Is Benjamin Bankes an Independent Contractor?

Posted on by Adrienne Gonzalez

We were wondering about Benjamin Bankes’ employment status with the AICPA, a non-profit professional trade organization, the trade being (loosely) the CPA. They fiercely defend the CPA designation’s legitimacy as a world-recognized credential and work for their members by offering themselves up as experts for legislators who have no idea what they are unleashing with a simple tax tweak. It’s a pretty good deal; we get reasonable security that our financial experts are at a minimum trained in the skills necessary to function at the entry level and the AICPA gets the notoriety that comes with being a 360,000 strong organization with a long history of protecting the integrity of its most precious asset.

So when we found Benjamin Bankes’ picture among AICPA headshots on Flickr, we wondered what kind of employment status he enjoys with the AICPA. Independent contractor? Full-time, taxable employee? Spokespig? I mean he’s right up there with Barry, so it’s got to be a pretty secure gig.

Just wondering. It’s a damn awesome picture.

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Koss Sues Grant Thornton, Blames Firm’s Assignment of Newbie Auditors

Well! You might have thought that Koss would just handle this Sue Sachdeva situation like gentlemen headphonesmiths but you would have thought wrong!

Koss is suing S-squared and Grant Thornton for their respective roles in the alleged embezzlement of $31 million from the Brew Town company.

While it sounds like , that won’t protect her or Chipman & Co. from the wrath of Koss. But one thing is for sure, despite the lawsuits and whatnot, this is not the company’s fault. Just ask Koss’ attorney Michael Avenatti, “I’m confident the company will be exonerated.”


Why? Because Grant Thornton threw a few young associates on the engagement, that’s why!

Koss hired one of the best accounting firms in the world, Grant Thornton, and should have been able to rely on Thornton’s audits to uncover wrongdoing, Avenatti said. The suit against the auditing firm says auditors assigned to Koss were not properly trained.

The lawsuit lists hundreds of checks that Sachdeva ordered drawn on company accounts to pay for her personal expenses. She disguised the recipients — upscale retailers such as Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Marshall Fields — by using just the initials. But the suit says Grant Thornton could have ascertained the true identity of the recipients by inspecting the reverse side of the checks, which showed the full name.

Forget the fact that the CEO was also vice chairman, chief operating officer, president and chief financial officer. Oh, and he sat on the audit committee at another company. Apparently Koss wanted GT partners auditing those cash accounts rather than implement anything that even closely resembles an internal control system.

Grant Thornton, meanwhile, is still sticking to the boilerplate statement as reported in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, “We remain confident that we have met all of our professional obligations and that our work complied with professional standards.”

Sigh. Of course no one wants to be responsible, so let’s decide for them. Let’s get a show of hands:

It’s worth mentioning that the lawsuit comes just a few short days before Koss’ tardy restated financials are due. If the company doesn’t cough them up, the Nasdaq will banish them like they’ve got lice.

Koss sues former executive, auditor over alleged embezzlement [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]