Tag: Koss

Accounting News Roundup: Koss Sues AMEX for Sachdeva Spending Spree; IRS Worker’s Widow Sues Stack’s Widow; Twitter Feeds for Tax Pros | 02.24.10

• Koss sues American Express over Sachdeva purchases [MJS]
Headphone factory Koss is suing American Express (the whistleblower!) for not reporting alleged embezzler extraordinaire Sue Sachdeva sooner.

Koss alleges that AMEX knew about Suze paying her credit card with Koss funds in February 2008 but then did nothing about it until August 2009; a month when SS spent $3.5 million on high end threads.

Sue Sach was finally exposed last December after allegedly making off with $31 million. So more or less, Koss is suing AMEX for $20 million because Koss’ management was far too busy to pay attention to their own company. The good news is that a whistleblower that happens to be corporation gets about as much gratitude as a human whistleblower. Consistency!


• IRS worker’s widow sues Texas suicide pilot’s wife [AP via NYDN]
The widow of IRS employee Vernon Hunter is suing Sheryl Stack, widow of Joseph Stack, in order to determine if JS had a life insurance policy or other assets. The suit alleges that Mrs. Stack should have “should have warned others about her husband,” apparently because someone bitching about the IRS regularly flies a plane into a building.

• Four Twitter Feeds for Tax Pros [FINS]
FINS put together their top four Twitter feeds for tax professionals yesterday and lo and behold, we ended up on the list! Thanks to FINS for including us but a special thanks goes to people like Terry “Dozer” and wives that shoot at their greedy husbands. They make our jobs easier.

Koss: Financial Results Will Be Better Now That the Whole Fraud Thing Is Over

Hopefully! Headphone master Michael Koss officially announced that things are back to business as usual at casa de Koss now that Sue Sachdeva’s sticky fingers aren’t around.

“The company has continued to operate in the normal course of business despite the disruption resulting from the discovery of the unauthorized transactions,” Chief Executive Officer Michael J. Koss said in a statement. “We believe that the elimination of these unauthorized transactions will enhance our future operating results.”


What a relief! No mention of how the pending lawsuits against Koss will affect operating results, however. We understand that it could be a sensitive issue at the moment.

The Company filed its 10-Q yesterday and an 8-K today that explains that those restated, not-so-good results that you’re expecting will be done pronto. Don’t expect to see anything before April but not past June, swear.

After that, watch out everybody, Koss will be on fire, blowing those analyst estimates out of the water. In the meantime things are moving along and those internal controls, yeah, they’re working on them but they reminded everyone in the 10-Q that even if they designed the best internal control systems on Earth, it still wouldn’t guarantee that bad stuff won’t happen:

A control system, no matter how well conceived and operated, can provide only reasonable, not absolute, assurance that the objectives of the control system are met. It is possible for even the best control system to be circumvented by those with the intent, knowledge and opportunity to do so.

Not to put to fine a point on it but a half-assed control system would have detected this fraud, never mind the “well conceived and operated” part.

With fraud claims exposed, Koss expects better financial results [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]

Koss Investors Lining Up for Litigation; Will Grant Thornton Join the Party?

Investors in Koss Corporation are lining up in the pending litigation against the company and a press release from law firm Carney Williams, announced this morning that those interested in as lead plaintiff have until March 12th to make their desires known.

Form the press release, “The Company and certain key executives are alleged to have violated federal securities laws by issuing false financial statements and failing to maintain adequate internal and financial controls.”

Many, like Tracy Coenen, have argued that the internal controls are management’s responsibility and Grant Thornton was not engaged to audit these controls but does that mean that GT will dodge these investor lawsuits?


We spoke with Randy Pulliam, a partner at Carney Williams on the case if he expected Grant Thornton to be named in the litigation, “the lead plaintff will ultimately decide as to who will be named in the litigation, including the accountants.”

There’s nearly a month until the deadline so it’s far too early to tell who will decide whether Grant Thornton needs to be included but we’ll go on record saying that we’d be shocked(!) if GT manages to get forgotten in this whole matter. Regardless of your feelings on the firm’s responsibility (i.e. GT should have discovered the fraud or not) the fact that Sue Sachdeva is accused of embezzling $31 million over a period of five years while Grant Thornton was auditing Koss will not be lost on the investors or their attorneys.

“This is a five year class period so many investors are eligible to participate,” Mr. Pulliam told us. Plenty of investors out there would like to see someone make things right. Grant Thornton seems like a decent candidate especially since their pockets are far deeper than Koss’. So if you asked us to put a wild-ass guess on the odds of Grant Thornton being named in the lawsuit, we’d put it somewhere in the nabe of 10-1. Not Mine that Bird territory but not Secretariat either.

We left a message at Koss and dropped an email to Grant Thornton seeking comment and neither have gotten back to us at this time. We’ll continue to update you on the developments, shopping addictions and otherwise.

Koss VP Sue Sachdeva: Shopping Addict or Burgeoning Retail Queen?

It’s been a few days since we had read anything on embezzler of the year 2009, Sue Sachdeva. We figured the whole thing was on the fast track to getting resolved since her attorney started claiming that the woman has an addiction. Well today, we checked in over at Fraud Files Blog where Tracy Coenen has come up with a theory that blows the whole shop until you die argument out of the water

Since Sue had 461 different pairs of shoes that ranged from sizes 8 to 14 (!) and 34 fur coats, Tracy is thinking that S-squared didn’t have a shopping problem; she was simply working on achieving an entrepreneurial dream:

She couldn’t have worn that range of sizes, but that range would have been perfect for someone retailing the merchandise. I bet we’re going to hear soon that Sachdeva was selling this merchandise to domestic and overseas retailers at a fraction of their wholesale value.

It’s already a matter of record that SS was having garage sales at her desk, so Tracy’s logic makes sense. We’re now convinced Sue had bigger plans.

Obviously enamored with the idea of a Sachdeva Goodman’s, Suze may have gotten a little ahead of herself as Tracy notes, “[I]n late 2009 (which is fiscal 2010 for Koss) she got greedy and stole much more in a six month period than she ever had in one year.”

The indictment lists six wire transfers (total of nearly $3 mil) from Koss accounts directly to her personal AMEX accountant, so girl was definitely burning up the plastic. That’s not an addiction; that’s inventory. Besides, isn’t a shopping addiction a faux-addiction? The real tragedy here is that a dream was not reached and an accounting firm was fired. Neither makes us feel very good.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Stephen Chipman’s Blog is Live

As promised, Stephen Chipman has started his blog with the first post going up today.

I am excited to provide this interactive Blog designed to foster thoughtful dialogue and information sharing between you and me. My Blog enables me to share with each of you my personal thoughts about our business and other important matters. I hope you find this Blog informative as well as useful. Please check back every Wednesday for a new post.


Unfortunately for you non-GTers out there, the blog is not public like Jeremy Newman’s so not just anyone can help him with his grammar (which we’re sure is impeccable) or spelling.

Despite being the blog being for GT eyes only, he’s still excited about spreading the good word through this new medium:

I’m delighted to be writing my first blog. One of the aspects of our modern culture is the ease of informal communication. As I noted in the announcement, I have no pre-planned features or stories, I’m just going to blog the way others do — in the moment.

It’s disappointing that Chip didn’t start the blog a little earlier, say, when he got the news about Sue Sachdeva’s shopping sprees. Catching him in the moment of that particular bit of news would have made for a good post, no? Plus, since he’s so close to Milwaukee, he might have run up their to see some of this loot himself in order to tell us what he thought of Suze’s taste in clothes, jewels, etc.

Our one beef with Steve-o’s first post is that it has too much of a journal feeling to it. Personally, we’d prefer he got on his soapbox about how the Big 4 isn’t all that, or why he thinks Davos is overrated. We realize that he’s new at this so we’ll give him a little time to get it together. In the meantime, be sure to inform us about his words of wisdom going forward.

(UPDATE) Fooling Auditors Is So Easy, a Caveman Could Do It

Thumbnail image for sachdeva_sue.jpgIn the spirit of O.J. Simpson, Tracy Coenen explains today, that if Sue Sachdeva stole $31 million and spent most of it on some high-end threads and then sold the crap she didn’t want, it would’ve been a snap.
We’re not talking Enron type stuff here, just making off with cash:

All it takes are three steps to make this fraud nearly undetectable in a company in which the other members of the executive team aren’t paying attention. (And don’t worry, dear readers, that I may be giving away any secrets to committing fraud and covering it up. Any serious fraudster already knows these three things.)
1. Keep the fraud off the balance sheet.
2. Keep all transactions below the scope of testing by the auditors.
3. Don’t commit fraud during the last month of the fiscal year and the first month of the following fiscal year.
Can it really be this simple?


Here’s the quick and dirty:
Point 1 – Tracy notes that 80% of audit procedures focus on the balance sheet so if Suze was slamming all the bogus transactions amongst 4 or 5 income statement expense lines, no one would get wise to it.
Point 2 – If she did it, Suze probably knew what GT’s scope was (it’s supposed to be super-secret). She could plan the amount of her transactions to fall under this scope every time.
Point 3 – Auditors probably spent most of their time looking at bank statements for the last month of the fiscal year and the first month of the subsequent fiscal year. The rest of them don’t get much attention.
So there you have it. Throw in the incestuous management team, auditors that may be trying to get on each other and you’ve got a slam dunk.
UPDATE 7:38 pm: We got to wondering if Tracy’s statement “Any serious fraudster already knows these three things” were true, so we asked one. Crazy Eddie CFO, Sam Antar indulged us:

[Tracy] is correct. The fraudster always has the initiative because they are judgment oriented in their approach to crime, while auditors are process oriented in their approach to audits. In other words, fraudsters know how to think out of the box to solve problems and achieve their goals, while auditors rely too much on process and procedure to accomplish their missions. In the criminal’s world, judgment is more powerful than process.

We’ll leave it there (that’s right CNN).
Koss Corp.: Commit the fraud and cover it up [Fraud Files Blog]

Quote of the Day | 01.19.10

“Audits are of limited usefulness – the scope of work is so small and is done in such a compressed time, usually at the end of the year. And the work that auditors do is predictable.”
~ Tracy Coenen, of Fraud Files Blog, in regards to the how Sue Sachdeva allegedly pulled off a $31 million embezzlement at Koss under the nose of Grant Thornton (Steve Chipman may need a pair of these to drown out the attorneys). [Milwaukee and Southeastern Wisconsin Business News]

Koss VP Got Busted Just When She Was Getting Really Good at Stealing Money

Sue Sachdeva had this stealing money thing down so cold that she continually outdid herself, stealing greater sums of money every year until she was caught last month (thanks AMEX!).

If you need more evidence that everyone near this company (we’re looking straight at you Koss Family and Grant Thornton) was completely clueless, this should satisfy you.

Here’s the run down for the last six fiscal years ending June 30:

• 2005 – $2,195,477

• 2006 – $2,227,669

• 2007 – $3,160,310

• 2008 – $5,040,968

• 2009 – $8,485,937

• Q1 and Q2 of 2010 – $10,243,310

Jesus, she was really getting good those last six months. Girl couldn’t spend it fast enough.

We’d really like to hear from GTers from the Milwaukee/Chicago offices to let us know how TPTB are handling everything. Maybe it’s NBD to them but we just want to know. We thought this story would stop getting ridiculous but so far it continues to impress.

Koss: Unauthorized transactions increased over years [The Business Journal of Milwaukee]

Was Koss Fraud Made Possible by Incestuous Management?

Thumbnail image for sachdeva_sue.jpgMaybe! If you figure an incestuous management team is a clueless management team, the argument can certainly be made. How else could Sue Sachdeva hold garage sales at her desk without anyone noticing? This went on for five years:

How is it that nobody noticed $5 million missing each year when the company’s net income is about $5 million? I mean, the business of “stereo headsets” isn’t really a complex business model. There’s revenue, cost of sales, and expenses. How do you somehow manage to hide $5 million when expenses are only $10 million … and cost of sales is $25 million?
The answer becomes clear when you look at the company’s management team. Michael Koss is the company’s CEO. He’s also the company’s vice chairman, president, COO, and CFO. The company’s VP of sales is, that’s right, John Koss. Together they own 65 percent of the company’s stock. Another Koss, John Jr., owns 8 percent of the company’s stock. Who knows how many other Kosses there are scattered about the place. No checks and balances there. No hands on the wheel, either.

Sooo, the question becomes: Should Grant Thornton have noticed this sleepy management oversight? Did Michael Koss just give them the “I involved in every aspect of the business so there’s nothing to worry about” story and GT just bought it? Discuss.
The Problem with Incestuous Management [The Corner Office/Steve Tobak]

Unfounded Rumor of the Day: Fired Koss VP Had Garage Sales at Her Desk

Or something like that. Guest 28 put it out there that Sue Sachdeva was flipping those designer threads to fellow employees for low low prices.
On the one hand, maybe the two employees on leave that worked for Suze were the bargain shoppers. On the other, how hard up for extra money was this woman? Maybe she just wore it out once with the tags on and said “I don’t love it”? Can anyone in the Milwaukee area that hasn’t already gone to happy hour confirm this? Get on the horn.

Grant Thornton Loses Its Fire in Letter to the SEC

Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Grant-thornton-logo.JPGDespite getting all bent out of shape in their earlier statement:

“The fraud was apparently conducted by a longtime, trusted senior financial executive who was hired and supervised by senior management,” a Grant Thornton spokeswoman said Tuesday. “The company (Koss) did not engage Grant Thornton LLP to conduct an audit or evaluation of internal controls over financial reporting. Establishing and maintaining effective internal control is management’s and the board’s responsibility.”

Grant Thornton is less enthused in their letter to the SEC:

We have read Item 4.01 of Form 8-K of Koss Corporation dated January 4, 2010, and agree with the statements concerning our Firm contained therein. We have no basis to agree or disagree with the statements and conclusions in Item 4.02(a), some of which were not disclosed to Grant Thornton LLP prior to receipt of this filing.

The only thing we read here that might be a dig at Koss is “some of which were not disclosed to Grant Thornton LLP prior to receipt of this filing.” If this is intended to be the firm’s version of the finger — straight up, at you Koss — the passive-aggressiveness is at a level that even impresses us.
At least in the Overstock letter the firm flat out called Pat Byrne and his company liars. This latest opportunity to lay the smackdown on a client in a regulatory filing seems to have been squandered.

This Is How You Spend Stolen Money

So you’ve been embezzling money from your employer for awhile and what’s a girl to do? Well you could spend it on your wedding but if you’re already hitched then it’s has to get blown elsewhere. Besides, the £470,000 that Joanne Kent stole is chump change compared to what Sue Sachdeva had on her hands:

• $225,000 at Karat 22 Jewelers.

• $1.4 million at Valentina Boutique a high-end joint in Mequon, WI.


• $20 million on artwork.

• $649,000 at Zita Bridal Salon, even though she was already married. Probably just wants to wear a gown to slob around in.

• $670,000 at Au Corant a Milwaukee-based fashion retailer.

• $4.5 million on credit card bills.

A decent haul although the new GT leadership can’t be thrilled to have this shopping spree land in their laps.

Btw, congrats to Baker Tilly Virchow Krause, the new auditors, on the pickup. We’re sure it’ll be a breeze from here on out.