Barbara Mendels has been hired by an attorney representing Greenride Inc., a large dealer of state-of-the-art electric cars. Greenride has independent departments for new car sales, used car sales, services, and parts. Jason Miraba has been the head accountant for the last five years. He oversees all accounting and financial aspects of the business. Camina Greenride is the owner of the business. She has just fired Jason Miraba. She is very upset because in recent months, cash flow reports have become progressively negative, but she is sure that the numbers are wrong because she is on the lot almost daily and business seems to be holding up well. On two occasions she asked Jason to explain the bad numbers, but Jason became angry and defensive and gave her no useful information. Further, over the last few months Jason has become withdrawn and difficult to deal with. "I'm sure he stole a lot money," said Camina Greenride. "I just don't know how, and I have no solid proof, but I looked through the accounting records and found all kinds of nonsensical debits and credits in our consign- ment account. I could see that his goal was to make the account records completely unintelligible, surely to cover up his stealing," In the initial interview with Ms. Greenride, Barbara learned that Jason's brother-in-law had recently opened a competing dealership on the other side of town. "I'm sure that Jason is siphoning off funds and funneling them to his brother-in-law's business. I think he is stealing our customer lists as well." Mrs. Greenride stated. Barbara also learns that Ms. Greenride is filing a lawsuit against both Jason Miraba and his brother-in-law. She is alleging civil theft and a conspiracy to steal, not only her money, but also her customers. "The IRS just visited here this morning," said Ms. Greenride. "It looks like Jason didn't turn over payroll taxes, and now I have a two hundred and thirty thousand dollar lien filed against my business." Barbara accepts the engagement. She discovers that a large portion of the audit trail for the cash accounts is missing. Bank records are in shambles, half the deposit slips are not there, and the related cash accounts are filled with unintelligible entries. To make things worse, Jason has made all kinds of transfers between various bank ac- counts, and general operations expenses are mixed in with consignment account transactions. Barbara slowly pieces together her investigation, but the records are in such bad condition that the best she can do is guess that \($220,000\) in funds cannot be accounted for, but she will need many months more in inves tigation to know for sure. However, she has seen enough evidence to know that the destruction of the financial records was no accident. At the same time Barbara is conducting her investigation, Ms. Greenride is pleading with a local detective to arrest Jason Miraba. She is concerned that if Jason and his brother-in-law are not stopped, they will steal too many of her customers. In addition, some of her most loyal employees are quitting and joining the brother-in- law's dealership. Barbara is still in the middle of her investigation, but she is being pressured by Ms. Greenride to give a preliminary opinion to the detective. She wants Barbara to tell the detective that, in her opinion, a fraud has been committed and that the loss is consistent with Jason Miraba having committed the crime. The pressure from Ms. Greenride is intense. She feels that unless the police become involved to stop what is going on, she may lose her entire business. 

Required 

How should Barbara respond to Ms. Greenride's request for a preliminary opinion? What are the possible ramifi- cations of Barbara complying? What can Barbara safely say, if anything at all?