Corporate Fraud Quotes

When executives allegedly lie to the investing public about their company's performance and thereby harm the integrity of the market, they must be held accountable.

Self-dealing, essentially, occurs when managers run companies to line their own pockets instead of those of the companies' owners. It's been a perennial problem in American capitalism and became a real dilemma when America moved toward a model in which corporations would be run by professional managers who had only small ownership stakes.

…the new front of great corporate transgression.

Many financial and industrial companies have been bailed out with the public's money, but very few of those who had run those companies have been punished for their failures. Yes, the top managers of those companies have lost their jobs - but with a fat pension and mostly with a handsome severance payment.

The worst story I ever wrote was after the conviction of Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay. My co-author and I wrote a piece for 'Fortune' saying everything's going to be different now.

We have decriminalized Wall Street malfeasance.

As alleged, the most senior executives at Brixmor engaged in a years-long scheme to cook the books and deceive the investing public.

I agree that there are some bad apples on Wall Street. I spent about ten years exposing corporate and financial fraud for 'Barron's' magazine and I found a lot to write about.

Legitimate institutions historically have been defenseless in the face of outright fraud.

A scam is a scam. A fraud is a fraud. Different rules don't apply in the City than they do for you and me.

You don't want another Enron? Here's your law: If a company, can't explain, in one sentence, what it does... it's illegal.

Ken Lay, the disgraced former chairman of Enron, found a way to escape his legal problems: He died after being convicted of fraud and conspiracy charges.

Buying only what you know can end in disaster. Just think about Enron's employees and business partners, the 'locals' who bought lots of its stock because they thought they were in the know.

First, his job approval ratings have been trending down for many months, a trend that has accelerated in recent weeks as the war on terrorism has been supplanted in the public's mind by corporate scandals, stock market declines, and a growing sense of economic insecurity.

White-collar crime gets more outrageous by the second in America.

Some American companies operate in the gray area between legitimacy and outright fraud … where the accounting is being perverted.

The facts are the vice president's company that he was CEO of, that did business with sworn enemies of the United States, paid millions of dollars in fines for providing false financial information, it's under investigation for bribing foreign officials.

Sure, food stamps are occasionally misused, but anyone familiar with business knows that the abuse of food subsidies is far greater in the corporate suite. Every time an executive wines and dines a hot date on the corporate dime, the average taxpayer helps foot the bill.

Are you getting a big kick out of the Enron scandal? I find this interesting that whenever a big crisis starts, people start showing up in church. So, Ken Lay shows up in church this weekend. Church officials are still looking for the collection plates.

Get inside information from the president and you will probably lose half your money. If you get it from the chairman of the board, you will lose all of your money.

Holding individuals accountable for corporate wrongdoing isn't ideological; it's good law enforcement.

Over the weekend, former Enron executives Jeffrey Skilling and Rebecca Carter married each other during a huge ceremony in Houston. The happy couple is planning to honeymoon for three weeks in front of Congress.

Ken Lay has, does and will continue to accept responsibility for the fall of Enron. He was the man at the controls. But failure is not a crime.

You probably will always believe there should be a law against [financial market] fraud, and I don’t think there is any need for a law against fraud.

I think that the failures of Enron and WorldCom and other companies are partially failures of investors to recognize companies that are selling for a thousand times nothing, but chances are they may be worth only that.