What are the biggest recent accounting scandals in America? When businesspersons turn fraud, it affects a lot of people. Violent crimes can destroy people, but so can economic crimes. Entire families are destroyed just because one person turned greedy. Such accounting scandals even affect the country as a whole because it can affect investor confidence, which can lead to lesser money being poured into the market, leading to a downturn. In the recent past, America has seen many accounting scandals, each bigger than the other. Since almost all multinational companies have a strong presence in the country, there is a huge scope for scandals. The system is geared towards maximum profit and very little checks by the government, which means that unscrupulous corporate people can get away with fraud for a long time. This is the beauty of unchecked capitalism, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better. Under these circumstances, it might be a good idea to learn more about the recent accounting scandals in the country.
The most intriguing and biggest recent accounting scandals in America include Enron, Bernie Madoff, and Lehman Brothers. Enron created the biggest scandal of them all in 2001 when the company went bankrupt after the CFO and others misled the board of directors into making wrong decisions. The company went bankrupt and the investor loss totaled up to $78 billion. This scandal had such a massive impact that it led to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Another huge scandal was when Bernie Madoff and his accountant cheated investors off $65 billion through stock fraud. He was given 150 years in prison. Even though his actions affected the economy at large, it seems a bit harsh considering that rapists only get three months.
Lehman Brothers also went bankrupt in 2008. This one was huge because another huge firm acting in the capacity of their auditor, Ernst & Young, was also involved in this scandal. Ernst & Young sold assets to banks in the Cayman Islands through manipulation of the accounts. The investor loss has been $50 billion. You can learn more about recent accounting scandals by going through our list. The data has been gathered from Forbes, Accounting Degree, and Wikipedia, and the ranking is based on the amount of loss. Go through this list to know about more accounting scandals in detail.
