About the Corporate Fraud Library
The Corporate Fraud Library is an open-access research repository dedicated to explaining the precise accounting mechanics of corporate fraud and indexing public enforcement records from the world's leading securities regulators.
- Mission: Build the definitive global reference library for how corporate and accounting fraud works.
- Coverage: One page per fraud scheme explaining accounting mechanisms, and one page per case joining all public enforcement records.
- Financial Crime Reference Network: The fourth leg alongside consumer scams, money laundering, sanctions evasion, market manipulation, and tax evasion.
- Audience: Forensic accountants, auditors, analysts, compliance officers, journalists, students, and LLMs.
- Open Data Commitment: All structured data published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.
1. Scope & Boundaries
In scope: financial reporting fraud, disclosure fraud, books-and-records and internal controls violations, auditor failures and independence breaches, related-party concealment, off-balance-sheet vehicles, fictitious assets, restatements triggered by misconduct, options backdating, and the corporate accounting side of Ponzi structures where financial statements were falsified.
Out of scope (covered by sibling sites): pure insider trading, market manipulation and spoofing, pump-and-dump operations, money laundering, sanctions evasion, consumer advance-fee scams, and tax evasion as such.
2. Sibling Research Network
The Corporate Fraud Library represents the fourth pillar in a coordinated network of financial integrity reference resources:
- How Scams Work: Consumer fraud, advance fee fraud, romance scams, phishing, social engineering, impersonation (active).
- How Money Laundering Works: Placement, layering, integration, trade-based money laundering, smurfing, shell companies, bank secrecy (active).
- How Sanctions Evasion Works: OFAC enforcement, dark fleet shipping, transshipment hubs, export control violations, circumvention networks (active).
- Corporate Fraud Library: Accounting fraud, financial statement manipulation, disclosure fraud, books and records violations, auditor failure (Current site).
- How Market Manipulation Works: Spoofing, pump and dump schemes, wash trading, front running, insider trading, benchmark fixing (planned).
- How Tax Evasion Works: Offshore tax havens, transfer pricing abuse, carousel fraud, undeclared foreign accounts, aggressive tax shelters (planned).
3. Tone and Evidentiary Discipline
Our tone is strictly plain, factual, and sourced. We reject sensationalism, speculation, and unverified rumors. Every fact, quote, and financial number links directly to the primary public filing that supports it.