• Professor Elam

  • Professor Elam

    Monday  4/1/2024

    Meet Our Team!

    Codirectors

    UTSA- Isabelle Creagh

    TAMUSA- Denique Escobedo

    Social Media 

    SM Chair- UTSA- Gabriela Benavides

    UTSA- Gabriela Mendoza

     

    Committee Members

    Trinity University- Harold Degenhardt

    UIW- Jhase Edwards

    OLLU- Jesus Rodriguez

    Schreiner University- Amanda Perrin

    TAMIU- Jannie Easton

    UTSA- Gabriela Mendoza

    St. Mary's University- Noel Casino

    TAMUSA- Kali Lettine

     

    Important Dates

    Monthly CPA Webinar

     

    April 3 from 12-1 pm

    Zoom Link: Click here!

    Meeting ID: 829 938 0821

    Registration Link: Click here!

    Becker CPA Evolution

     

    April 11 from 5-6 pm

    Zoom Link: Click here!

    Meeting ID: 829 938 0821

    Registration Link: Click here!

    Monthly Study Session

     

    April 20 from 1-3pm

    Location: Summer Moon Coffee – 3233 N St Mary's St #102, San Antonio, TX 78212

    Registration Link: Click here!

    ​Biweekly Student Auxiliary Meeting

     

    April 5 and 19 from 12:30-1pm

    Meeting ID: 944 1591 1847

    Zoom Link: Click here!

     

    Useful Links

  • Professor Elam

    Monday 4/1/2024

    Cash-strapped Tupperware Brands is delaying its annual results due to internal control issues and a shortage of accountants that has been a growing challenge for companies’ finance teams.

    The Orlando, Fla.-based reusable-container maker said in a filing Friday that its previous delays in filing its 2022 10-K annual report caused subsequent issues with its quarterly reports. The company said it filed its 2023 quarterly reports on Friday, but those delays pushed back work on its annual report.

    reviously disclosed a material weakness in its internal control over financial reporting and warned of its ability to continue operating.

    Tupperware said Friday its continuing material weakness had made added procedures necessary in preparing its annual report, which has contributed to delays. The company said its accounting department is experiencing “significant attrition,” which has left the company with strained resources and gaps in skill sets.

    Companies over the past year have cited a lack of skilled accounting personnel for material weaknesses in their financial-reporting controls, typically a predictor of restatements. More accountants are retiring without an adequate pipeline of entrants in the profession to fill the void.

    The dearth of new accountants has increasingly bled into U.S.-listed companies’ financial statements. The companies have been bigger than the often smaller businesses that historically struggle to draw accounting expertise. For example, Advance Auto Parts last year couldn’t file a quarterly report on time, saying it wasn’t able to attract and retain enough qualified accounting staff to fulfill internal-control responsibilities.

    In response to the shortage, some companies have weighed raising salaries and tapping temporary outside help.

    Tupperware said retaining a new independent auditor also hampered its ability to submit its form 10-K on time.

    In its latest quarterly report, Tupperware booked $259.6 million in revenue for the quarter ended Sept. 30, 2023, down 14% from the prior-year period. It reported a net loss of $55.8 million for the quarter ended Sept. 30.

    Last month, Tupperware secured a forbearance agreement with lenders as it explores strategic alternatives.

    Tupperware didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

  • Professor Elam

  • Professor Elam

  • Professor Elam

    3/28/2024

    An alert student found this Covid fraud scheme.

    This is what ha[[ems when Congress creates free money with no controls

  • Professor Elam

    Thursday 3/28/2024

    A former employee of a Texas trucking company featured in a reality TV show was sentenced Tuesday to more than five years in prison for stealing more than $1.4 million from the firm.

    Veronica Rios — an administrative assistant who processed payroll at Texas Chrome Transport Inc. in Atascosa — overpaid some employees in exchange for a cut between 2017 and 2020. Rios also added non-employees, including her then-boyfriend, to the payroll and pocketed part of their fraudulent payments.

    Nearly all of the padded-paycheck recipients said that they gave Rios at least half of the extra money they received, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Daphne Newaz. The prosecutor said financial records corroborated some of their statements.

    "You were this temptress who lured these otherwise law-abiding people into becoming crooks," U.S. District Judge Fred Biery told Rios, 44, in San Antonio's federal court.

    Biery handed Rios a sentence of 63 months on each of six counts of wire fraud that she pleaded guilty to in September. The sentences run concurrently. Prosecutors dismissed 12 other fraud counts.

    The judge also ordered Rios, of Salado, to pay $1.4 million in restitution and turn herself in to prison officials by July 8.

    She'll serve three years of supervised release once she gets out.

    When Rios said she had "zero" money for restitution, the judge asked her what happened to the money from the scheme.

    "That's a good question — that's what I keep asking," Rios said. "It didn't come to my pocket."

    Federal guidelines recommended a prison sentence of 51 to 63 months for Rios.

    David Kimmelman, Rios' public defender, requested a sentence closer to 51 months, telling Biery that Rios "feels a lot of remorse for what she did."

    "She accepts it was wrong," Kimmelman said. "Your comments about how she got these people involved struck a chord with her. It’s true, but I think she never solidified that within her own mind. I think today it’s something she acknowledges."

     

    But when the judge gave Rios the opportunity to address company owners Raul and Lorena Mendez, Rios didn't seem as contrite.

    "Speechless," Rios said as she faced the Mendezes. "I trusted them a lot. I worked really hard day and night, and even though they did this to people I love and care for …"

    "They did this to other people — they only picked me mostly and the people I love and care for," she said.

    Addressing Biery, the prosecutor noted that Rios blamed the Mendezes, in case the judge hadn't caught the nuance. 

    "As far as where the money went, (Rios) was taking lavish vacations and bragging about it on Facebook," Newaz said. "She bought herself new clothes, a whole new wardrobe, and was driving around in a Hummer. That’s where the money went."

     

    Among those who received inflated pay in Rios' scheme was her boyfriend at the time, 50-year-old Mario Martinez, who never worked for the company. Biery sentenced him Tuesday to five years of probation and ordered him to pay $432,000 in restitution.

    Martinez, who received about that amount in payroll deposits, told the judge he gave more than half of the money back to Rios. He had been charged with three counts of wire fraud  but pleaded guilty to a single count as part of a plea deal.

    Unlike Rios, Martinez, a truck driver from Von Ormy, apologized to the Mendezes.

    "Perdón," Martinez said. "I took a lot from you all. I'm sorry. I apologize. I was wrong — wrong doesn’t even cover it. I felt bad knowing I looked at you all so many times, and it was wrong."

    Court records said that Rios also overpaid company employee Pedro Guillen, 49, more than $424,000, and another worker, Tommy Byrum, more than $140,000.

    Rios paid her daughter-in-law, Amanda Hernandez, more than $30,000 after Hernandez had left the company in May 2019, according to court filings.

    Prosecutors alleged that one of Rios’ friends, Maira Vargas, received $30,000 in payroll deposits, and another friend, Guadalupe Alsidez, got $200,000. Neither ever worked for the company.

    Guillen, Byrum, Vargas and Alsidez pleaded guilty for their roles and were previously sentenced to probation.

    Texas Chrome Transport’s website said the Mendez family started the firm in 1975 as Mendez Trucking in 1975 and built it into one of the largest independent trucking contractors in the state.

     

    Since 2011, the company has hauled fracking sand to oil production sites across Texas, the website said.

    The Mendez family also runs Texas Chrome Shop in Atascosa, and its members were featured in "Texas Trocas," a Spanish-language reality series for Discovery en Español about tricked-out semis. It is also on Apple TV.

    After sentencing, Rios told a reporter to "ask them" when asked what she meant when she addressed the Mendezes.

    The Mendezes said that Rios "has always been like that" — blaming them for her conduct.

  • Professor Elam

    3/24/2024

    Losing $103.3 M is not a slilp up!

     The Senator is also sponsoring a  bill that would  charge any Defense Dept 1% of their budget if they cannot pass a audit. The Defense Dept has never

    passed an audit since the requirement began in  1990.

  • Professor Elam

    3/17/2024

    Click here to read

    And of course a finance professor says it is just more than our annual income

    She compares it to  a US family

    If the US family owed more than its income there would be collateral like a house and two cars, here there is not collateral and the interest on the debt is now more than the defense budget

  • Professor Elam

    3/13/24

    Janet Mello, the former civilian Army employee who looted more than $100 million from a youth program for military families, is notorious for spending the money on designer accessories, luxury cars and high-end real estate.

    Parcel company drivers delivered so many boxes of Louis Vuitton, Coach, Gucci and other designer brands to her North Side home that they nicknamed her “the Gucci Goddess.”

    It turns out that Mello, 57, also accumulated a lot of ordinary, workaday stuff: old lawn mowers, motorcycle and car parts, ladders, boxes of dishware, farm implements, a 1980 Nissan pickup, six trailers and two John Deere tractors. That’s just for starters.

    The federal government wants to sell those items to fund the restitution Mello owes. And they want to do it quickly, because the stuff is deteriorating from disuse and the depredations of “rodents and rust,” according to court filings.

    The odds and ends are stored in Gonzales County, 80 miles east of San Antonio. Court documents don’t say where in Gonzales County or in what kind of storage structure.

    “Many of these items, most notably the vehicles, have not moved in months if not years,” federal prosecutors said in a recent court filing. “Rodents and rust appear to have damaged some of the items, which are also suffering from lack of use. As a result, it is essential that the items be sold before their value diminishes any further.”

    On Monday, U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez signed an order appointing a receiver “to take possession and arrange for the sale” of the belongings. The sale “is both necessary and appropriate to prevent waste and dissipation of the assets of the Defendant and to ensure funds are available to apply towards the Defendant’s upcoming restitution debt,” the judge said.

    Rodriguez appointed Daniel Kubinski, founder and co-owner of Crowned Eagle Realty in San Antonio, as receiver. As compensation for his services, Kubinski will collect up to 5% of the sale proceeds, plus “reasonable and necessary” expenses, including auto mileage to and from Gonzales County, according to the judge’s order.

    The order requires Mello and her husband, Mark, to cooperate fully with the receiver and to surrender keys, passwords, entry codes and any other information or records necessary for him to get hold of the property and sell it.

    The miscellaneous items slowly deteriorating in Gonzales County are in a different category from the expensive things Mello acquired with her ill-gotten money: condos, homes, at least two huge estates and large parcels of empty land in prime locations in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Maryland and Washington. Not to mention more than 80 vintage and high-performance cars and motorcycles, some of them worth more than $150,000 apiece.

     

    That really valuable stuff already has been seized under forfeiture laws that allow the government to take possession of property used to commit crimes or purchased with the proceeds of criminal activity.

    “However, given the volume of items, not all the personal property will be forfeited,” prosecutors wrote. There are just too many lower-value items gathering dust in Gonzales County. Thus the need for a receiver.

    Mello pleaded guilty last week to stealing $108 million from the Army, one of the biggest thefts of public funds in Texas history.

    Mello, once the salutatorian of her high school graduating class in Guam, pleaded guilty to five counts of mail fraud and five charges of filing fraudulent tax returns.

    She exploited lax financial controls at the Army’s Installation Management Command to divert $108 million to a bogus company she created.

     

    As a financial program manager, Mello helped run the 4-H Military Partnership Grant program, which hires contractors to provide training and curricula to the service branches so children from military families can participate in 4-H, a network of youth groups that encourages children to undertake hands-on projects in agriculture, health, science and civic leadership.

    When Mello created her company, CHYLD, in 2016, she said it provided 4-H services to military personnel and their families, but prosecutors said its only purpose was as a repository for money illegally diverted from the Army.

    The government mailed more than 40 checks to CHYLD totaling $108 million. The checks were sent to mailboxes Mello rented at UPS stores, which she claimed were CHYLD’s addresses.

    “Today was the beginning of the long process where she pled guilty,” Mello’s lawyer, Albert Flores, told reporters after her guilty plea. “She’s accepting responsibility for her actions. She’s very remorseful for what she’s done.”

     

    Her sentencing is scheduled for May 29.