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Ex-Crazy Eddie CFO Now Judging Fellow Criminals on Their Criminal Talents or Lack Thereof

Posted on by Adrienne Gonzalez

If there's anyone who knows about being a criminal, it's former Crazy Eddie CFO Sam Antar because he is one. Perhaps that's why CNBC recruited him to judge fellow criminals' performance much like Michelle Visage judging drag queens on their cakes and tucks (don't Google that).

First, the background on the scam up for judging:

There are smart ways and dumb ways to do income-tax evasion and disgraced former Staten Island Congressman Michael Grimm took the stupid route.

Grimm is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to a single count of income-tax evasion and admitting to skimming cash from Healthalicious, the New York restaurant he co-owned before he was elected to Congress. (He was indicted on 20 counts that also included mail fraud, hiring undocumented immigrants and perjury.)

According to the indictment, he evaded sales tax on cash transactions and paid some of his employees in cash (off the books) thereby dodging paying payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, and disability insurance. And, while he only pleaded guilty to one count, he admitted other wrongdoing in a "statement of facts," including hiding over $900,000 in revenue and hiring the undocumented workers.

According to Sam, it wasn't the tax evasion itself that's the problem (after all, Crazy Eddie was pretty good at that), it's that Grimm was really bad at hiding the evidence of it:

My former bosses running Crazy Eddie would never have let an amateur like Grimm participate in our tax-evasion schemes! If you are to engage in any scheme to skim money and evade taxes, there is one golden rule: Never leave an audit trail.

Michael Grimm left behind a body of evidence in the most convenient places for the federal investigators to help bury him. According to the indictment, "GRIMM maintained electronic spreadsheets which detailed the restaurant's true payroll information, including the cash wages, while concealing such cash wages from the payroll processing companies retained by Healthalicious." Furthermore, the indictment stated that, "On numerous occasions from March 2010 through June 2010, GRIMM sent the Manager emails from the GRIMM AOL Email Account containing excerpts from the Second Set of Payroll Records, detailing how much cash each Healthalicious employee should receive for a particular week." His manager, Manuel Perez copped a plea and provided evidence to the FBI. (Grimm should have chosen his fellow co-conspirators more carefully.)

We like this series. Why not take it a step further and assemble a panel of criminal judges to assess fellow criminals' charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent1? We could have Scott London, Sam Antar, Jeff Skilling, and Luke Perry in the role of Reverend Jeremiah Cloutier judging an American Criminal competition to find America's best (worst?) criminal. Sam is definitely onto something here!

Check out the video if you'd like and do share with your tax evading friends so they don't end up a target of Sam's trolling after they're inevitably busted.

 

1In case you can't tell, I'm binging on RuPaul's Drag Race today

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Satyam: Does Anyone Mind if We Take Another Three Months to Finish Our Restatements?

With just a couple weeks until the June 30 deadline for the company to issue its restated financial statements, Satyam is requesting just a little more time to get this mulligan nailed down. Three months to be precise.

Yes, they’re completely aware that it’s been nearly 18 months since the shit hit the fan. And yes, this is the third time they’ve asked India’s Company Law Board (“CLB”) for an extension on the filing but at this point they figure expectations are so low, no one will get too worked up over it.


Except for an “analyst with a leading brokerage house.” who is quoted in the Business Times, “There is no clarity on what is happening within the company. They should have at least provided the current sales figure or the bench strength. How is the shareholder supposed to rate their stock?”

Since more than a few people might be caught up in “sales figures” and whatnot, Satyam went to the trouble to let everyone know that they’re working hard, ordering in, etc. etc. so you can rest your pretty little heads:

A Satyam official said, “The records have been under the custody of investigating agencies and we recently got a court clearance. Also, our auditors (KMPG and Deloitte) told us they need some more time for the restatement. It’s only a matter of a quarter.”

See? It’s just a matter of a quarter. Plus, you can’t really blame them – KPMG and Deloitte are the ones saying they need more time. Satyam has likely been bugging them for months about wrapping up but KPMG and Deloitte are probably complaining, saying things like, “we can’t find any documentation to supports these numbers” and “this doesn’t add up.”

So, TFB if some whiny analysts don’t like it. We’ll just find out just how big of nightmare these financial statements will be in due course.

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Koss Files Restated Financial Statements, Just in the Nick of Time

As you may recall, restated financial statements for headphonesmith company Koss were due yesterday and they used all the time they were allowed.

According to our friends aty filed its restated 10-K for June 30, 2009, and 10-Qs for September 30, 2009, December 31, 2009 and March 31, 2010 5 pm, 5:06, 5:11, 5:16 and 5:17 respectively.

Oh and they topped everything off with an 8-K at 5:27 that explains the barrage (not that we need it but, you know, securities law and stuff):

On June 30, 2010, Koss Corporation (“Koss”) released restated consolidated financial statements for the fiscal years ended June 30, 2009 and 2008, and the quarter ended September 30, 2009. Koss filed amendments to its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009 and its Quarterly Report for the three months ended September 30, 2009 containing the restated consolidated financial statements for the applicable periods. The restatements were required as a result of previously disclosed unauthorized transactions by Sujata Sachdeva, Koss’s former Vice President of Finance and Principal Accounting Officer.

Koss also amended its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the three months ended December 31, 2009 and March 31, 2010 to include financial statements, which were omitted from the Company’s reports when previously filed. The release of these financial statements was delayed due to the restatement of Koss’s financials statements required by the unauthorized transactions. With the filings of these amended Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Koss understands that it will regain compliance with Nasdaq Listing Rule 5250(c)(1), which requires the timely filing of periodic financial statements.

That about covers it, doesn’t it? Oh right, the actual numbers. We checked in with forensic sleuth and GC friend Tracy Coenen on these and she gave us some perspective on the restated numbers:

So I’ve taken a run through the restated numbers for 6/30/09 and 6/30/08. Very interesting.

2009 – Revenue was understated by $3.5 million to conceal the fraud, while COGS was overstated by $1.7 million. Overall there is now a loss for 2009, thanks to $8.5 million of theft, but without that, the company would have had profits of $8.2 million, or 19.6% on net sales. Wow!

2008 – Revenue was understated by $2.1 million to conceal the fraud, while COGS was overstated by $1 million. Overall there is now a loss of 2008 of $1.3 million thanks to $5.1 million of theft, but without that, the company would have had profits of $10.7 million or 21.9% of sales.

Pretty impressive stuff. Maybe the company was right when they said everything would be hunky-dory once they got this little mishap out of the way. Chief headphone inheritor Michael Koss explains in the company’s press release, “Given that certain unauthorized transactions were concealed in the Company’s sales and cost of sales accounts, our sales were higher and our cost of sales was lower than previously reported in both 2009 and 2008. This correction has revealed an increase in gross margins for our Company. From this perspective, the Company’s performance was actually stronger than originally reported.”

Tracy continues:

What you see is that 65%-75% of the theft on an annual basis was concealed on the P&L, and the remainder was dumped into the balance sheet, via inflated A/R, Inventory, and fixed assets, and understated liabilities. The adjustments on the balance sheet are large by 2009 because those irregularities were cumulative.

So the bottom line is that the company is very profitable, if shareholders could actually count on them to watch over the money and see to it that the profits aren’t all being stolen. My original theory was that Sachdeva was expensing her theft, and that’s true to some extent, but failure to record sales was presented to me later as part of her her scheme, and she also involved the balance sheet which created a cumulative (and messy) problem.

Oh right! Watching the money. Should probably write that one down. Hopefully we’ve all learned a valuable lesson.