And in dozens of lawsuits in the years afterward, shareholders named accountants as co-defendants when alleging accounting fraud.
Not according to Charles Drott, a forensic accountant and fraud examiner in San Francisco who testifies in accounting fraud cases.
It alleges that the accounting fraud was "orchestrated by the firm's senior-most accountant professionals," and names Sanders, Canellas, and Mullikin.
Xerox's accountant troubles date to June 2000,when the company acknowledged that its Mexican businesses had committed accounting fraud.
As Erik Lioy, a forensic accountant and fraud expert at Grant Thornton, told me, "When it's not clear how projects get approved, people assume the worst, and that provides incentives to do a bribe or kickback".
Elsewhere on ABC's new slate, Grey's Anatomy and Scandal showrunner Shonda Rhimes will launch The Catch, focusing on an accountant exposing fraud, while Rhimes' Shondaland production house will also make the Joan Allen drama The Family, about a young man returning from the dead.
In a decision by Judge Henry J. Friendly, a prominent appellate judge, a federal appeals court 32 years ago upheld the conviction of three accountants of fraud, even though there was testimony at their trial that they had complied with generally accepted accounting principles.
A jury on Tuesday convicted two prominent lawyers, the former head of a major accounting firm and an accountant of mail fraud charges in the prosecution of a multibillion-dollar tax shelter scheme.
Ernie Smith, an investigative accountant and certified fraud examiner for the Melville accounting firm of Callaghan Nawrocki, said that abuses most often occur when the segregation of duties that is supposed to exist does not.
