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2024 Was It Fraud or Just Poor Audit Quality?

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ACPEN Webcasts

Online, OK 00000

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1.50 Credits

Member Price $79

Non-Member Price $99

Overview

This session describes a state agency’s quality review of a not-for-profit organization’s A-133 Single Audit. The case study describes the organization audited, its federally- and state-funded programs, and the CPA firm retained to do the audit. Various anomalies in the financial statements alerted state officials to potential problems, and a detailed quality review followed. Find out how the entity turned hundreds of thousands of dollars in bank overdrafts into hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash on its balance sheet. Explore other “creative” ways to deal with fixed assets, accounts receivable, and related-party transactions. Were the auditors just sloppy, ignorant, negligent? Or were they active participants in producing fraudulent financial statements? You be the judge.

Highlights

  • Financial statement manipulation
  • Ethics enforcement process
  • Auditor conflicts of interest

Prerequisites

None

Designed For

Accountants and auditors at all levels

Objectives

  • How easily financial statements can be manipulated
  • How checklist auditing is dangerous
  • Consequences for poor or negligent audit work
  • The importance of auditor objectivity and independence

Preparation

None

Leader(s):

Leader Bios

David Cotton, Chairman, Cotton & Company, LLP

Dave Cotton is founder and Chairman Emeritus of Cotton & Company, Certified Public Accountants, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia. Cotton & Company was founded in 1981 and has a practice concentration in assisting Federal and State agencies, inspectors general, and government grantees and contractors with a variety of government program-related assurance and advisory services. Cotton & Company has performed grant and contract, indirect cost rate, financial statement, financial related, and performance audits for more than three dozen Federal inspectors general as well as numerous other Federal and State organizations, programs, activities, and functions. In April 2022, Cotton & Company became a subsidiary of Sikich LLP.

Dave has a BS in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA in Management Science and Labor Relations.

In May 2022, Governor Glenn Youngkin appointed Dave to the Virginia Board of Accountancy.

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Non-Member Price $99

Member Price $79