Detecting accounting fraud: analysis and ethics

Description

Over the last two decades, financial statement fraud has become an increasingly serious issue, resulting in the collapse of ostensibly solid companies and a subsequent lack of confidence in financial markets.Detecting Accounting Fraud: Analysis and Ethicswas created in response to the challenges facing accountants in this era. This book provides a thorough overview of the top 20 methods of overstating earnings and assets or understating debt in financial statements. In addition, detailed coverage of the main signals indicating possible fictitious reporting in financial statements helps readers to identify signs of possible fraud. Readers work with a variety of original documents (or relevant extracts of such), including Litigation Releases, Complaints, and Financial Statements. And because breakdowns in ethics underlie accounting fraud, the book presents three major theories of ethics, as well as applicable ethical decision-making models. KEY TOPICS: Introduction to the Problem of Accounting Fraud; Ethics at Work; The Sizzling Saga of Sunbeam; Hocus Pocus; WorldCom Wizardry: From WorldCom to WorldCon; Abracadabra; Enron and the Tale of the Golden Goose; Tall Tales; Mortgage Mayhem MARKET: Practitioners of forensic accounting and those wishing to learn about this fast-growing area