Sarbanes Oxley Scorecard

Conrad Black after his conviction last month.

Sometimes seem like you can't keep corporate fraudsters straight without a scorecard? You're in luck.

The Department of Justice has been keeping track of corporate fraud convictions following President Bush's creation of a corporate fraud task force five years ago, in the wake of the Enron, WorldCom and other headline frauds.

The tally is impressive: 1,236 total corporate fraud convictions, including 214 chief executives and presidents, 53 chief financial officers, 23 corporate counsels, and 129 vice presidents.

And that may be a conservative count. Kate Plourd, the legal-affairs writer at CFO.com reviewed the numbers and concludes today that the actual count of convicted corporate finance chiefs is 63. She writes:

The government's list excludes the names of some well-known former finance chiefs who wound up in jail, including Enron's Andrew Fastow, WorldCom's Scott Sullivan, Tyco International's Mark Swartz, and Rite-Aid's Frank Bergonzi. Fastow's and Sullivan's cases, for example, were handled by the fraud team of the U.S. Attorney's office, which is why they were not included on the list, according to the DoJ. Likewise, Swartz was prosecuted by Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau.

Still, the Justice Department's list reads like a trip down memory lane:

Jeff Skilling, Andrew Fastow and Co. at Enron; Bernie Ebbers at WorldCom; Rigas pére et fils at Adelphia; Joseph Nacchio at Qwest; Walter Forbes and Kirk Shelton at Cendant; and Conrad Black at Hollinger International, among others.

Charges against these and others have included wire fraud, accounting fraud, securities fraud, insider trading, stock option backdating, market manipulation, obstruction of justice, false statements, money laundering, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations, and conspiracy.

In addition to putting miscreants in jail, the task force said it had recovered more than one billion dollars in fraud-related forfeitures in its first five years. It has distributed that money to the victims of corporate fraud.

by Mark Stein