Having never been part of a PCAOB investigation, we’re not able to attest to the uncomfortable violated feeling one must have when you have a government foot soldier crapping all over your work.
That being said, if you can at least make an argument for your shoddy work, you’ve got something to throw at them. The same cannot be said when you have no discernible argument whatsoever that will allow you to look yourself in the mirror and call yourself an auditor.
Enter Moore & Associates and its President, Michael J. Moore:
Poor auditing, after the jump
After M&A registered with the Board in October 2004, Moore began auditing
the financial statements of public companies for the first time in more than ten years.
Over the next three years, M&A accepted nearly 300 public audit engagements, with
Moore serving as the auditor with final responsibility on each of them. Respondents
added new clients at a nearly exponential rate while the audit staff was comprised of
inexperienced staff members overseen by one professional. M&A staffed the audits
with assistants who had no accounting or auditing education, experience or training.
These unqualified audit assistants planned and executed the audits with little or no
supervision from Moore.
So, you’re back in the audit game after a ten years on the bench and you really don’t have the resources to pay anyone that has any accounting background. Not being one to shy away from adversity, you go out and find whatever warm bodies you come across at the Greyhound station. Eventually you get the call that the PCAOB is on to your little game and you’ve got to think that the jig is up.
Nah. Keep rolling with it:
Respondents also failed to cooperate with the Board’s investigation…Respondents created false work papers that did not accurately reflect the work performed on the relevant audits and produced those false work papers to the Board’s Division of Enforcement and Investigations. Moore also falsely testified that these work papers produced by Respondents were true and accurate audit work papers completed during the audit, when he knew they were not.
Nothing like going down in flames. For his incredibly diligent dishonesty and disregard for the PCAOB’s rules, Moore has been banned to the CPA darkness.
Moore & Associates, Chartered, and Michael J. Moore, CPA (8/27/2009) [PCAOBUS.org]
