18 Burst results for "Cynthia Cooper"
Crypto Critics' Corner
"cynthia cooper" Discussed on Crypto Critics' Corner
"And hopefully help them reap rewards while protecting their other interests, whether that's keeping them anonymous or otherwise. And I find it extremely rewarding, extremely entertaining, fraud always makes for good stories as my partner bob likes to say, we like cases that have high amusement value. All of these cases have high amusement value. But they also have high impact value. Whistleblowers are part of the solution. If you think about the Panama papers and the impact that the Panama papers have had on the world in a number of countries, it is testament to the power of whistleblower. It's never the full story is never the end of the story, but so often when people like Cynthia come forward, change happens. That's why I started the website. I hope that society will change their perspective on whistleblowers and who whistleblowers are because I think that they do play a critical role in protecting all of us, protecting. I mean, we see that, right? With a lot of these cases and protecting societies and saving lives and admire what you're doing and what you guys are doing as well to try and fight fraud in the industry. I think Bennett and I largely started this just to reflect on something but also to share what we feel like we've learned along this incredibly weird journey and I'm happy to hear that you're going to be starting your own podcast defining moments with Cynthia Cooper. Can you tell us more about that? It's defining moments with Cynthia Cooper. I have already interviewed Francis haugen, the Facebook whistleblower Sharon Watkins of enron talked to the founder of the association of fraud examiners and the president of the ACIP. They represent a hundred thousand fraud examiners all over the world. And have some other guests exciting guests lined up and hoping that Cass that you and Bennett will come on to the show and that we can continue this conversation because it's so important. And I know it's not always easy to share and do what you're doing and I'm sure you guys receive some resistance. But it's important, right? It's important. And I've seen from watching your podcast that you put a lot of research and thought into your podcast, so thank you. That means the coming from you. So yeah, it's been an unreal experience to get to talk to you some began Darren. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on to talk about the work that you do. I'm dumbfounded that you guys were willing to do this with us. This is by far our longest recording. So much ground. And I deeply appreciate both of you being willing to take this time to talk about these things with us today. I think we've covered a lot of really valuable things. And I'm really appreciative that you guys were willing to sit here and do this. Thank you so much. We are deeply appreciative of you. And thank you for taking so much time. You've got a lot ahead of you. If people want to get in touch with us, Cynthia, I know your LinkedIn page, right? Sure, I'm on LinkedIn or C Cooper at Cooper group LLC dot com. I'm also on LinkedIn and crypto whistleblower dot com. If you want to email me, my email is there, I can send you some tips on what makes for a successful crypto whistleblower case. Please reach out.
Crypto Critics' Corner
"cynthia cooper" Discussed on Crypto Critics' Corner
"Cass, I can tell you for me personally this has been by far the most difficult thing that I've been through. In my lifetime. And just as the author of the whistleblower said, there was a period of time where I began to suffer from some pretty severe depression. There was nothing to celebrate here. I lost over 30 pounds. It was difficult, sometimes just to get out of bed and put one foot in front of the other. And I can remember my dad sitting at the foot of my bed one night reading and rereading the 23rd song. Obviously, none of us want to find ourselves this position. People we care about people we love. Family members are pulled into it, right? So many people are pulled into it. But I think what helped me personally to whether the storm and move forward, I was blessed to have a great team that stood by me. My husband was a huge source of support, my parents, that made a big difference because a lot of people don't have that. We all do have those moments where we have to make those choices. It is good for corporations to have a speak up culture where people feel like they can come to their superiors and their executives and describe the problems to them instead of to law enforcement or regulators. What kind of things make it possible for a company to have that kind of culture for people to feel like they can discuss these kind of problems in their workplace and make these kind of changes without having to whistle blow without having to go through all of those experiences. Yeah, that's a great question. So when you have these entrepreneurial fast growth companies, like what we see in the crypto space, we saw it in dot com, telecom. The founders are often the ones who set that tone at the top. The culture permeates throughout the organization. And so having a code of conduct is important, defining the values that are important to the organization, making sure everybody understands what the purpose of the company is, that you have a purpose that's bigger than profits. If you see something that you're not comfortable with, we want you to speak up. We want you to come to us, having a chief compliance officer, for example. Letting people know, here's what we want you to do. We want to hear from you. And then making sure that you follow up on it and that you get back to the person, protecting the person's anonymity is important if at all possible. So all of these different things work in an ecosystem together to make sure that companies have this transparent speak up culture. And then sending out surveys, I think ethical surveys are really important to touch every employee in your organization. Either one on one or through small group roundtable discussions or through ethics questionnaires. And think about it with a lot of these big scandals if a compliance officer or someone had sent out an ethics questionnaire, it's likely because lots of people knew about some of these things that someone would have said, hey, well, yeah, there's this thing I'm uncomfortable with. So making sure for executives making sure you get out, you talk to people at all levels, not just at the top. And that you ask them the right questions. Is there anything that you're not comfortable with? Honestly, I think it's quite important that people listen to this and take away the right lessons from
Crypto Critics' Corner
"cynthia cooper" Discussed on Crypto Critics' Corner
"It's a lot easier for you to bring charges against that person, knowing that they're going to then flip against all of the people that you really want to get to. So it's a tough position to be in because I suspect you would get charged with something because they know that if you don't want to get actual prison time, you're just going to talk. And there's no reason for you not to at that point because these people are not doing anything for you and your career is over at that company. So that's right. No one wants to be in that position where they have to decide, okay, I might get probation if I just play along. You want to nip it in the bud. You want to be like Cynthia. I like the point that cast made the different divisions within the Justice Department followed different protocols. Betty and Troy, they were very close to obtaining immunity. Originally, a division of the Justice Department within Mississippi was going to handle this case. But when the southern district of New York got the case, it was a different story. So your point sometimes people will plead guilty and then they cooperate with the prosecutors in the case. So Betty and Troy, they wrote their resignation letters. And I think it's worth reading all engage my acting background here. Yes. His childhood acting background. Dear buddy, this letter is to serve as notice of my resignation from WorldCom effective today. The actions proposed regarding quarter close entries has necessitated this action. If needed, I can assist with any transition issues that may arise. My income situation is such that I request we work out an equitable arrangement regarding some sort of salary and benefits continuation until I can obtain other employment because I feel that upper management has forced my decision surrounding my resignation. This is not the course of action that I prefer, but feel I must take. So is there anything that jumps out to you guys about
Crypto Critics' Corner
"cynthia cooper" Discussed on Crypto Critics' Corner
"It represented amounts that were paid to third parties to at least telecom fiber. It had jumped up dramatically and was out of line with the company's revenues. And so Betty and Troy took the results to their boss who went to the controller, the controller walks into the CFO's office. And the CFO says there's no way these numbers are right. You guys have made some kind of an error. Go back, close the books, find your error. So they go back and forth and Betty and Troy go through the close process again. They can't find this error anywhere in the books. And at this point, there was something like 5 days away from having to release earnings. And so the pressure was really starting to build. And the CFO told the controller look, here's what I need you to do. He said, I want you to go back and find what's known in accounting as some excess liability account, some cookie jar reserves. And draw down on those reserves so that you can reduce this expense. So that line cost expense as a percent of revenue stays flat at 42%, consistent with what it's been in the prior quarters. So that when Arthur Anderson comes in and looks at key ratios, quarter over quarter, everything looks to be in line with their expectations. And when the Wall Street analysts like Jeff greiman and others look at ratios, everything will look to be in line with what they are expecting to see. And he said, we'll find this error next quarter. But this is what we need to do for now. So the executives at the top of the company don't know how to go into the system and actually physically key some accounting entries. And this is the point at which the inner circle had to grow. Well, Betty and Troy aren't very comfortable with what they're being asked to do. And so you've got the CFO who is highly respected, three levels above them in rank, asking them to make these entries. He's telling them that there's an error. He says, we don't have any students here at you and Cass can be the pretend students. What would you advise them to do? Probably talk to a lawyer. Yeah, I mean, it's challenging because my understanding is the cookie chart part they did it first is like a legitimate accounting practice as I understand. Especially when you're going by acquisition and you're trying to combine together all these books. It's not uncommon to end up with some of these weird little leftover amounts. Pulling those down seems like it might have been a questionable but reasonable decision there. As it goes on and you start to get asked to book more and more, you want to offer the advice that you should say no to those things, but as you've talked about here, there's a lot of pressures and these individuals and other people have to make these decisions as they're doing it. And so it's kind of like hard sitting here in the outside to say that someone should have stopped it, you know? So what they ended up doing was requesting a meeting with the CFO so they go to his office and they sit on the couch across from him. And he really praises their work. You guys are doing a fantastic job. Thank you so much for your hard work. And he uses this analogy of an aircraft carrier. So he knows that they're thinking about leaving the company. And he says, imagine that this is an aircraft carrier, helped me to get all of the planes landed
Crypto Critics' Corner
"cynthia cooper" Discussed on Crypto Critics' Corner
"In a closer comparison than even just the promoters, which is a clear, more or less a one to one to what you guys were just discussing. We also have entities in cryptocurrency like Cumberland global and a handful of others. They function as like the same way you're talking about the super banks. They function as like, we're going to market make. Also, we're going to invest. Also, we're going to have an exchange. Like FTX and Alameda. We're going to have our hands in every single cookie jar and ultimately like bitmex. It was proven. They were trading against their customers. Like these guys had access to the order books and they could trade against their own customers. And front run them and spoof and do whatever it took to liquidate their own customers. It just seems like such an obvious like, oh, well that's a problem. And to me, that's the Vanguard of enforcement in the crypto industry. It is just started to happen. So we're going to see more cases on market manipulation. More cases on insider trading. And whether that market manipulation is just as you describe whether it's front running or spoofing or wash trading, that's where the SEC is going. To this point, the SEC and the CFTC as well have really focused on offering unregistered securities or out and out thefts. Those have been the two sort of low hanging fruit that they've gone after. And now we're starting to see changes. Of course, with the insider trading case, the coinbase case, and just last week that the hydrogen technology case, which is a case that involves a sort of wash trading, a sort of spoofing, but basically where a programmer was hired to pump and dump a certain amount of coin that was released by hydrogen allegedly, although that programmer has now agreed to a settlement. That's an interesting case. It's a little more complicated. And I think all of those things that you refer to cast, which I think, to some extent, there's been a bind eye turned to them. I don't think that's going to happen anymore. I think the regulators are saying, hey, there's a real problem here. And we've addressed it in traditional financial markets, but now we have to bring that over to crypto. We want to minimize regulators having to chase down fraudsters and criminals, right? That's totally inefficient. We want smart balanced policy that allows for transparency for some attestation or assurance over metrics that are really important to society and the public. While at the same time, allowing room for innovation of new technologies. Besides these comparisons, I think, are valid. I think the more direct comparison between someone like Jack and cryptocurrency are like the cryptocurrency researchers who are heavily invested in cryptocurrency, or who even will do some angel or VC investing while still publishing protocol research reports and stuff. Sometimes when you hear them talk, it reminds me a little bit of Jack's brazenness. Where he was writing an email that his upgrade of AT&T that he did was a business deal in his mind to get his kids into this preschool that the AT&T executive could. And that when The Wall Street Journal started reporting on some of Jack's conflicts of interest, he said to New York, magazine, the reality of the world is that analysts are becoming increasingly important in the banking practice of firms, not just for underwriting, but also for mergers and acquisitions. It just is what it is, it's part of the business. You also said once when challenged as to whether or not he could remain objective is response was objective question mark, the other word for it is uninformed. Like he embraced the conflict of interest and cas and I both experienced in cryptocurrency.
Crypto Critics' Corner
"cynthia cooper" Discussed on Crypto Critics' Corner
"And I can tell you that crypto is the highest priority right now. It is the hottest topic for those two agencies. To the point where there's literally tension between them to regulate the industry. When my client shows up to talk actually anonymously, 9 people from the SEC show up to hear what my client has to say. That's not typical. And you want to be in that position where your regulars really take this seriously because they understand that when you're talking sometimes about billions of dollars in value that can be erased overnight. They see that as a systemic risk. And they're going to try to do something about it. So to those who have rightly tried some of the regulators for being slow to act, I don't think that's the case anymore. Now, is it everything that needs to be done? Is there some kind of comprehensive scheme? I think some of that may take legislation. We all know that there are a lot of different bills right now to determine how various aspects of the crypto world need to be regulated. But when you're looking at fraud at market manipulation, those pieces of the puzzle that have really weighed down the industry and made victims of so many people, that's in the crosshairs. Well, that's good to hear. I think the president's executive order that came out and the report that just came out to the president where all the regulators got together. I mean, they're clearly moving on this. There's no question about that. We could save ourselves a lot. A lot of pain if we could be more proactive in identifying and monitoring those systemic risk and unintended consequences for society. And a more structured intentional way. Talking a little bit more about crypto. There's one character in the world comes story who every time I read about them, I'm like, this person would have been great. If they were becoming a young working professional during the crypto era. And that's Jack grubman. Can you talk a little bit about his role in WorldCom and in the WorldCom stock and what he was up to during this period? Sure. So Jack grubman was one of the primary analysts in the telecom industry. And we have to talk about the super banks while we're talking about Jack grubb mode. So what happened these super banks like Citibank, for example, that on one side of the house, you had the investment bankers on the other side of the house, you had the commercial bankers. And then you had when as Solomon Smith Barney was acquired, you had the analyst. So Jack Grumman followed World Cup stock and he, until the bitter end, basically tell people, load up the truck, buy as much of the stock as you can. Well, we talked about a little bit about Bernie Ebbers and the loans he took out. He went to Citibank on the commercial side to take out a lot of his loans, put his stock up or stock options as collateral. And then on the other side of the house, the investment banking side,
Crypto Critics' Corner
"cynthia cooper" Discussed on Crypto Critics' Corner
"Do you think that it's worse now than it used to be? Frankly, when it comes to crypto, most of my interactions with people in the industry who are on the up and up and knowledge that the industry is rife with fraud. And want to see a crypto industry that matures. So they believe that eventually the more reliable, the more legitimate and useful portions of this industry remain. I think that those people who are telling you well, you can either be rich or you can be right. Probably reached that point where they look in the mirror and they say, well, I guess this is who I am. And I'm going to own it. That makes me feel a little bit better. I think you've heard the saying that history repeats itself. Mark Twain says that history doesn't repeat itself, but history rhymes. So if you go back to the dot com and telecom, when they were like the boom period and even when you
Crypto Critics' Corner
"cynthia cooper" Discussed on Crypto Critics' Corner
"So if the government collects a $100 million, the whistleblower can literally get up to $30 million, my partner, bob, we just mentioned a bit ago was one of the lawyers who represented the ranbaxy whistleblower who ended up being paid out $48 million. So with those kinds of numbers, it definitely changes the calculus. And then the other way they change the calculus is through helping whistleblowers remain anonymous. Now, there's never any guarantee that you can remain anonymous, but all of these programs have a commitment to confidentiality. And most of the whistleblowers do remain anonymous. So they can provide their information if somehow it ends up going to trial. The government may have to reveal who the whistleblower was. But their policy is, they don't do it. I think the government has started to learn, hey, whistleblowers are important and we need to protect them because it is really a difficult process. If you're out there on your own and in public making accusations, regardless of whether or not they're true, it's not a panacea, but we're definitely moving in the right direction. A lot of people are willing to stand up, step up to the plate and raise their hand because it's the right thing to do. But what this does is incentivize even more people to stand up because they know that they are going to be able to have anonymity that they will have an attorney supporting them and that if they lose their job, they will have some means of supporting themselves, financially, the number one way in which straws are identified as their tips, the association of certified fraud examiners shows that year after year after year. The top two reasons people don't come forward are because number one, they fear retaliation. And number two, they don't think anything will happen anyway. So what these bounty programs have done is really encouraged and pushed corporations across the country
Crypto Critics' Corner
"cynthia cooper" Discussed on Crypto Critics' Corner
"Oh my gosh. It's just insane. One live leads to another, and they're each one being less and less and less believable, I guess. So here comes back from the other room and he says, well, I can't get in. The door's locked. And so at that point, Cass, I mean, I decided, okay, let's shut the call down here. And when you get the subpoena, give me a call back. And my director and I leave rural comms headquarters. We actually drive to my parents house. And this is back in the day of the yellow pages. So we go for the yellow pages, and we are paying particular attention to the half and the full page ads. If you're wondering if the full page ad works, sometimes it might be worth investing in. And so we rushed down to the lawyer's office. He caused general counsel and he says, this is not proper service of a subpoena. We are going to quash that in the morning. I'm thinking I had no idea what quash meant, but I like the way it sounded. And we did not have to be in New York the next morning. But there were a lot of politics going on behind the scenes, a lot of agendas, general counsel, by the way, does not represent you. They represent the company. So it's very important if you find yourself in an odd situation like this to obtain your own counsel, once you obtain your own counsel, general counsel, can no longer communicate directly with you. At this point, I'm being told that I am to go in and talk to members of the SEC, the FBI and the Department of Justice, that they're on a plane tonight. They'll be your first thing tomorrow morning. And my new attorney tells me and my director, he said, look, there's probably something ought to tell you. I'm also representing three other employees in this case. The two mid level managers we talked about and their boss.
Crypto Critics' Corner
"cynthia cooper" Discussed on Crypto Critics' Corner
"So there is this perception with some people, but the path of a whistleblower can be very difficult. I've been working with whistleblowers for more than a decade. First is a federal prosecutor in the tax division at the DoJ. And now in private practice, helping whistleblowers go to the government and reveal the information that they have. And there are several different types. The best type from, say, a prosecutor's perspective is someone like Cynthia, who just finds themselves in a situation. And says, how did I get here? I never expected to be finding what I'm finding. But now that I found it, I can't unsee it. Let me tell somebody about it. Maybe they can do something about it. That person is usually going to come across on the stand as completely credible. But that doesn't mean that other whistleblowers can't be helpful as well. You do have the kind of whistleblowers that you described who are angry. Maybe they got laid off. Maybe they weren't being paid what they thought they were worth. And that's why they come forward in the first place. Or there's the type of whistleblower who might even have been at least at one point a part of the fraud. You take Bradley birkenfeld who is one of the most from a monetary perspective. Successful whistleblowers in history, he received a reward of a $103 million from the IRS for revealing the fraud at UBS, but he also spent significant amount of time in prison because he participated in that fraud. So whistleblowers can run the gamut as a whistleblower attorney, I'm open to anybody coming to me, but I want someone like Cynthia. That's the gold standard. So you mentioned that this one whistleblower was very financially successful in whistleblowing. Can you talk a little bit about the process of actually whistling the cow yet you went through whistleblowing back then what it looked like and how some of the bounty programs and stuff these agencies have developed have changed that since World Cup. Yeah, so the process I went through, let me pick up after the full board is called together. The fraud is reported to the public to the Department of Justice. The aftermath, the two years following the fraud was the most difficult time. So from the point that we found the very first entry into the point I was sitting across from the CFO at this emergency meeting, was less than a month. It went pretty quickly. We didn't just sit on it. In the aftermath, it was over two years before I was finally testifying at Bernie Ebbers trial. Once you step over that invisible line that you don't even know exist, and you become a quote whistleblower, strange things will start to happen in your life. A senior executive who comes to me regularly and he gives me these messages. Look, he said, two of the top executives with the company are saying that you should not talk to anybody in the press. And we're not asked, well, who are these two top executives? Well, I can't tell you that, right? And then he shows up another day and says, I need you to take your entire staff. All of your team and I want you to move them from where you are over to this other building beside me because I've been told that I need to keep an eye on you guys. And so I wasn't going to do that.
Crypto Critics' Corner
"cynthia cooper" Discussed on Crypto Critics' Corner
"And what I can tell you is that most whistleblowers are pretty average citizens who are just doing their job, going to work every day, trying to support their family. At this point, I was 37 years old. I had two daughters, my oldest daughter was 12. My youngest was 11 months old. My husband was a stay at home dad. So I was the sole supporter of my family. And I loved rural college. I loved the people. I worked with. We had worked very hard to help build this company. It was a celebrated company all over the world. And especially imagine in Mississippi, these were jobs that were very important to the state of Mississippi, rural comet this point employed something like a 100,000 people. Most of all those people were honest average citizens going to work every day. Doing their job. So there was absolutely nothing to celebrate here. It was heartbreaking. It was gut wrenching. And as you mentioned, even the people who were complicit with the fraud, these people weren't strangers to us, these are people who we had known for years. We knew their spouses. We knew their children, the director of accounting his son, went to school with my daughter and to church. So these are people in our community. We see them in the halls and the cafeterias. So it's very different when people you work with are perpetrating a fraud versus reading about something in The Wall Street Journal. When you look behind, I guess that the machinations of all these fraud scandals. And how they're perpetrated behind the accounts and the numbers. These are always stories about people and choices. And that's why I have felt such a passion for sharing the story, I've spent the last 20 years analyzing many, many frauds. What do they have in common? How can they be prevented? Because that's ultimately what we want to do, how can we detect them more quickly?
Crypto Critics' Corner
"cynthia cooper" Discussed on Crypto Critics' Corner
"There are no real victims. That's another one that I hear sometimes. But he said, we probably never should have made these entries. Once we made them the first time, it was really hard to stop. And that's the point at which I knew how serious this was. His wife later told The Wall Street Journal that he had made a personal decision that if I came to him and asked him face to face about these entries, he would tell me the truth. And she said that long before I ask him about these injuries, that he had become very depressed, he was contemplating taking his life and he drew his car faster and faster up to something like a 120 miles an hour. Fortunately he didn't do that. He almost wanted you to catch him then, huh? He said, cast that two of the most poignant moments in his life were the birth of his children and the day he said across from me and told the truth. As human beings, when we do things that go against our values, whether we're caught or not, our lives can begin to implode. And that's exactly what was happening to him. What were the things that followed that led to you deciding to blow the whistle on this and reveal this? From there, I went back to the audit committee chair and told him about the conversation. He was not very happy with me. He said, I thought I told you not to do anything else with this. I went to the extra audit partner. He thought they were playing some kind of a joke on me. Treating me as if I was green. I encouraged him to go and talk to the controller himself. I didn't mention that when I got to work that Monday morning, I had a voicemail from Scott Sullivan the CFO. And the voicemail said, look, I've spoken with the audit committee chair max Bobbitt. He tells me there's some kind of tension between your department and the accounting group. And I just want to talk to you and put that to bed. He later testified in federal court that the audit committee chair actually never asked him about these entries on the corporate jet. He simply told him there seemed to be some kind of tension between the two groups and would he mind giving me a call and working through that. Were you able to work through it with a simple phone call? Well, once I had that message that morning, that's the point at which I decided I was going to go to the county department that I had already heard his explanation. After talking to the audit committee chair and to the external audit partner at that point, I was not comfortable with having one member of my audit committee who knew about this and three who didn't. And so I asked the audit committee chair, hey, can you call an audit committee meeting and he says, no, it's still premature. We're not going to do that. We're not calling a meeting. Days are passing, I then get a voicemail from the CFO's administrative assistant saying he wants you to be in New York tonight, come by yourself, don't bring any of your staff. He wants to meet with you and the controller privately. I wasn't about to do that. At this point. So finally, I said, look, if you guys don't call a meeting, I'm going to call one. And I was told, well, you can't do that. And I said, well, I know how to do phone numbers. Ultimately, an audit committee meeting was called. And I flew to Washington and set across from the CFO as he came into this emergency committee meeting. The CFO was given the weekend to go back to the accounting literature
Crypto Critics' Corner
"cynthia cooper" Discussed on Crypto Critics' Corner
"Training that I'd had ever many years did the CPA, CFE, CIS, I think that came into play. I think values definitely came into play as most of our values, I think, are instilled at a pretty young age. And I can remember my mother, she was always trying to teach lessons to my brother and me. And two of the things she would say are think about the consequences of your actions and don't ever allow yourself to be intimidated. And I think as much as anything, her words really helped make define my courage at different points in my life when I needed it the most. And that doesn't mean that I was always this courageous strong person. There were times going through this situation where literally I felt fearful where my hands were shaking and my heart was pounding and I had to find a way to push forward in the face of that fear. But I think her words really have helped to empower me throughout my life. So I was pushing forward at this point. Nobody was mentioning the word fraud, but we're like, okay, well, this is kind of odd. And I go to the external audit partner, as I mentioned, and the audit committee chair, and he tells me, look, I don't want you to do anything else with this audit. And I don't want you to ask any more questions. In fact, he said, I've talked to Scott Sullivan. He's going to call you on Monday and I think he will have a really good explanation for these entries. So I want you just to sit back, chill, wait for him to call you. So every accounting entry is supposed to have support or backup. You don't just key an accounting entry to the accounting system. Here's what I didn't understand. Why would anybody possibly tell me not to ask for support? Why would they care if I asked for support?
Crypto Critics' Corner
"cynthia cooper" Discussed on Crypto Critics' Corner
"So that's the person who I reported directly to. And as I come to this audit of capital, expenditures, I decided I'm going to ask him about what is this prepaid capacity? And when I ask him about it, he's very calm. He said, look, Cynthia, this represents telecom fiber that we've leased from third parties that either has no utilization, so no traffic running across the fiber are very low utilization. And we're so busy with this additional debt financing. We really don't have time to deal with this audit right now. If you don't mind, if you could just delay your audit until the third quarter and look at second quarter numbers, that would be great. That would really help us out a lot. He later testified in federal court that he wanted me to delay the audit and look at second quarter numbers because he had a plan in his mind to fix what he had done. Fraudulently moving his amounts from the income statement to the balance sheet. And he was going to take what's known in accounting as an asset impairment charge, effectively writing off all of these amounts in one film sweep. It seems pretty common in stories of fraud where you'll hear the person who ended up committing it say that they expected it only to be this one time thing that they were going to then correct. But often it ends up harder for them to correct that than they initially anticipated. That seems like a pretty clear example of that. They were trying to do what they needed to get the debt financing to keep the business going with the goal of making things right in the long term. Do you think that was like an accurate read of what Scott intended at this point? Yeah, I really do. Based on his testimony, he told the judge that it was a misguided attempt to try and save the company and save jobs. Yes, I really think that that's what he was planning to do.
Crypto Critics' Corner
"cynthia cooper" Discussed on Crypto Critics' Corner
"Simply not enough end user customers to support all of these networks that had been built out. And the idea that the Internet was tripling every quarter turned out to be a myth. It was growing at a much slower rate, which comes back to the point about making sure that the assumptions that are driving a market or a business is strategic decisions are valid. And then when the bubble burst, that's where the pressure to commit fraud came from. World columns, revenues started to decline. All of these companies that had placed orders with the big carriers back in the 90s just started going bankrupt. One after another after another, and canceling their orders with the big carriers. And so in 1999, if you looked at the backlog of orders for the big carriers, it was just unprecedented. None of them could keep up with the orders. In fact, a lot of customers were placing orders with multiple carriers to see who could provision the service first. So it was just this wild west gold rush environment. And that's what drove the industry to its heights. And those poor strategic decisions spending billions to build out the network over leveraging and then signing leases with third parties for telecom fiber in places where rural did not have their own network. They saw these three and 5 year operating leases, which are supposed to be expense in the current quarter to reduce your revenue. And what WorldCom did was they would say, here's where we are. Here's where we tell the street we were going to be. Okay, we're $700 million short. And there were literally pick that up and move it from an expense on the income statement to an asset on the balance sheet. And then they would depreciate it over a much longer period of time. It's accounting shenanigans, right? I mean, this is basically without getting into the weeds.
Crypto Critics' Corner
"cynthia cooper" Discussed on Crypto Critics' Corner
"Back everyone. I am Cass PNC. I'm joined as usual by my partner in crime, mister Bennett Tomlin, how are you today? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm great. We have a couple amazing guests. I'm unbelievably excited about this. Cynthia Cooper, who is the CEO of the Cooper group and is a recognized speaker bestselling author and a consultant on issues of corporate governance, ethics, and leadership. She also was the whistleblower who called out WorldCom Cynthia, wonderful to have you here. How are you? Thank you, Cass. I'm doing great. I'm excited to be here with you and Bennett. Well, thank you for joining us. And then along with Cynthia, we have Darren firestone, who is a partner at Levi firestone muse, a law firm in D.C., where he represents whistleblowers in the cryptocurrency industry. Darren, welcome as well, how are you? I'm great. It's great to be here. I am an avid listener. So it's a thrill to be here in person. Awesome. Well, it's amazing to have both of you. I guess we should start off with WorldCom. That is how I came to know your work, Cynthia. I want to say that you essentially got me on the path that I'm on with your book extraordinary circumstances, reading that and looking at all of the ways that that transpired, it seemed to feel so similar to what I was seeing currently, but let's talk about that. First of all, maybe you can help our audience understand what was WorldCom and what was your role at World Cup? First, thank you, Cass for your kind words, your support, and for all that you have been there doing. I've loved watching your podcast. I'm actually going to go back to the beginning and watch all the way through. Very important work. So I was the vice president of internal audit. For a rural comma reported directly to the chairman of the audit committee and dotted line to the chief financial officer.
The Lab
"cynthia cooper" Discussed on The Lab
"Hashtag so. I wanted to ask you guys among these incredible wnba players. Who's your goat. How would you narrow it down to just one well mine. I've been on record. We wrote the story. Last year about cynthia cooper of the great houston comets dynasty in the very first years of the wnba and still the greatest team. Probably of all time in the wnba. So she be my vote although it is interesting to think about like looking at that list. It's clearly trying to trying to balance against three different things which were players that were really great early in the wnba. that were sort of just. Didn't have enough time to play. A ton of seasons. Like cynthia cooper because she was already a stellar college player in the eighties and then played overseas in the nineties. Up until the start of the wnba because there wasn't a professional women's league here in the us. And so you have to manage that. Sector of player cheryl scoops a little bit in that category. Some of the other ones then you had players that played during sort of the expanding age of the wnba where their whole career was able to play out in the league and then the third group is players like ranch. Stewart and some of the more recent ones elena on that played there's still active than and they still have a lot of their career left ahead of them so it is a balancing act between like devalue peak performance which would give more credit to those players that ends of both of those groups of the early players and then the current younger players. Or do you credit total value which i think your list sarah with the wind chairs does more so because it's just looking at total production and so i think they did a pretty good job of balancing those things. Maybe you could argue that. Current players are represented a little highly. The which would suggest maybe peak value is repeat future potential value even in some cases is being sort of baked into it but also to your point about the age of the of the wnba if he would that comparison to the nineteen seventy-one nba season. Think about what great players have had not yet played in the nba. By that point. You know you were just getting the very beginnings of kareem abdul-jabbar. Michael jordan was born at that time but was still a child. Lebron james and kobe bryant. They weren't even born so think about that. Also about the what. The future will hold if the same sort of trajectory plays out so we could be looking like if the nba had done an nba. Twenty five list in nineteen seventy one. It would have turned over a large portion of that list by the time it came to do it again. At the fiftieth anniversary or the seventy fifth anniversary and so on and so forth so. I think that that's also an interesting factor that this is a changing list. It's going to. It's going to change with time. I think that's a great point. And and i that that is part of what i see this lipstadt like there was. It was a labor of love to get this league off the ground to get people interested in to care about it into soc- sustain it in a way that you know. I'm sure that i'm sure that the beginnings of the nba were also like difficult. But there was also this current of you know. People opposed to celebrate in women in sports. That was hard for the wb breakthrough. so that's why. I feel like some of the earliest players..
Around the Rim
Inside The Women Of Troy
"Welcome inside a special edition of around the rim. One that tells the story of the nineteen eighty three and eighty four championship teams for the USC Trojans. Their women's basketball program was a trailblazer in. Its own way where they had almost a super team of some of the biggest names in college. Basketball Cheryl Miller Cynthia Cooper panic. Paula McGee What Dynasty. They were what a talented team so fun to watch. I'm your host. Let's China Robinson. Join as always by my fantastic and fabulous producer to Riga foster bradsby. Then we are going to take you inside with some of the biggest names in biggest contributors to the success of that team and people that can tell the story the best. That's right the China so to help us tell that story. We've enlisted. Six people knew this team the best head coach. Linda Sharp assistant coach. Fred Williams team captain Juliet Robinson Point Guard Rhonda Wyndham forward. Pamela MCGEE AND GUARD CYNTHIA COOPER DYKE. So throughout this podcast. You're going to hear them. Discuss their relationships together coming together as a team learning how to play with each other learning each other on the prime that they have in USC and what it meant to be a Trojan and what it was like as far as the landscape of women's basketball at that time the rivalries. I'm you're going to get to know more about the players in from their teammates themselves. And you'll hear clips from Geno Auriemma Reggie Miller. Doris Burke teasha Chiro the nineteen eighty-four Olympics Paula. Mcgee and the cause from the championship games of nineteen eighty three and one thousand nine hundred eighty four. Let's all get a history lesson from the inside of what was so special about USC. Women's basketball in the women of Louisiana Tech University and the University of Southern California trojans outlet more southern California at forward six three junior from Flint Michigan number eleven all over more southern California at Bulwer from Riverside California number thirty one zero southern California Singer. Six three junior from Flint Michigan over thirty southern California had guard a by rescued from New York City. We're southern yard five nine zero number or no