AOL Execs Indicted In PurchasePro Fraud

from the whoops dept

Ah, bubble era accounting tricks. Remember the era when "business development" deals were simply about inflating each others' books without any money actually changing hands? Well, it appears that a group of executives involved in just such a scam between AOL and PurchasePro may be facing some amount of punishment at this moment, after being indicted on fraud charges associated with the scam. Of course, while these guys are getting blamed for it, what isn't mentioned is that these types of scams were pretty common throughout the industry, and many companies even felt compelled to do it just to "keep up" with their competitors. The plan may have been to "get big fast," but when the metrics are somewhat meaningless, you have to expect people to come up with ways to fudge them.

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