- Where was Sarbanes-Oxley When Public Company CFO Stole $80 Million Before Getting Caught? Jonathan Dwane Nelson, the former chief financial officer and secretary of Snyder, TX-based Patterson-UTI Energy Inc. oil exploration and production company, was charged with submitting and fraudulently approving phony invoices to Patterson-UTI from a separate company he controlled and authorizing payment of the invoices by Patterson-UTI.

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- E-Discovery Warning: Don’t Delay Turning Over Requested Evidence
In a recent federal lawsuit, the plaintiff sought sanctions against the defendant for lateness in producing E-mail evidence during discovery.
  The plaintiff argued the defendant “hindered and prejudiced the discovery process when it produced requested E-mails in the eleventh hour of discovery and after intrastate deposition of key witnesses had commenced.”
  Response: The defendant claimed that any late E-mail production was inadvertent, an unforeseen result of two physical upgrades to its computer systems, and did not prejudice the plaintiff’s case.The defendant further argued that there were no grounds for sanctions due to the absence of any evidence showing that the defendant failed to preserve or retain relevant evidence. READ MORE...

- Sales Ethics. Why Closing the Deal is Not the Only Thing that Matters. It’s too easy to blur the ethical boundaries between honest selling and fraudulent or deceptive sales practices—as more and more companies have discovered too late. READ MORE...