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Accountant Sets Bar for Idiotic Embezzlement Schemes

The snatch and grab and burn technique isn’t the most sophisticated plan we’ve read about but we are talking about a man who is an accountant first (we’re guessing a very bad one) and an extremely dimwitted criminal second:

An accountant faces seven years in jail after a court convicted him yesterday of deliberately setting fire to Dh250,000 in cash and stealing a similar amount from the taxi company where he worked.


Why this particular accountant-cum-thief decided half the money wasn’t worth his trouble is unclear but what is CRYSTAL is that setting the remainder on fire was the equivalent of writing “I’M EMBEZZLING FUNDS” with a Sharpie™ across the cash ledger.

According to the arraignment sheet, prosecutors said [the accused] deliberately set fire to the money bag which contained Dh500,000. He burned Dh250,000 and stole the rest.

He was also charged with causing intentional damage and financial loss to the company. The company’s Indian manager testified that one of the employees informed him over the phone that the accounting office was on fire.

“I rushed to the company’s premises to check what happened. We had left nearly half a million dirhams in a money bag which we kept inside a wooden cupboard. The money was our drivers’ daily revenues. I discovered that half of the money got stolen and the remaining half was burned,” the manager told prosecutors.

But to be fair to our asshat accountant du jour, “a money bag which we kept inside a wooden cupboard” isn’t the most secure internal control procedure we’ve ever heard of. Let this be a lesson.

Accounting News Roundup: Big Names Oppose Proposed Washington Tax; American Apparel Names Acting President; Oregon Gubernatorial Candidate Donates Home and Gets Burned | 10.08.10


SEC Accuses CHiPs Actor, Others Of Securities Fraud [Dow Jones]
“In complaints made public on Thursday, the SEC alleges that the actor, Larry Wilcox, and more than a dozen other penny stock promoters engaged in a series of kickback schemevolume and price of microcap stocks and illegally generate stock sales.

Wilcox, who starred as Officer Jon Baker on the long-running television show “CHiPs”, lives in West Hills, Calif., and is president and chief executive of The UC Hub Group, according to an SEC complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.”

Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon Line Up Against New Washington Tax [Janet Novack/Forbes]
“The Washington State fight over whether to impose a new income tax on well-to-do residents heated up Wednesday, as the group opposing the tax released a list of employers that have joined the anti-tax cause. Companies on the list include Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, Weyerhaeuser and Safeco Insurance.

The tax, which will appear as Initiative 1098 on the state’s November ballot, would impose a 5% tax on income of more than $400,000 per couple and a 9% levy on income exceeding $1 million per couple.”

Rep. Levin: Fate of Bush tax cuts unknown [On the Money/The Hill]
This does not sound good: “The Senate is expected to move first on the issue, but Levin said even that was not certain.

‘It’s preferable that the Senate act first because we’ve seen that if they can’t act first they won’t act second because the Republicans block it and don’t provide the 60 votes,; he said, adding, ‘I think we’ll have to wait and see.’ “

American Apparel names Tom Casey as acting president [Reuters]
Tom Casey just left the terminal case known as Blockbuster in August.

SBA Loans Jump, Despite Unsteady Year [WSJ]
“Small-business lending still hasn’t bounced back to pre-recession levels. But despite a rocky year, the number of loans backed by the Small Business Administration jumped about 30% in 2010.

The agency, which ended its fiscal year Sept. 30, says it approved $16.84 billion, or 54,826 small business loans, in the past 12 months. That’s up from fiscal 2009, when the SBA backed about $13.03 billion during the depths of the credit crunch. In 2007, the agency backed about $20.61 billion.”


Oregon Gubernatorial Race Roiled by Candidate’s Charitable Deduction for Donation of Home to Fire Department [TaxProf Blog]
You try and do something nice…

FASB Advances EITF Proposals on Goodwill, M&A [A&A Update/Compliance Week]
“The Financial Accounting Standards Board is proposing new updates to the Accounting Standards Codification around goodwill write-downs, business combinations, and revenue recognition for health care entities based on recommendations from its Emerging Issues Task Force.

In the proposal titled Intangibles – Goodwill and Other (Topic 350): How the Carrying Amount of a Reporting Unit Should Be Calculated When Performing Step 1 of the Goodwill Impairment Test, FASB and the EITF want to settle on one starting point for all companies to follow in deciding if goodwill needs to be written down.”

U.A.E. Drops Threat to Suspend BlackBerry [NYT]
Your vacation is back on.