Q 1 Explain the nature of accounting fraud? A1. Background: The origin of WorldCom can be traced to the breakup of AT&T in 1983. The company began as Long Distance Discount Services Inc during 1983. LDD name was changed to WorldCom in 1995. To build the economies of scale that were critical success factor in long distance market it was imperative for WorldCom to grow its available volume off bandwidth as it lowered the per unit costs. Also the Telecommunication act of 1996 permitted long
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Accounting Fraud at WolrdCom Introduction WorldCom‚ US second largest telecommunication company shocked the world by filing bankruptcy at 21 July 2002. The WorldCom filing surpassed Enron and became the largest bankruptcy filing in United States history. Due to its rapid growth‚ WorldCom is also heavily in debt as they finance the company growth with debt. The collapse of WorldCom did not just affect their employees‚ retailers‚ the government but also bankers. WorldCom was a multi-billion dollar telecommunications
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Why were the actions taken by WorldCom managers not detected earlier? What processes or systems should be in place to prevent or detect quickly the types of actions that occurred in WorldCom? The first reason is that both internal audit and external audit of WorldCom were not performing their role as intended. Generally‚ internal audit mainly focus on the reliability of financial reporting and the effectiveness of operations‚ and reports directly to the Board of Directors. In WorldCom‚ however‚ internal
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entity’s ongoing major‚ or central‚ operations. Expenses are gross outflows incurred in generating revenues. (ii.) SCON No. 6‚ paragraph 148‚ states that costs should be expensed when they are used up or have expired and when they have no future economic value which can be measured. SCON No. 6‚ paragraph 178-181‚ states costs should be capitalized or recorded as assets when the costs have not expired and they have future economic value. b. According to GAAP Accounting Principles‚ cost capitalization
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CASE NAME: WorldCom: Keeping Planes In the Air 1. Briefly describe the important aspects of the situation. WorldCom had asked its accountant to make accounting entries dipping into reserves to help the company to meet its earnings target. WorldCom had been done these financial reserves for three quarters and intended to do so thereafter. The telecommunications industry was in a severe slump. WorldCom had a slow growth and rising cost. Vinson‚ who had done WorldCom’s accounting
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WorldCom Ethical Scandal In the late 1990’s‚ WorldCom was a successful company and leader in the telecommunications world. They had merged with MCI and the company was regarded for being innovative and growth hungry. However‚ in the midst of all the mergers WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebberly began to mismanage the company. WorldCom was no longer meeting their numbers and it looked like stock prices would fall. Rather than letting this happen‚ executives at WorldCom doctored the books. CFO Scott
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What Actions Should be taken? In Ruwan’s Prospective Ruwan should first raise his opinion to his immediate superior Mr. Robert Chapman‚ Controller to ensure that he does not break immediate or formal line of communication in the organizational hierarchy. If Mr. Robert agrees with him he could talk to the senior management. However‚ if he does not agree Ruwan could directly take it to the senior management which could bring up a discussion to re consider the decision taken by them. On the other hand
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Worldcom appeared to be a great success story. However‚ the success began to unravel with the accumulation of debt and expenses‚ the fall of the stock market‚ and long distance rates and revenue. It would take 2 years for the extent of these problems to become public‚ and accounting scandals like that of Worldcom would make history in the finance and telecommunication areas. While the intent is to make money to benefit a person or a group of people through illegal acts while disguising their illegal
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7/22/13 WorldCom Search » Ethics Home Page About the Center Focus Areas Bioethics Business Ethics Campus Ethics Character Education Government Ethics Internet Ethics More... Publications Ethics Articles Ethics Cases Ethical Decision Making Videos Ethics Blogs Podcasts E-letter/Subscribe Contact Us Site Index WorldCom1 By Dennis Moberg (Santa Clara University) and Edward Romar (University of MassachusettsBoston) An update for this case is available. 2002 saw an unprecedented number of
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3) Roots of the scandal The roots of the fraud and the role of internal auditors As explained above‚ the fraud was implemented by the former CEO Bernard Ebbers and commited by his financial director Scott D. Sullivan. The technique used by Worldcom was pretty simple; indeed‚ he cooked the books by saving pure operating expenses such as maintenance network in capital expenditure instead of expenses in order to hide its decreasing earnings and to maintain the price of Worldcom’s stock. In summary
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