So my assignment is that i had to come up with my own financial statement fraud scheme and do an investigation on it. overview - The SignPro Limited printing company operates primarily in Ontario. This well-known printing company designs signs, posters, and billboards in the Greater Toronto Area. In the past few months, shareholders of SignPro Limited have contacted ACME Consultants & Analysis Firm about numerous irregularities in the oversight of their business. It has been noted that these irregularities raise several red flags among the majority shareholders.

The first is that during the Covid 19 Pandemic, revenues have significantly increased despite the decline of others in the industry, while expenses have not increased in accordance.

Additionally, the financial statements showed a lack of sufficient details as well as a lack of consistency. It was observed that the company submitted financial statements that differed from those contained in its annual reports and SEC filings.

Last but not least, it has been reported that despite a major economic downturn, year-end employee bonuses were received due to the company achieving all sales targets.

Schemes Indicating Financial Statement Fraud In light of our preliminary analysis, we have identified the following schemes through which SignPro Limited may be potentially responsible for fraud on its financial statements:

1. Fictitious Revenues:One of the first signs of potentially fraudulent activity was the increased revenue during the Covid outbreak despite a drastic decline in economic business activities. It is possible that the company created fake sales to create a higher than the original revenue estimate.

1. Misclassification of expenses:As the company may not be able to affect its financial statements directly, it may misclassify the expenses to make them appear as capital expenditures to portray the impression that the company is earning more revenue.

1. Misusing reserves:Our analysis indicated that the company's financial statements were inconsistent. Financial statements for reports displaying high revenue could have been manipulated and misused using company reserves like a warranty for printing tools and bad debt.

1. Improper expense recognition:We observed that the company issued employee bonuses by claiming that targeted sales had been achieved. To make the profits appear higher than they are, we suspect that the company could have achieved this by delaying the recognition of expenses.

individuals suspected- Thomas Shephard (CEO) As CEO Mr Shephard is responsible for a company's financial statements and may be involved in financial statement fraud. If the company is under pressure to meet earnings targets or are trying to hide poor financial performance.

Jack Dawson (Senior Accountant) - Mr. Dawson is responsible for preparing a company's financial statements and may be involved in financial statement fraud.

Maria Thompson (Sales Person)

Katie Rowan (Sales Person)

They may be involved in financial statement fraud as it would facilitate to make sales targets and create fake sales transactions or artificially inflate the value of actual sales to achieve wages and bonuses.

Charles Harris

Kim Coles

Timmy Turner

Christopher Brown

Other employees within a company may be involved in financial statement fraud as they are faced with pressure from management to performance criteria.

So I need help with this:

Mitigate FSF moving forward -Identify the current weakness in the controls -Build a stronger Internal Control (Outline step by step) Recommendation Put Monitoring Controls In Place -Frequency -How it will be done -By whom ( Who reports the findings, who receives the report) Test the controls by -Assessing Employee's Work Performance -Conduct Interviews with Staff/Management

please do not use CHATGPT