http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/business/26cendant.html?ex=1340510400&en=23c540ddeea22cbf&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rssA federal appeals court has denied a request by the former Cendant chairman, Walter A. Forbes, to be released pending an appeal of his conviction in a case over one of corporate America’s biggest accounting scandals.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit also denied Mr. Forbes’s requests for an order to keep certain financial information in district court confidential, according to information posted on the court docket on Friday.
A lawyer for Mr. Forbes could not be reached for comment.
In April, Judge Alan H. Nevas in Connecticut ordered Mr. Forbes to report to prison on July 16 to begin serving his sentence.
He was sentenced in January to 12 years, 7 months in prison and ordered to pay $3.3 billion for his role in the scandal.
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Forbes gets 151 months for Cendant fraudBRIDGEPORT, Conn. — A federal judge sentenced Walter Forbes, the former chairman of Cendant, to 12½ years in prison Wednesday, bringing an end to a criminal inquiry that began almost a decade ago. With the jail term, Forbes becomes the latest member of a rogues' gallery of former CEOs packed off to prison in recent years for presiding over accounting debacles.
In addition to handing him a prison term of 151 months, U.S. District Judge Alan Nevas ordered Forbes to pay $3.275 billion in restitution, an amount roughly equal to what shareholders received in a settlement with Cendant and auditor Ernst & Young in 1999.
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From 1976 to 1997, Forbes was chief executive of Comp-U-Card International (CUC), a shopping club that allowed consumers to purchase goods directly from manufacturers.
The company grew each year through acquisitions, a practice that allowed Forbes to manipulate earnings, prosecutors alleged. In 1997, Forbes merged his company with HFS, a travel services firm, to form Cendant.
In early 1998, accountants from HFS noticed problems with CUC's merger reserves. The disclosure of CUC's earnings problems in April 1998 caused Cendant's stock price to plummet, wiping out $14 billion in market capitalization in one day.
In 2004, prosecutors put Forbes and Shelton, his top lieutenant, on trial in Hartford, Conn., charging they fabricated $252 million in non-existent earnings. Shelton was convicted, but the jury deadlocked on Forbes. A year later, another jury also deadlocked on the matter.
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hmmmmm.... mergers and acquisitions allowed them to manipulation earnings.... hmmmm :think:
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