# Corporate Fraud Library
> Global Enforcement Actions, Accounting Schemes, and Open Data

The Corporate Fraud Library is the global reference database for accounting and corporate fraud mechanisms, primary regulatory enforcement actions, and forensic ratios.

## Scheme Taxonomy (32 Schemes across 5 Families)
### Family: revenue-recognition
- [Channel Stuffing](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/revenue-recognition/channel-stuffing/): Shipping excessive quantities of inventory to distributors or resellers ahead of real demand to prematurely recognize revenue.
- [Bill and Hold Abuse](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/revenue-recognition/bill-and-hold/): Recognizing sales revenue for goods that remain in the seller's possession without meeting strict legal criteria for customer ownership.
- [Round-Tripping (Swap and Back-to-Back Transactions)](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/revenue-recognition/round-tripping/): Entering reciprocal transactions with a counterparty to sell an asset and simultaneously buy back an equivalent asset to create fictitious trading volume or revenue.
- [Side Letters and Undisclosed Return Rights](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/revenue-recognition/side-letters/): Executing secret written or verbal agreements granting customers return rights, payment cancellation, or price concessions that invalidate revenue recognition.
- [Premature Revenue Recognition](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/revenue-recognition/premature-recognition/): Accelerating the recording of revenue into the current period prior to meeting all recognition criteria, such as holding books open past quarter-end.
- [Fictitious Revenue](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/revenue-recognition/fictitious-revenue/): Fabricating entirely nonexistent sales transactions, fake customers, forged purchase orders, or forged shipping manifests.
- [Gross versus Net Revenue Misreporting](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/revenue-recognition/gross-vs-net/): Reporting the gross transaction value of products or services sold as revenue when the company is acting merely as an agent rather than a principal.
- [Multiple-Element Contract Manipulation](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/revenue-recognition/multiple-element-manipulation/): Distorting the allocation of contract consideration across bundled software, hardware, and ongoing maintenance to accelerate upfront revenue recognition.
- [Consignment Sales Treated as Final Sales](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/revenue-recognition/consignment-as-sales/): Recording sales upon transferring goods to a distributor who has no obligation to pay unless and until the goods are sold to an end consumer.
- [Barter and Non-Monetary Exchanges](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/revenue-recognition/barter-and-nonmonetary/): Exchanging advertising, software, or bandwidth capacity with other entities at inflated fair values without commercial substance to boost reported revenue.

### Family: expenses-and-reserves
- [Cookie-Jar Reserves](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/expenses-and-reserves/cookie-jar-reserves/): Over-accruing liabilities or loss allowances during profitable quarters to draw them down into earnings during subsequent lean quarters.
- [Capitalising Operating Expenses](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/expenses-and-reserves/capitalising-operating-expenses/): Recording routine ongoing operational costs as long-term capital assets rather than expensing them immediately in the income statement.
- [Big Bath Restructuring Abuse](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/expenses-and-reserves/big-bath/): Taking massive one-time write-offs, restructuring charges, or asset impairments during an already poor period to clear the books for future artificial profitability.
- [Allowance for Loan and Lease Losses / Bad Debt Manipulation](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/expenses-and-reserves/allowance-manipulation/): Artificially depressing bad debt reserves, loan loss provisions, or warranty reserves to understate expenses and inflate net income.
- [Depreciation and Useful Life Extension](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/expenses-and-reserves/depreciation-and-useful-life/): Extending the depreciable life of fixed assets or exaggerating residual salvage values to reduce current periodic depreciation expense.
- [Deferred Cost Abuse and Prepaid Inflation](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/expenses-and-reserves/deferred-cost-abuse/): Deferring current period customer acquisition, marketing, or contract costs as prepaid assets rather than recognizing them as expenses.

### Family: balance-sheet-and-assets
- [Phantom Inventory](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/balance-sheet-and-assets/phantom-inventory/): Falsifying physical inventory counts, creating fake warehouse locations, or stacking empty boxes to conceal inventory shortages and overstate assets.
- [Fictitious Cash and Fake Bank Balances](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/balance-sheet-and-assets/fictitious-cash-and-assets/): Forging bank statements, letters of credit, escrow certificates, or confirmation documents to substantiate nonexistent cash reserves.
- [Off-Balance-Sheet Entities and VIE Concealment](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/balance-sheet-and-assets/off-balance-sheet-entities/): Using special purpose entities (SPEs), variable interest entities (VIEs), or undisclosed partnerships to bury debt, losses, and toxic assets off the issuer's balance sheet.
- [Impairment Avoidance](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/balance-sheet-and-assets/impairment-avoidance/): Delaying or failing to write down impaired goodwill, intangible assets, or fixed assets when fair value falls below carrying value.
- [Loan-Loss Provisioning Manipulation](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/balance-sheet-and-assets/loan-loss-provisioning/): Understating loan-loss reserves at banks and credit institutions to mask deteriorating credit quality and report false capital adequacy ratios.
- [Fair-Value Manipulation and Mark-to-Model Abuse](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/balance-sheet-and-assets/fair-value-manipulation/): Manipulating unobservable Level 3 inputs, discount rates, or proprietary models to mark illiquid contracts and assets to inflated valuations.
- [Undisclosed Related-Party Transactions](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/balance-sheet-and-assets/undisclosed-related-party-transactions/): Siphoning corporate funds, transferring assets, or extending undisclosed credit lines to corporate insiders, their family members, or affiliated entities.
- [Debt Classification and Covenant Concealment](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/balance-sheet-and-assets/debt-classification-and-covenant-concealment/): Misclassifying short-term debt as long-term debt, or using temporary repo maneuvers (such as Repo 105) to strip debt off the balance sheet at quarter-end.

### Family: disclosure-and-controls
- [Material Omission and Misleading Disclosures](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/disclosure-and-controls/material-omission/): Concealing material negative events, regulatory investigations, loss contingencies, or customer contract losses from public disclosures and MD&A.
- [Misleading Non-GAAP and KPI Manipulation](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/disclosure-and-controls/misleading-non-gaap-and-kpis/): Adjusting non-GAAP earnings metrics (Adjusted EBITDA) or manipulating operational KPIs (MAU, ARR, churn) to present a false picture of core profitability.
- [Segment Misreporting](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/disclosure-and-controls/segment-misreporting/): Altering segment definitions or reallocating corporate overhead between operating units to conceal unprofitable divisions or meet segment margin expectations.
- [Going-Concern Concealment](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/disclosure-and-controls/going-concern-concealment/): Concealing imminent liquidity crises, severe debt covenant defaults, or supplier halts from auditors and the public to avoid receiving a going-concern explanatory paragraph.
- [Books and Records and Internal Controls Violations](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/disclosure-and-controls/books-and-records-and-internal-controls/): Intentionally bypassing or overriding accounting controls, maintaining off-the-books ledgers, or entering falsified accounting descriptions to hide illicit transactions.
- [Options Backdating](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/disclosure-and-controls/options-backdating/): Retroactively picking past stock option grant dates corresponding to historical stock price lows to enrich recipients without recording mandatory compensation expenses.
- [Acquisition Accounting Abuse and Cushion Creation](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/disclosure-and-controls/acquisition-accounting-abuse/): Manipulating purchase price allocation in mergers to write down acquired assets and create artificial liability reserves that can later be reversed into earnings.
- [Reverse-Merger Fraud](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/disclosure-and-controls/reverse-merger-fraud/): Bypassing traditional IPO regulatory scrutiny by merging an operating business into a dormant US shell company, often concealing fabricated operations.

### Family: auditor-conduct
- [Audit Failure and Gross Negligence](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/auditor-conduct/audit-failure/): Failing to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence, ignoring obvious red flags, and issuing clean audit opinions on materially false financial statements.
- [Auditor Independence Violation](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/auditor-conduct/independence-violation/): Compromising auditor objectivity through massive consulting fees, personal or financial relationships, or auditing the firm's own prior work.
- [Workpaper Alteration and Backdating](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/auditor-conduct/workpaper-alteration/): Retroactively modifying, deleting, or fabricating audit workpapers after learning of regulatory investigations or inspection inquiries.
- [Audit Fee Pressures and Commercial Conflicts](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/schemes/auditor-conduct/audit-fee-and-consulting-conflicts/): Suppressing audit scope, refusing to perform necessary testing, or bowing to client pressure to retain high-margin fee revenue and avoid client dismissal.

## Canonical Cases
- [WorldCom: $11B Operating Expense Capitalization Fraud](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2002-worldcom/): Jurisdiction: US, Overstatement: $11000.0M, Status: adjudicated
- [Enron Corp.: Off-Balance-Sheet SPEs and Mark-to-Model Fabrication](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2001-enron/): Jurisdiction: US, Overstatement: $1200.0M, Status: adjudicated
- [Wirecard AG: 1.9 Billion Euro Fictitious Cash Fraud](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2020-wirecard/): Jurisdiction: DE, Overstatement: $2130.0M, Status: adjudicated
- [Satyam Computer Services: $1B Fabricated Cash and Ghost Employees](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2008-satyam/): Jurisdiction: IN, Overstatement: $1040.0M, Status: adjudicated
- [Carillion plc: Aggressive Contract Revenue and Going-Concern Concealment](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2018-carillion/): Jurisdiction: GB, Overstatement: $1350.0M, Status: adjudicated
- [Luckin Coffee: $300M Fabricated App Sales and Circular Cash Scheme](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2020-luckin-coffee/): Jurisdiction: CN, Overstatement: $311.0M, Status: settled
- [Parmalat: $4.9B Forged Bank of America Deposit Certificate](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2003-parmalat/): Jurisdiction: IT, Overstatement: $4900.0M, Status: adjudicated
- [Toshiba Corporation: $1.9B 'Challenge' Pressure Profit Inflation](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2015-toshiba/): Jurisdiction: JP, Overstatement: $1900.0M, Status: adjudicated
- [Sino-Forest Corporation: Fictitious Timberland Holdings and Valuation Fraud](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2011-sino-forest/): Jurisdiction: CA, Overstatement: $3000.0M, Status: adjudicated
- [Americanas S.A.: R$20B Off-Balance-Sheet Supplier Risk Financing](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2023-americanas/): Jurisdiction: BR, Overstatement: $4100.0M, Status: alleged
- [Patisserie Valerie: £94M Forged Invoices and Secret Overdrafts](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2019-patisserie-valerie/): Jurisdiction: GB, Overstatement: $120.0M, Status: adjudicated
- [Computer Associates: $2.2B '35-Day Month' Revenue Backdating](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2004-computer-associates/): Jurisdiction: US, Overstatement: $2200.0M, Status: adjudicated
- [Nortel Networks: Cookie-Jar Reserve Manipulation for Executive Bonuses](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2004-nortel-networks/): Jurisdiction: CA, Overstatement: $3200.0M, Status: settled
- [Tyco International: $600M Executive Looting and Reserve Accounting](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2002-tyco-international/): Jurisdiction: US, Overstatement: $600.0M, Status: adjudicated
- [Adelphia Communications: $2.3B Off-Balance-Sheet Family Co-Borrowing](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2002-adelphia/): Jurisdiction: US, Overstatement: $2300.0M, Status: adjudicated
- [Lehman Brothers: $50B Repo 105 Balance Sheet De-leveraging](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2008-lehman-brothers/): Jurisdiction: US, Overstatement: $50000.0M, Status: adjudicated
- [Bristol-Myers Squibb: $2B Channel Stuffing with Wholesaler Incentives](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2004-bristol-myers-squibb/): Jurisdiction: US, Overstatement: $2000.0M, Status: settled
- [Waste Management: $3.5B Depreciation Useful Life Extension Scheme](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/1998-waste-management/): Jurisdiction: US, Overstatement: $3500.0M, Status: settled
- [Sunbeam Corporation: 'Chainsaw Al' Dunlap's Big Bath and Bill-and-Hold](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/1998-sunbeam/): Jurisdiction: US, Overstatement: $60.0M, Status: settled
- [Xerox Corporation: $1.5B Lease Acceleration and Reserve Manipulation](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2001-xerox/): Jurisdiction: US, Overstatement: $1500.0M, Status: settled
- [Brocade Communications: Criminal Options Backdating Scheme](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2006-brocade-communications/): Jurisdiction: US, Overstatement: $150.0M, Status: adjudicated
- [Diebold, Inc.: Bill-and-Hold and Factory Floor Premature Revenue Recognition](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2005-diebold/): Jurisdiction: US, Overstatement: $127.0M, Status: settled
- [Global Crossing: Hundreds of Millions in Reciprocal Fiber Capacity Swaps](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2002-global-crossing/): Jurisdiction: US, Overstatement: $750.0M, Status: settled
- [Qwest Communications: $3B Sham Optical Capacity Swaps and False Metrics](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2002-qwest-communications/): Jurisdiction: US, Overstatement: $3000.0M, Status: settled
- [Colonial Bank: $2.9B Fake Mortgage Collateral Fraud with Taylor Bean](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2011-colonial-bank/): Jurisdiction: US, Overstatement: $2900.0M, Status: adjudicated
- [Let's GOWEX: 90% Fabricated Municipal Wi-Fi Contracts and Revenues](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2014-gowex/): Jurisdiction: ES, Overstatement: $180.0M, Status: adjudicated
- [Noble Group: Aggressive Mark-to-Model Commodity Contract Valuations](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2020-noble-group/): Jurisdiction: SG, Overstatement: $1500.0M, Status: settled
- [Banco Popular: Concealment of Real Estate Loan-Loss Provisions](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2018-banco-popular/): Jurisdiction: ES, Overstatement: $3700.0M, Status: adjudicated
- [Volkswagen: Material Omission of Emissions Defeat Devices in Bond Offerings](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2015-volkswagen/): Jurisdiction: DE, Overstatement: $15000.0M, Status: settled
- [Theranos: Fabricated Revenue Projections and Fake Blood Analyzer Demos](https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/cases/2018-theranos/): Jurisdiction: US, Overstatement: $700.0M, Status: adjudicated

## Open Dataset Downloads
- Cases CSV: https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/data/cases.csv
- Cases JSON: https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/data/cases.json
- Actions CSV: https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/data/actions.csv
- Penalties CSV: https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/data/penalties.csv
- Dataset Manifest: https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/data/dataset-manifest.json

## API & Search
- Search Endpoint: https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/api/search?q={query}
- RSS Feed: https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/rss.xml
- Sitemap Index: https://corporatefraudlibrary.org/sitemap.xml

## Licensing
Database compilation and derived analyses are released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Primary regulatory documents belong to their respective jurisdictions and public records frameworks.