For more than three years, U.S. securities regulators investigated allegations of accounting fraud at a small telecom firm called China Voice Holding Corp, but could not make a case, according to Reuters. Then last November, they got an unexpected break. A Texas-based tax consultant doing work for a firm affiliated with China Voice contacted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission with information about suspicious money transfers she'd detected.
The call from Dee Dee Stone was quickly routed to a preliminary version of the SEC's new $21 million "Tips, Complaints and Referrals" or TCR Database, which the agency later fully deployed in March. Within 24 hours, Stone, a former Internal Revenue Service agent, got a call from an SEC attorney spearheading the China Voice inquiry. Five months later, the SEC on April 29 sued several China Voice executives, claiming they had duped investors out of $8.6 million in a Ponzi scheme. Agency lawyers say without Stone's help, regulators may not have even discovered the scheme, let alone made a case so soon. The alleged fraud at China Voice was small in the annals of Wall Street sins. But the SEC's response to Stone is an indication that….
http://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCATRE76Q2NY20110727
No comments:
Post a Comment