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Costa Rican Auditor Admits To Never Actually Auditing

Provident Capital Indemnity Ltd’s former outside auditor admitted in federal court this week to participating in a $670 million fraud in the life settlement bond market, according to the Department of Justice.


56-year-old Jorge Castillo pleaded guilty Monday to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, U.S. Attorney Neil MacBride in Alexandria, Virginia, said in a call with reporters. He could face up to 20 years in prison.

Castillo admitted to conspiring with PCI president Minor Vargas Calvo to prepare false financial statements that reflected contracts PCI held with other reinsurance companies. Castillo admitted to prosecutors that he never audited PCI’s financial statements and that he was aware PCI did not actually enter into the contracts with other reinsurance companies listed on the company’s financials. PCI paid him about $84,000 from 2004 to 2010.

Castillo will be sentenced in a Richmond, VA federal court on May 22.

DOJ: Purported Auditor Of Provident Capital Pleads Guilty In Scheme [WSJ]

Sue Sachdeva Was Needlessly Paranoid About Grant Thornton’s Fraud Detecting Abilities

About a year ago at this time, we just started learning about Sue Sachdeva, the convicted embezzler extraordinaire of headphone cobbler Koss. It took a little less than a year for everything to get sorted out including quite the inventory of luxury loot, her emerging talent for stealing money, lawsuits, a guilty plea and a sentence of 11 years.

Since all that’s settled it’s on to the lawsuits and Suze was recently deposed in Koss’s lawsuit against Grant Thornton where she testified about many interesting things, including being a nervous nelly from the get-go:

Former Koss Corp. executive Sujata “Sue” Sachdeva worried each day that she would be caught embezzling money that eventually totaled $34 million.

“Fear was one thing. I thought it was imminent,” she said in a recent court deposition. “Their auditors, every time they walked in, I’d say, ‘This is it. They’re going to catch me.’ 

Turns out, S-squared was paranoid for no good reason because – as we all know – GT had no clue that she was lifting millions every year to pay off her AMEX, partly, she says, because they were throwing green auditors at the company every year:

Sachdeva said in the deposition that Grant Thornton considered Koss to be a well-run company and a good training ground for its new auditors.

“Every year, we’d have at least one or two new auditors come through, and I know Michael (Koss) and I both objected to that – getting kids right out of college and had to explain the business to them every time,” Sachdeva said.

Sachdeva said she never held back documents from the auditors. They didn’t question the amounts of money flowing in and out of the company, nor did they question the internal controls, she said. The lack of inquiries surprised her, she said.

Then there were the allegations that she was having regular three-vodka-shot lunches, according to an October article in Milwaukee Magazine:

Retailers who lunched with Sachdeva say she downed vodka shots at the North Shore Bistro with Julie and Tracy. “Then they all went back to work bombed,” says one shop owner.

One consignment shop owner recalls picking up Sachdeva and taking her to Harvey’s restaurant in Mequon. “Sue told the waiter she wanted her ‘juice.’ They knew that meant vodka,” says the shop owner, who was surprised by how much Sachdeva drank.

Well, it all kinda makes sense now doesn’t it? She was either paranoid because she drank or drank because she was paranoid. OR the amateur auditors drove her so batty and she had no choice but to get a little loaded. Anyway you slice it, the auditors seem to be ones to blame, which seems like a trend these days.

Koss embezzler feared discovery from start [MJS]
The Diva [Milwaukee Magazine]

Deloitte Admits to Handling Layoffs ‘Poorly’

That “All-Hands” meeting we told you about on Monday sounds like it was a real snoozer, however, a source who was there did share two interesting details:

The guys in charge basically told us the following:

– They handled the [May 2009] “headcount adjustment” poorly. It was a necessary action; but more communication was necessary to keep people informed.
– Deloitte is better poised to grow over the next few years as compared to their competitors (we saw projections, but no comparisons…)

That took about 1.5 hours.

Since this was an “all-hands” we’re assuming tax people were there? If so, the ones still trudging towards the 15th (one week!) had to be suffering borderline panic attacks. Or maybe it was a brief oasis? Either way it’s unfortunate that nothing came up about increase in comp. Maybe Deloitte is the one firm that is saving it as a big surprise. If the cat gets let out of the bag on comp, get in touch with us.

Grant Thornton Wants Help Breaking Into the Global 6

Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for Grant-thornton-logo.JPGBoy, a firm gets fired a couple times and you’d think the sky was falling.
GT isn’t literally saying, “Help us, for the love of God, the Big 4 is just too powerful” but it’s close enough for us:

Mid-tier accounting firm Grant Thornton has described the current audit market as unsustainable and is calling for new rules to promote greater competition.
In a letter to the International Organization of Securities Commissions, the firm put together a four point plan aimed at increasing diversity in the concentrated audit industry.


The firm want regulators to require companies to disclose third party agreements that limit auditor choice, discourage companies and financial intermediaries from entering agreements containing restrictive clauses, and publish balanced findings of their inspections of individual audit firms.
The firm claims that in the event of a Big Four collapse, 20% of the 7200 largest businesses in the G20 would be left stranded without an auditor.

Hell, maybe they have a point? If their claims are legit, we are talking over 1,000 companies that just up and don’t have an auditor any more. And the firm can’t instantly quintuple its global revenue.
We asked a frequent commenter on the subject of Big 4 failure, Jim Peterson of Re:Balance, for his thoughts and he told us:

[W]hen the next of the Big Four goes down — which will be in a highly visible and ugly burst of flame and wreckage — the other 3 will quickly enough leave the assurance business themselves. What incentive would they have to stay? They would not have the resources or the political agility to take up the slack, and there would be no upside for them in the face of relentless attacks from the blame-mongers.
So it’s not 20% — it’s 100% — and then the re-building process starts with a blank page.

That sounds kinda serious. Maybe governments do need to get involved. Seems like the going trend these days anyway.
Global audit industry is unsustainable: GT [Accountancy Age]