The collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and other large corporations in 2001 and 2002 motivated Congress to pass the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). The purpose of this legislation was to restore investor confidence in the United States stock markets, and to prevent and detect fraud in financial statements as well. This dissertation examines the effectiveness of SOX for the latter purpose of preventing and detecting fraud, using statistical enforcement data presented by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and financial statement restatement numbers published by the Huron Corporation. The two methodologies utilized to analyze the data were the unpaired t test and the chi square test. Surveys were also emailed to executives and certified public accountants across the country to extract o...

Financial reporting frauds and earnings manipulation have attracted high profile attention recently. There have been several cases by businesses of what appears to be financial statement fraud, which have been undetected by the auditors. In this project, the main purpose is to focus on the nature of financial statement fraud, and fraud schemes regarding to financial statements. The project also discusses common techniques used to detect financial statement frauds. Two cases of the fraudulent financial statements of Enron and WorldCom are analysed.