Public company executives caught lying about college degrees

Posted Nov 13th 2008 12:55PM by Tracy Coenen
Filed under: Scandals

Felon-turned-fraud investigator Barry Minkow has released the names of seven public company executives caught lying about their degrees. Sounds unusual, doesn't it? Well, the former head of the fraud known as ZZZZ Best Carpet Cleaning has been working hard to verify the credentials of 358 public company executives and directors. The names put through the ringer were generally in industries he suspected were filled with "hype." Upon identifying executives whose degrees weren't listed in a large database of college graduates, schools were contacted directly to verify if the executives earned degrees or not.

Why is any of this important? I've been investigating corporate fraud for over a decade, and have generally found that when there's a small fraud being committed by an upper-level executive, chances are greater there's a much larger fraud being perpetrated at the same time. My evidence is only anecdotal, but I've become a believer based on what I've witnessed -- that small frauds are often only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to wrongdoing by upper management.

Which companies have degreeless executives? Trimble Navigation (NASDAQ: TRMB), Cabot Microelectronics Corp, Tetra Tech Inc. (NASDAQ: TTEK), Knight Capital Group Inc. (NASDAQ: NITE), Helix Energy Solutions (NYSE: HLX), Life Partners Holdings (NASDAQ: LPHI) and PepsiAmericas (NYSE: PAS). Some of the executives don't have degrees at all, while others have lesser degrees than company documents claimed.

Executives caught lying have either admitted their dishonesty, or said it was all a "misunderstanding." It's not clear to me how a person without a diploma in hand "thinks" they got a master's degree, but that's exactly what Dennis Workman, chief technical officer at Trimble Navigation, is claiming. His company biography said he had a master's degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but the school verified that he only attended for two semesters and didn't get a degree. The company says Workman thought he had gotten a master's degree when he left the school in the late 1960s.

I'm not sure why the company would even allow Workman to advance such a silly claim, but that's what they're telling the WSJ. While the lack of a degree on the part of an otherwise excellent executive at a company might not mean much to a lot of observers, it should at least be viewed as one piece of evidence about its credibility. And during this time when the issue of fraud is at the front of many people's minds, that might make it important.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

Tags: college degree, CollegeDegree, fraud, inthenews

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

11-13-2008 @ 1:48PM

Virgil Bierschwale said...

I've always wondered about this because I did not have a degree and I have had a hard time finding work because of that even though I had the knowledge and skills.

So lets dig a little bit deeper as this affects millions of very qualified people that could be producing for many corporations.

Anytime you mandate that a person has to have a degree, you are setting yourself up for fraud by individuals willing to take such measures.

I have never understood this need for a degree because a good many, if not the majority of our major improvements over the last 200 years have been produced without the person having a degree and simply having a very strong interest in the subject that they specialized in.

But thats only the little picture.

Lets step back and look at the big picture.

I posted an article today on my website about how companies are now going to offshore their HR depts.

Now really, do these idiot's actually think that a firm from another nation is going to try and find a job for American's or will they recommend their fellow countrymen ?

It's time for a modern day witch hunt and if you're going to go after people that do not have a degree and state that they do, then you need to forget about the little fish and go after the big fish that are destroying this great country that we call America.

Go after the person that is offshoring our work instead of focusing on their community, county, state and country.

Give me their names and links to the article and I will gladly post them on the "Wall of Shame" because that is where they belong because they are directly responsible for the current financial crisis.

Anybody that puts the American consumer out of work when the American consumer accounts for 70 % of the American economy is a damn fool and needs to have their name and face on the wall of shame.

Virgil
http://www.KeepAmericaAtWork.com

11-14-2008 @ 10:23AM

widollar said...

Only Larry Ellison, the founder and Current Chairman and CEO of Oracle in Belmont California can lie about their education and get away with it. Larry once claimed to have both a Bachelors and Masters Degree, when in fact he never finished College!