Wheel, Deal, and Steal: Deceptive Accounting, Deceitful CEOs, and Ineffective Reforms

Chapter 4. More Than a Few Bad Apples

	“The System has not failed us, but a few have failed the system.”
	--Donald L. Evans, Secretary of Commerce of the United States.[58]

	“There are a few bad apples, the dirty little piggies.”
	--Muriel Siebert[59]

A Lot of Dirty Little Piggies

In Chapter 2 we described a group of companies in which there have been significant financial scandals. From media reports, each situation seems quite distinct—a different set of schemes and a different group of people. From these apparent differences it has been argued that each of these situations is unique, unrelated to the others, and that each therefore represents a bad apple in a barrel of otherwise well-behaved companies.

But this isn’t the case. In fact, the differences ...