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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!hao!menlo70!nsc!chuqui
From: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.legal
Subject: Re: Insurance question: Equity Funding Corp. of America
Message-ID: <572@nsc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 25-Jan-84 12:53:02 EST
Article-I.D.: nsc.572
Posted: Wed Jan 25 12:53:02 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Jan-84 11:27:07 EST
References: <645@dciem.UUCP>
Organization: National Semiconductor, Sunnyvale
Lines: 29

My (soon to be ex) wife worked for the accounting firm in charge of working
with the court in clearing up the accounts and paying off everybody
involved. As of 1982, they were still working on this with no end in site.

As far as programmers getting convicted, some were. Its just that the
bigwigs get the press. There was involvement at every level of the company,
although not everyone in the firm was involved (a good percentage was
though). The normal sequence of events was that you were hired. If they
thought you were trustworthy, they brought you in. If not, they figured out
some way of getting rid of you. The original tipoff came when they
approached someone who balked and went to the police.

As was pointed out, the place where the computer helped most was in the
audits. Every policy had a flag on it. If that flag was set, then the
policy was a fake and never showed up on the 'random' samplings the
auditors used to check up on things, so they never found a thing. At that
point, nobody thought to check whether or not the computer was lying since
everyone assumed that computers never lie (well, they don't, but their
users can in their name). As a matter of fact, most accounting firms are
still VERY lax about auditing EDP systems, mainly because most accountants
seem to dislike computers and therefore try to ignore them.


-- 
From the house at Pooh Corner:	Chuq (a Silly Old Bear)
				{fortune,menlo70}!nsc!chuqui
				have you hugged your Pooh today?

The difficult we gave up on yesterday, the impossible we are giving up on now.