Add the nation's largest accounting firms to the list of watchdogs and regulators that didn't catch the multibillion-dollar Madoff investment scam. KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, BDO Seidman and McGladrey & Pullen all gave clean bills of health to the numerous funds that invested with Bernard Madoff and his asset-management firm. Clients say the large accounting firms signed off on statements that said the Madoff investment vehicles had billions of dollars in assets as well as an unlikely track record showing ...

Stepping up the attackSometimes it seems that success fathers its own problems. In its campaign to hook smuggled drugs, the Reagan Administration has claimed some impressive catches: since establishing a regional interdiction center in South Florida in March 1982, it says that cocaine and marijuana seizures there are up 54% and 23% respectively, drug arrests have risen by 27%, and the street value of intercepted dope amounts to around $5 billion. Smugglers, however, have risen to the challenge by trafficking in smaller, harder-to-detect loads and by moving ...

We don't know much about Sherron Watkins. We haven't met her in our living rooms, on TV in front of a bank of microphones, not yet. But because she wrote a letter to her boss, we know she knew, about the "Condor" and "Raptor" partnerships and the accounting and the doom Enron was facing. We know that in August she told them — her boss, Ken Lay, and then her friend at Arthur Andersen, who then told ...

As questions swirled around its accounting practices, Tyco International, an industrial and services conglomerate with $36 billion in annual revenues--and a beaten-down stock price--said last week it would split into four companies in a bid to "unlock tens of billions of dollars of shareholder value." The company's combative CEO, Dennis Kozlowski, predicted the breakup would add 50% to the stock price. Going him one better, Don MacDougall of J.P. Morgan Chase said the move would make the stock worth $80 ...

Is there anybody out there investors can trust? Wall Street was pondering that today as markets were hammered following last night's announcement that WorldCom had inflated profits by a staggering $3.8 billion over the past five quarters. The Dow skidded towards the 9,000 level, while the news pushed the NASDAQ to near post-Sept. 11th levels. The accounting slight-of-hand was accomplished by calling some ongoing costs, like network maintenance, capital expenditures — a move that let the company spread costs over several years, thus ...

When Sam Antar was cooking the books for his company, he used a number of complicated accounting tricks to dupe auditors. But some tactics were simple. "These auditors from the Big Four accounting firms are usually single kids just a few years out of school. What do kids in their 20s think about all the time Sex," said Antar, who was at the center of a multi-million dollar fraud 20 years ago. So Antar would pair "cute hot female" employees ...

You're probably not thinking about what you would like for Christmas yet. But ask any environmentalist for their ideal gift and you'll get a version of this answer: a binding agreement at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December that is strong enough to match the science. The talks are the latest in a line of climate conferences that began in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. This year the focus will be on the details of a ...

Want to get the most out of your next brainstorming session at work? Bring in an oddball. If you can't find an oddball, try a naysayer or even a mere stranger — anyone who can keep things vaguely uncomfortable. If that sounds like a prescription for one of the worst meetings you've ever had, suck it up and go anyway. It might also be one of the most productive. Business experts and social scientists have long warned about the perils ...