Would a simple audit not completely destroy this case?
"How did you acquire these sets?"
"Uhm... don't know they just appeared out of nowhere"
Straight to jail.
Would a simple audit not completely destroy this case?
"How did you acquire these sets?"
"Uhm... don't know they just appeared out of nowhere"
Straight to jail.
It goes more like:
"How did you acquire these sets?"
"We acquired them from the previous franchisee when we purchased the store. Here's the contract we signed to acquire the store and contents, here's the payment we made"
"Okay thanks that checks out"
This is a misrepresentation.... They acquired the contract that held those sets, not the sets directly. The "ownership" of the sets was with the original owner. The set owner entered into an agreement with the shop to pay them for shelf space to advertise the sets for sale.
They were essentially "on-loan" or "borrowed". At no point in time was the ownership was ever transferred to the shop. Possession != ownership
Yes it's a misrepresentation and that's the whole point.
If B&M misrepresent things to the auditor it's unlikely they'll detect this. The auditor for B&M would not have access to the original contract between the previous owner of the store and the owner of the sets.
Audits just aren't that detailed. They might pick a few sample transactions or sample products to check in depth but every set in every store? Definitely not.
The comment I replied to insinuated an audit would lead straight to jail and I find that extremely unlikely. The likely outcome is a signed off audit, like at WireCard, ENRON, and WorldCom.
There wasn't a signed contract with the previous franchisee from what I can see.
And even then, the trail audit goes further as the previous franchisee didn't have a proof of purchase of $200k of inventory.