I am one of those auditors, I'm not completely incorrect. I've testified in 17 different trials that all led to convictions. I've also written about the failures of Arthur Andersen and how they manipulated the system for industry journals. I obviously simplified it, but fraudulent accounting is basically the standard. There's a saying about how everyone cheats on their personal taxes at one point or another, but when it come to business taxes I'm 99% sure EVERYONE is cheating a little.

I wish people would get into "Hollywood Accounting" and dig around to see exactly how a company says their own subsidiary fees equaling multiple times the production costs of their good or service and gets away with it. Or how Apple China makes a phone for $50 and sells it to Apple Ireland for $60 and they resell it to Apple US for $600. That kinda scam had been going on unchecked for decades, and was basically a tolerated form of money laundering.

It's kinda funny, I was talking with some people and one of them said they wished Breaking Bad wasn't so popular because it would teach smart people about making meth. The consensus among my co-workers was that we were far more afraid that it would teach drug dealers about money laundering through places like car washes and laundromats. I had to break it to them that drug dealers definitely know more about how launder money than we ever would be able to predict. Some of their ideas are brilliant. The people who help them set up systems like that are some of the best tricky accountants on the planet, cause they have to know how to cook the books - or they get caught and go to jail. And most of the time when you dig deep into it, it's not tough to crack. Especially in the computer era, 99% our leads are basically automated AI reviews that trip certain specific safeguards. But if you're not cheating in an obvious way, you can get away with it for decades.