SEC Enforcement Released Its Greatest Hits for FY 2022
The SEC Division of Enforcement cracked a lot of skulls in fiscal 2022, as it brought in a record $6.439 billion in penalties and disgorgement, up from $3.852 billion in fiscal year 2021. Of that total, the $4.194 billion in civil penalties the SEC doled out was also a record, but the $2.245 billion in […]
SEC and PCAOB Enforcers Took An Extended Smoke Break In 2021
People who work in the enforcement divisions at the SEC and the PCAOB must have been busy doing other things than monitoring the gatekeepers of the capital markets last year, as accounting and auditing enforcement activity decreased and monetary settlements fell sharply, according to a recently released report from Cornerstone Research. The two regulators made […]
A Few EY Partners Didn’t Get the Auditor Independence Rules Right
The SEC on Dec. 10 decided that two EY partners and one principal didn’t take the auditor independence rules seriously and doled out a few fines and sanctions. And like many of these auditor independence violations that get firms in hot water with the SEC or the PCAOB, the flagrant rules bending by EY had […]
EY Learns the Hard Way Not to Screw Around with the SEC’s Auditor Independence Rules
Back on Aug. 12, 2019, Bubble Wrap maker Sealed Air Corp. disclosed in an 8-K that it had fired EY as its “independent” registered public accounting firm and stated that it had hired PwC. OK, no biggie, the auditor carousel is always going round and round in the Big 4. But the most interesting tidbit […]
Two Ex-KPMG Auditors Were Told By the SEC to Have a Seat On the Sidelines For a While
Two former KPMG auditors who worked on the ill-fated audit of a not-for-profit college agreed to having their wrists slapped by the SEC for their roles in the school’s collapse: The Securities and Exchange Commission today suspended two former KPMG auditors [Christopher Stanley and Jennifer Stewart] from practicing before the SEC in connection with settled […]
Your Naughty Corporate Controller of the Day
Edward Kelly has been suspended from appearing or practicing before the SEC as an accountant because he got caught insider trading. You can read the SEC order from Feb. 16 here. But the blog SEC Actions put together a nice little synopsis of the case against Kelly: Now the agency has brought an insider trading […]
Your Naughty CEO and CFO of the Day
By making false statements and omissions to external auditors, which resulted in the improper recognition of $3.6 million in revenue related to a contract with a large public-sector client, ex-WageWorks CEO Joseph Jackson and former CEO Colm Callan had to pay their way out of the SEC’s doghouse. According to the SEC: In March 2016, […]
Number of the Day: 43%
The Anti-Fraud Collaboration—a partnership between the Center for Audit Quality, Financial Executives International, The Institute of Internal Auditors, and the National Association of Corporate Directors—sifted through more than 530 SEC Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAERs) filed between 2014 and 2019 for its newly released report, Mitigating the Risk of Common Fraud Schemes: Insights from […]
Here Are 6 Reasons Why the SEC Whistleblower Program Is Successful
In response to the 2008 financial crisis, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act in July 2010, which, among other things, created the SEC Whistleblower Program. A decade later, the program has proven to be successful in generating high-quality information regarding securities laws violations that have enabled the SEC to halt fraud schemes and protect investors. Since issuing […]
It’s That Time of Year When the SEC Gets Braggadocious
Now that the SEC is a little more than a month into its new fiscal year, the commission wanted to remind everyone that its enforcement division staff didn’t spend FY 2019 watching porn at work all day long. Yep, the SEC Division of Enforcement 2019 Annual Report is hot off the press, and in it […]
SEC Fines and Bans Three Accounting Firm CPAs for Not Doing Their Jobs Very Well
Three CPAs from a New Jersey public accounting firm most of you probably have never even heard of got their wrists slapped by the SEC on Sept. 30 for signing off on the audits of an IT company’s financial statements, even though the company’s CEO and CFO were perpetuating a massive fraud. Schulman Lobel Zand […]
What Price Wrong-Doing? Sanctions Against KPMG Are Complicated
“Sell in May and go away” was an investors’ adage invoked as vacation strategy in a more genteel era. Returns in the summer were said to lag the rest of the year—and in any event, that’s how brokers justified their holiday cottages on the eastern seaboard. This year the maxim has twice failed my attempt […]
Which KPMG Scandal Is Worse: PCAOB ‘Steal the Exam’ or CPE Training Exam Cheating?
Since Monday when the SEC announced it had fined KPMG $50 million for not one but two scandals involving auditor misconduct at the firm, I’ve been thinking about which scandal is worse. Is it KPMG audit partners stealing confidential information from rogue PCAOB employees in order to better the firm’s audit inspection scores OR is […]
SEC Says $50 Million Fine For KPMG Is ‘Significant’ and ‘Appropriate’ For All That Cheating Going On
The SEC made official today the news that Dave Michaels of the Wall Street Journal broke late last week, announcing that KPMG will pay $50 million to settle allegations that former partners “stole the test” by using confidential information that was being fed to them by a PCAOB insider to improve the firm’s performance on […]
Two Internal Auditors Thought They Could Get Away with Insider Trading, LOL
Two internal auditor buddies got a starring role in an SEC litigation release after they were charged with insider trading for monkeying around with secret information about their respective employers. Lloyd Schuman, a former senior internal auditor at Verso Corp., and Dane Janes, an internal auditor with Ashford Hospitality Trust Inc., agreed to pay a […]
It Seems the PCAOB and SEC Are Giving Accountants the Benefit of the Doubt More These Days
Maybe it’s because the PCAOB had a new chairman and a whole new board at the beginning of last year. Or maybe it’s because the audit regulator’s longtime enforcement chief bolted last May and the position still hasn’t been permanently filled. Whatever the reason, the PCAOB settled only 13 enforcement actions against accountants in 2018, […]
PCAOB Told SEC ‘Hold My Drink,’ Went All Enforcement-Crazy on Accountants in 2017
2017 was a banner year for the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board when it came to enforcement actions against accountants. For the Securities and Exchange Commission, not so much. The PCAOB finalized 35 enforcement actions involving “accountants”—otherwise known as CPAs employed by SEC registrants, auditors, and audit firms—last year, up from 28 in 2016, according […]
KPMG Settles With SEC Over a Giant Failure of an Audit
KPMG has settled SEC charges for $6.2 million due to a shoddy audit of an oil and gas company. The partner in charge of the job, John Riordan, also settled to charges, agreeing to a $25,000 fine and a suspension to practice before the SEC. He can re-apply in two years. KPMG did not admit […]
EY Thought the Weatherford Audit Could Turn Out Badly; It Turned Out Badly
I'm not sure if there's a pattern or not, but it sure seems like the Big 4 take turns being the poster child of sloppy auditing. Sometimes the stretch is long and sometimes it's short, but it's inevitable that something blows up and one firm will be back on top as the King of Failed […]
Weatherford International Gets in Trouble for Letting Execs Choose Their Own Numbers
Going Concern history buffs will recall a period in 2011-2012 when oil services company Weatherford International had some chronic problems with its tax accounting. Manipulations by two of its former accounting executives — James Hudgins and Daryl Kitay — resulted in a $500 million restatement in 2011. This was followed by two more restatements in […]