The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began to investigate and filed suitagainst Xerox in US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
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The complaint alleged that Xerox, using a host of undisclosed accounting “actions,” which were often referred to as “accounting opportunities” and “one-offs,” distorted earnings and misled investors There were two basic manipulations that formed the basis for the SEC investigation. The first was the so-called “cookie jar” method. This involved improperly storing revenue off the balance sheet and then releasing the stored funds at strategic times in order to boost lagging earnings for a particular quarter. This is a widely used manipulation. The second method—and what accounted for the larger part of the fraudulent earnings—was the acceleration of revenue from short-term equipment rentals, which were improperly classified as long-term leases. The difference was significant because according to the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)—the standards by which a company’s books are supposed to be measured—the entire value of a long-term lease can be included as revenue in the first year of the agreement. The value of a rental, on the other hand, is spread out over the duration of the contract.