Frank Abagnale Quotes

The company accountant is shy and retiring. He's shy a quarter of a million dollars. That's why he's retiring.

A board of directors that cannot produce reliable audited financial statements for almost seven years simply should not remain in office.

I think that the failures of Enron and WorldCom and other companies are partially failures of investors to recognize companies that are selling for a thousand times nothing, but chances are they may be worth only that.

I operated a business where I let someone steal three-quarters of a million dollars.

A father and two sons run Adelphia. It's a cable company. And they took from that company a billion dollars. A billion. Three people - three people took a billion dollars. What were they gonna do, start their own space program? 'Let's send the monkey to Mars, Dad!'

I have accused L.B. Management of failing to report to me, and I've told L.B. Management the money is missing, and it could very well be embezzled.

Before Enron, I think people were a bit more naive about the way things worked, and I think Enron pulled the curtain back on unsavoury practices that turned out to be a lot more widespread.

I always assign auditors to strictly supervise the businesses.

Stories come from other shows at other studios where only 2,000 rounds were actually used and the money for the other 3,000 went right into the studio pockets. Corners were cut and that production suffered. Knock wood, that hasn't happened to us.

When Enron collapsed, through court processes, thousands and thousands of emails came out that were internal, and it provided a window into how the whole company was managed. It was all the little decisions that supported the flagrant violations.

I take full responsibility for what happened at Enron. But saying that, I know in my mind that I did nothing criminal.

People are treating the Stewart case as seriously as Enron when it's really over trivia.

Larry, I spent probably most of my professional life helping to build Enron Corporation. I don't think there was anyone that was as shocked by the - by the collapse of the company as I was.

In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn't know what he is doing.

We've done all the work that needs to be done on the inside to make sure there's no malfeasance inside Chrysler.

Wells Fargo had a glitch - the truth of the matter is they made a business judgement that was wrong. I don't think anything is fundamentally wrong.

Governance is very important in NBFCs.

Preventing staff from having too much influence and decision-making power is fairly easy. Appropriate procedural safeguards can be installed to prevent staff from, among other things, self-dealing, making decisions in an isolated manner, or committing funds without oversight.

The Enron scandal is worthy of the highest level of scrutiny, both because of the enormity of the crimes that may have been committed and because of what the largest bankruptcy in American history has already begun to reveal about the weaknesses in our nation's corporate structures and regulatory oversight.

Risk management systems and controls may discourage or limit certain revenue-generating opportunities. Failure to ensure the independence of these functions from the revenue generators and risk takers has been shown to be dangerous, and this is something for which the board is accountable.

Over the years, Charlie [Munger, Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman] and I have observed many accounting-based frauds of staggering size. Few of the perpetrators have been punished; many have not even been censured. It has been far safer to steal large sums with pen than small sums with a gun.

If it were not for government regulation of big corporations, executives at companies like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, they could have cheated investors out of millions.

Lots of entrepreneurs don't want to be hassled by a board of directors early on. The entrepreneurs want to control the company, don't want to be responsible to a board, or don't want to waste time communicating with board members. This is a classic error of thinking about the early stage board incorrectly.

Jyoti Basu is the biggest fraud, cheat, and con man in West Bengal.

In any given day, our administration has about 2 million employees, and things happen. We put in process procedures to make sure if there has been any wrongdoing, there will be appropriate consequences, and we will move on.