Security Vendor McAfee to Pay $50 Million Fine 229
goombah99 writes "RedHerring.com reports that Security Vendor McAfee has agreed to pay a fine of fifty million dollars stemming from false SEC filing. McAfee cooked its books, overstating its revenues one year by 131%, or half a billion dollars. The method employed was 'channel stuffing' in which compliant re-sellers are effectively paid to buy and hold inventory they may never sell. The shipped goods are booked as revenue and the payments disguised in the books. When it caught up with them, McAfee's stock price crashed, wiping out a billion dollars of shareholder capitalization. The story quotes an analyst saying this maybe the swan song for the once dominant vendor."
Microsoft Rescue? (Score:4, Insightful)
50 million fine for a 500 million dollar fraud? (Score:5, Insightful)
This will continue until a lot of these people end up in prison for a few decades.
Good bye, so long (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fines are not enough (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought this what Sarbanes-Oxley was supposed to do. Anyone more knowledgeable than I know for sure?
Re:Oh, what a... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares? (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Fines are not enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Corporations shield their owners from bankruptcy and civil courts (to an extent). They do not shield the officers of those corporations from criminal charges. Just ask Enron Chief Accountant Richard Causey [cnn.com], who's serving seven years in jail for his role in the corporation's implosion. His old bosses, Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, are about to get their day in court in the next few months, too. If they can find an impartial jury, that is (if they're smart, they'll try to plead out, but if they were smart they wouldn't have cooked the books in the first place...but that's another story).
I don't know where this myth of corporations protecting people who out-and-out break laws came from, but it's not in the least bit grounded in reality. The cases where corporate executives get away with murder, figuratively and literrally, have more to do with state corruption than the legal fiction behind the "corporate veil". The infamous Union-Carbide tragedy was as much an exemplar of the corruption in certain parts of the Indian government as it was the amorality of company officials.
Re:if they're that corrupt (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fines are not enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:One of the oldest (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.dsbcpas.com/services/accounting/audit/
Notice that fraud is NOT included in the opinion. The idea of fraud is to go undetected, and you cannot audit for collusion. Therefore, unless the environment suggests fraud is taking place, fraud is discovered by the company or auditor in the normal course of operations or the audit, or if the company reports to the auditor that fraud is taking place, it is extremely difficult to audit for fraud, if not impossible.
The following link is to the auditing standards by the AICPA
http://www.aicpa.org/members/div/auditstd/auditin
See:
SAS 1 - Responsibilities and Functions of the Independent Auditor
SAS 99 - Consideration of Fraud in a Financial Statement Audit
Re:Fines are not enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Who are the people that voted the executives into their jobs?
The more shares a holder owns, the more responsible they are for putting these yahoos into these positions to begin with, and the more their bottom line should hurt. Don't like it? Don't invest; that will certainly clean things up in corporate board rooms.
Re:50 million fine for a 500 million dollar fraud? (Score:2, Insightful)
That all came crashing down and the stock (from the summary, I haven't RTFA yet) lost <drevil>ONE BEEELLLIIIOOOONN DOLARS </drevil> in market cap.
Assuming they didn't get out before the stock crashed*, they didn't benefit much.
*yes, I realize that there probably was some profit taking during this period, but execs tend to have lots of stock compensation laying around, and I would doubt if any of them are any better off in the long run, since they probably have a bunck of stock and options that are permanently under water at this point.
Re:50 million fine for a 500 million dollar fraud? (Score:1, Insightful)
McAfee cooked its books, overstating its revenues one year by 131%, or half a billion dollars.
Look at the real victims of this; the shareholders. Damnit, the people in charge of McAffee should be doing lotsa years in "slam me in the ass" prisons, NOT getting slapped on the wrist with a $50 mill fine!
Maybe after a few of them actually spend time in prison, this shit would stop!
Re:Oh, what a... (Score:3, Insightful)
notification: "Your Norton needs to update some of it's program files would you like to run liveupdate to update your progam now?"
Customer: "I have this yellow screen on my computer and I can't do anything with it being there"
support: "What does the window say?"
Customer reads off the window
support: "That's to help you keep your antivirus up to date and keep your information current so you are protected. Just click yes and follow the instructions"
Customer: "Oh, so I just close it then?"
One thing I have to give credit to MS for is the way they are applying automatic updates. "Download and ask me to install..." is a great way to do it. When the user shuts the computer down, updates that are downloaded are installed. I don't see why that can't be done with AV software as well. Definitions are one thing and don't require a reboot, engine updates are another. If they would just do it instead of nagging alot of the problems would go away. I have to agree it's a pain to take the time to download the updates to turn around and reboot your computer...you just booted the damn thing up.
BUUUUUUT like you say. The crap out these days is resource hungry. Either rate, I would like it if they would get their heads out of their butts and just do what needs to be done and quit jerking everyone around with excuses or "look at me!! I must stay in your head!! Remember my name!! Buy more from me!!"
Re:Oh, what a... (Score:3, Insightful)
And you KNOW why it ends up being that way ? Two reasons....
1. The bloody OS is a more porous than a sponge for all sorts of junkware.
2. Because they ( the Symantecs, and McAfee's of the world ) feel that they have to demonstrate blantantly to the user "Look how useful I am to you !! Look at me !!", so that they can try to justify in the user's minds the ridiculously overpriced license fees they charge for every nickel and dime piece of glopware they plaster your PC with. AV upgrade..Cha-Ching, Spamware upgrade...Cha-Ching, Firewall "upgrade" (c'mon you couldn't get it right the first time ? )...Cha-Ching !
All this as a self-sustaining, self-parasitic cycle of poo that consistently and repeatedly gums up the collective wheels of personal progress, for millions of people everywhere.
Now, would I navigate the waters of Windows World without an AV ? Hell NO. But that's why there's Free AVG ( Thank you Grisoft. Now, if only you could make it so that the default install wouldn't automatically set a schedule to make my PC perform an "ENTIRE" scan at 8 AM in the morning, I might actually give you higher marks. ).