a convicted-felon-turned-fraud-buster over any report that comes out of Congress. Especially in an election year.

A message left with Congressman Weiner’s spokesperson was not immediately returned.

Goldline International: An In-Depth Look at Congressman Weiner’s Allegations, And How He Got It Wrong [FDI]
Barry Minkow debunks the Glenn Beck and Goldline International fraud connection [Fraud Files Blog]
Weiner Takes on Goldline and Fox Business — At The Same Time [Weiner.house.gov]