

Could I Trust an Accountant Who Once Stole $1.2M? - danso
http://observer.com/2013/04/the-tax-man-skimmeth-the-1-2m/?show=all

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digisign
No. I agree that people deserve a second chance, but there is no reason for
him to be in the money business. He should be doing one of the other 95% of
jobs that do not require it.

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thematt
Exactly. Not to mention this guy had a second chance the moment he stepped out
of jail and what did he immediately do? He lied about having a CPA license.

There is no reason to trust him with any money and the authors conclusion that
it was worth it because he found a deduction is absurd. Any tax account should
find you the same thing and she deserves anything she gets from having this
guy know her (and her mother's) financial details.

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xhedley
The point of membership of a finance professional institute like the CPA is
that the institute judges whether a member meets the ethics requirements or
not.

Someone who claims to have membership when they could not be bothered to
complete their membership training records - plus a fraud conviction - nope I
would not trust them with my personal financial information.

Declaration of interests: I pay the UK equivalent of CPA (ICAEW) several
hundred GBP/USD annually as certification that I'm financially trustworthy.
Some of my work is figuring out how to execute fraud and then how to defeat it
- so it's a bit like a white hat badge.

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jgoewert
Someone lies and steals, is "rehabilitated", and right out of jail you catch
them in a major lie again and still have a spec of trust in them? Wow.

My first thought is that when this guy got out of jail, he'd have a nice job
away from being able to steal large amounts of money. But greedy people like
OP and the business owner let it slide for a few bucks.

I should have gone into high stakes accounting and financial work. I could
have hit and run down pedestrians, stole millions of dollars, killed a
girlfriend in my home, etc... and people would still let me handle their money
because I could save them about 2%. No one would bat an eye. Heck, people will
even defend me!

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danso
In 30 years, it'll be interesting to read the studies of how our capacity to
give convicts a new chance has increased or decreased. Before Google, we gave
people second chances because we didn't know any better. Now that it's
ubiquitous, it seems almost necessary for us to recalibrate what it means for
someone to have paid their debt to society.

