The year of the fire rooster

Harry Markopolos, the former derivatives professional turned independent financial fraud investigator, which most of you know as the one who cried Ponzi on Bernie Madoff’s empire way before the rest of us did, says he has “some large insurance fraud cases” that he is going to make public come 2017. According to Markopolos, it’s the job of the Big Four accounting firms (think: PwC, Deloitte, EY, and KPMG) to catch fraudsters but they don’t and they won’t because incentives aren’t there. Think: the companies rather than the shareholders pay the (very low) audit fees, hence auditing resembles a commodity handled by peeps in their 20s that are more likely to catch Pokemon. Off On a Tangent: The Wizard of Lies is an upcoming HBO film on the life and fall of Bernie Madoff starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer.