Public company executives caught lying about college degrees


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.

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Last updated: February 10, 2012: 08:09 AM

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