Step 1: Commit Fraud.
What? It is unethical, but it does work effectively until you get caught of course. Just look at Rita Crundwell. She was a comptroller for the city of Dixon, Illinois and she embezzled $53 million from her own city over the course of her career.No one seemed to wonder how she could afford to have a lavish lifestyle as a comptroller for a small town.
Fraud even happens at a corporate level. Ever heard of Enron? Once “considered one of the country’s most innovative companies,” they crashed hard due their infamous scandal. They intentionally altered their books so that their financial status was better than it actually was. Arthur Andersen was the firm that “failed” to catch these problems during their numerous audits. Eventually, this scandal, along with other corporate level scandals, led to the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxely in 2002. Can you guess where Enron and Arthur Andersen are today?
If you’ve ever watched the TV show, Mr.Robot, you might see a familiar logo. There is a fictional corporation in the show that bears a logo very similarly to Enron’s. In the show, that corporation is called “E Corp,” but the main character refers to it as “Evil Corp.” Is this a coincidence? Well the series creator, Sam Esmail said something regarding the logos:
Esmail told us that the “E” in Evil Corp is “totally the Enron logo.” Then he laughed. “It’s not like they’re going to sue us for it.”
That’s harsh, but then again, Enron’s scandal did put thousands of people out of work.
Frauds don’t even have to be as large as Enron’s or Crundwell’s. My External Auditing professor told us a story how he had bought movie tickets for him and his sons, but all the tickets weren’t for the same time or in numerical order. He suspected that there was a possibility that he was being sold used tickets. It’s not a huge fraud and won’t affect theater substantially with a few dollars being pocketed by the cashiers, Even so, it’s a method of fraud.
I urge you to look up some other accounting frauds after reading this post. Most of them are really interesting, and they were the funnest part of my accounting and auditing classes in college!
Olivia Phaphanthong 