Our favorite convicted felon and career advice-giver, Sam Antar, the former CFO of Crazy Eddie, had some things to say on Twitter about the current state of audits in a reply to a tweet from Francine McKenna about EY and the Wirecard accounting scandal:
I’m going to make this plain and simple:
•Audits are a myth.
•It doesn’t matter which accounting firm is doing the audit, Big 4 or a smaller firm.
•Real audits are too cost prohibitive.
(Continued) https://t.co/sMbT9RyL0z— Sam E. Antar (@SamAntar) March 2, 2021
•The purpose of what are called “audits” today is provide investors with a false sense of security.
•In other words, the whole exercise is a “feel good” measure.
(Continued)— Sam E. Antar (@SamAntar) March 2, 2021
•The group that took over Crazy Eddie thought it was the goose that laid the golden egg.
•Instead, they ended up with rotten eggs.
In other words, our fraud was uncovered because a group of fools believed our phony financial reporting and took over the company.
(Continued)— Sam E. Antar (@SamAntar) March 2, 2021
Now if you all don’t mind, I have more serious things to do. pic.twitter.com/vjOehuJ6O1
— Sam E. Antar (@SamAntar) March 2, 2021
PREACH IT SAM!
Related article:
Ex-Crazy Eddie CFO’s 10 Tips for Advancing Your Accounting Career
He isn’t completely wrong. However, audits have gotten tougher in the days since Sarbanes-Oxley. His fraud happened back in the days when there was a lot of auditing by conversation–explanation appears reasonable, pass further work.