Financial Crimes Report to the Public, Fiscal Year 2006 (October 1, 2005-September 30, 2006)

摘要

As the lead agency investigating Corporate Fraud, the FBI has focused its efforts on cases which involve accounting schemes, self-dealing by corporate executives and obstruction of justice. The majority of Corporate Fraud cases pursued by the FBI involve accounting schemes designed to deceive investors, auditors and analysts about the true financial condition of a corporation. Through the manipulation of financial data, the share price of a corporation remains artificially inflated based on fictitious performance indicators provided to the investing public. In addition to significant financial losses to investors, Corporate Fraud has the potential to cause immeasurable damage to the U.S. economy and investor confidence. While the number of cases involving the falsification of financial information remains relatively stable, the FBI has recently observed a spike in the number of Corporate Fraud cases that involve the backdating of executive stock options. Stock options are corporate incentives that allow the holder to purchase stock at a fixed 'strike' price sometime in the future, regardless of the prevailing market price. Generally, the strike price is the cost of the stock on the date the options were granted. The benefit to the options holder is the difference between the strike price and the later sales price. When stock options are backdated, however, the date of the options is set to a time in the past when the price of the stock was lower than on the date the options were actually issued. Backdating stock options inflates their value to the holder at the expense of regular shareholders. Some corporate executives have also changed their stock option exercise date (the date the option can be converted to stock) to avoid paying income tax. Currently, the FBI is investigating 59 cases involving the manipulation of executive stock options and anticipates that the number of cases will continue to grow.