A Potentially Costly Combination: Deloitte, Taylor Bean and the PCAOB

If you follow news affecting auditors, you may have noticed that the PCAOB made a very rare disclosure yesterday about one of the big four firms, Deloitte. The PCAOB said that Deloitte was previously sanctioned for not being skeptical enough to challenge statements made by management and that they still have problems with this.

Normally, the PCAOB tells the big audit firms what they did wrong and gives them a year to fix it with the threat that they will disclose their failures after a year if the firm doesn't fix it. Well, they decided Deloitte was still dropping this ball so they disclosed it publicly. Importantly, the timing of this ball dropping may have been very detrimental to Deloitte. Here is why...

Widow of Mark Madoff Talks

ABC News has an article about Mark Madoff's widow, Stephanie Madoff Mack, and her view of what Bernie did to her. Here are a few quotes I found interesting:

Fraud in Amateur Sports

Photo taken from KTLA.com

So, I was appalled to read about a marathon runner who caught a bus over the last six miles of the race and then waited until the 1st and 2nd place racers passed him before taking 3rd place with a personal record! I can just see this guy bragging about his PR to his friends at work! In my book, he's a bigger loser than the last place finisher who followed the rules. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "The biggest loser!"

Avoiding Consumer Fraud [Guest Post]

“You’ve just won $10,000! Act now! This opportunity won’t last long!” Every day, millions of consumers run into ploys like this one, and some of these people fall victim to the scam. Americans lose hundreds of billions of dollars to consumer fraud every year.

Victims of mass market fraud could potentially lose their life savings and/or have the need to file for bankruptcy. Con artists can find these innocent people through the internet, by telephone, email, and even post mail. People easily get tricked into trusting these scams and give out money or their very valuable personal information.

What is Consumer Fraud?