During the first couple of years of the new millennium, large Fortune 500 companies such as Enron and WorldCom were found to have been cooking the books to improve their financial figures. The resulting scandals gave investors and regulators a rude awakening concerning the reality that companies were hiding the ugly truth between the lines of financial data.
In order to rally investor confidence, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was created. This act of Congress created policies to protect investors against future incidents of corporate fraud.
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By cooking the books, directors grossly misled investors about the company's financial health.
Jane was charged with cooking the accounts of her mother's store.
•It's hard to tell whether she really cooked the accounts or just didn't know what she was doing.