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  Enterprise System Spectator, 26 Dec 2003 @ 5:21pm

  
  

  Low tech fraud

  From the NYT article:

  "...most amazing part of the Parmalat fraud....auditors accepted at face value that Parmalat had 3.95 billion euros (then worth $4.1 billion) in a bank account in the Cayman Islands. They evidently failed to actually talk to the bank officer whose name was on the phony confirmation."

  I get annoyed with accounting system vendors that propose technology solutions to Enron or Parmalat problems. The frauds were low tech. So also the solutions do not lie with technology but rather with auditors simply willing to do their jobs.
  

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  Anonymous Coward, 29 Dec 2003 @ 11:12pm

  
  

  investiagor modius operandi

  Most investigators are not geeks and are not intersted in finding technology based fraud because:
  
  1 - it tends to be hard to find and verify
  2 - it's not how the investiagor usually works
  
  With that in mind, I wonder how much technical fraud is executed on a daily basis, completely undetected.
  
  As for Enron, I would argue that a lot of their initial fraud (manipulation of the energy market and attempting to corner other finite resource markets) that allowed them to operate "legitimately" was overshadowed by the days leading up to their eventual collapse.
  
  Still, who the fsck cares if you can prove that they added 50cents per kilowatt hour to energy prices in a certain market just by shunting long-haul circuits around, when you can parade "bilked" mom&pop investors who lost "millions".
  
  One make for far better court room theater...

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