Aug 31, 2010
What would you do with $30 million? Well Sujata Sachdeva, the VP of Finance and Principal Accounting Officer at Koss Corporation bought designer clothes, furs, purses, shoes, jewelry, household furnishings, cars, did home improvement and renovations. The only difference is it wasnt her money, it was funds that belonged to the company, Koss Corpration. She had support from the senior accountant, Julie Mulvanev, together they concealed the fraud by overstating assets, expenses, and cost of sales, and by understating liabilities and sales. Based on the fraudulent records prepared by Sachdeva and Mulvaney, Koss prepared materially false financial statements and filed materially false current, quarterly, and annual reports with the SEC.
On August 31, 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged two former senior accounting professionals at Koss Corporation with accounting fraud, violation of book and record keeping and other related misconduct arising from the embezzlement of more than $30 million from the company. According to the complaint, the scheme began in 2004 and lasted through December 2009. After discovering the embezzlement, Koss amended and restated its financial statements for fiscal years 2008 and 2009 and the first three quarters of fiscal year 2010. Both Sachdeva and Mulvaney have been terminated by the company.
Sachdeva embezzled funds from company accounts through different means, including cashier’s checks, unauthorized wire transfers, and unauthorized payments from petty cash. Sachdeva fraudulently authorized the issuance of more than 500 cashier’s checks totaling more than $15 million. She used them to make approximately $10 million in payments to American Express for her personal credit card, and also used them to make direct payments to luxury retailers. At times, Sachdeva used acronyms in an attempt to conceal the identities of the check recipients — such as “N.M. Inc.” for Neiman Marcus and “S.F.A. Inc.” for Saks Fifth Avenue. Well thats what I call creative accounting!
