The SEC Doesn’t Care if ‘The Numbers Don’t Work’

Posted on by Caleb Newquist

magic money.jpgTry to control yourselves, the SEC continues to kick some ass. The Commission has charged Terex Corporation of Westport, CT with accounting fraud:
Check out the details, after the jump

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Terex Corporation, a Westport, Conn.-based heavy equipment manufacturer, with accounting fraud for making material misstatements in its own financial reports to investors, as well as aiding and abetting a fraudulent accounting scheme at United Rentals, Inc. (URI), another Connecticut-based public company.

The Commission had previously charged URI executives with fraud back in September when the company paid $14 mil to settle with M. Schape and the gang. Terex is settling for $8 mil.
The complaint alleges that both companies engaged in some shady revenue recognition which enabled them to meet earnings forecasts. It also states that from 2000 to 2004, accountants at Terex couldn’t figure out some of their inter-company transactions so they just decided to RAM some journal entries in there to make it work.
We understand that. Every once in awhile it’s 1 am-ish and you’re looking at a bunch of numbers that are getting blurry and you say “F THIS“. Entry gets made. Done.
Problem is, the SEC doesn’t like that.
SEC Charges Terex Corporation With Accounting Fraud [SEC.gov]

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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]

Sam Antar at Stanford: Jr. Deputy Accountant Gets a Live Dose of the Criminal Mind

Last week, I took the day off from work and headed down the 101 to sit in on former Crazy Eddie CFO and self-proclaimed criminal Sam E. Antar speaking to Stanford MBA students on, what else, fraud and the criminal mind. Sam is a friend of both JDA and Going Concern and it was excellent to see him recount the Crazy Eddie story to an auditorium of future MBAs.

Ironically, he showed up wearing an SEC baseball cap, which is akin to JDA owning a Federal Reserve hoodie (I do) and didn’t waste a second getting to the point of his visit.

“I’m gonna be the guy that fucks you guys up,” he told the room before beginning the presentation, “I’m a racist and a scum bag but I hate everyone equally.”


I could literally see the audience squirm in response. I already knew Sam was a tad offensive and was counting on getting an extra dose of it; there was no squirming in the media corner.

“Political correctness helps the criminal, not you,” he explained, “It limits your behavior, not the criminal’s.”

Right.

Sam went into auditor standards like the fraud triangle though insisted there is no such thing as rationalization. “Criminals know right from wrong. We don’t plan on failure.”

We even got to see a vintage Crazy Eddie ad spot as Sam’s presentation was spliced with images from the 2006 Court TV episode of Masterminds detailing the Crazy Eddie fraud. That’s for the sections that Sam doesn’t tell you; the details are plentiful in his spiel though don’t let that catch you off guard, he insists he is still just as dangerous as he was before he was caught.

You can get the Crazy Eddie backstory from Sam’s Web site (if you aren’t fortunate enough to be able to play hooky and see him spook Stanford MBA students in person) here, here, and here. If you get the chance, I highly recommend checking him out live (leave your valuables in the car).

And then there’s the video of Sam and Eddie meeting up decades after their fraud was discovered — and Sam gave up his family (and, consequently, himself) — that I recommend you not miss.

So long as there are unqualified auditors being piled into audits they aren’t trained to perform, there will be guys like Sam E. Antar figuring out a way to distract, deter, and delude them, no matter what it takes. For Crazy Eddie, it didn’t take much. What’s to say things have changed?

Sam Antar Photograph by Buck Ennis for Crain’s New York Business and Investment News.

Ernst & Young Gives Going Concern Warning to Allen Stanford Liquidator

If you’re given the task of running down assets that are left over from a Ponzi scheme, you’d think somone would throw in a little something for the effort. That stolen money is going to find itself after all.

Well! Apparently this is not so, especially as it relates to UK recovery firm Vantis. Vantis has been scouring the Earth for any of the plunder left over from the Allen Stanford hide the $7 billion game.

Six months into it, Vantis can’t get paid for its treasure hunt services and now Ernst & Young has said that the firm’s very life is at stake if they can’t start convincing some people to pay up.


Among the excuses that Vantis is claiming are the fact that most of the assets in the U.S. have been frozen and that the U.S. liquidator Ralph Janvey doesn’t play nice.

But hey! They’re still confident everything will be hunk-dory, “The UK recovery firm said it remained ‘confident’ that it would be able to recover its fees ‘in due course’ but said the timing remained uncertain.”

So more or less you’re day-to-day, right? Welcome to the prestigious Club of Those Ripped off by Allen Stanford.

Vantis faces going concern threat over liquidation of Allen Stanford’s bank [Telegraph]