Looks to me like another example of one of the oldest tricks in...

Looks to me like another example of one of the oldest tricks in the book....if you need to dress up the profit number...stash a bit on the balance sheet. Where to put the debit side of the journal entry (rather than expense)? Inventory.

Dress up a journal entry and have a good excuse ready for the auditors...preferably a junior auditor.

Anyone remember Harris Scarfe when it went under 15 or so years ago? I understand they had so many fake debits stuffed into inventory on the balance sheet it was ready to explode. And, then it did explode.

Many years ago, there was a distillery in Canada. One of the auditors was doing a stocktake. They were just finishing up, and as they were wrapping up one of the guys stepped backwards into a barrel that was lying on its side....guess what....a hollow sound. Empty. Lots more empties were found, yet management managed to explain away it as an accounting screw up. No jobs were lost as far as I know, but there should have been.

It wasn't me that kicked the barrel, but it could have been any one of us.

Generally, this sort of rubbish is done when there is short term pressure to increase profit. Stash a little bit, with the idea of getting rid of it by year end - reverse the journal when you have a good month. But what happens when the next month is worse...stash a bit more...then a bit more pressure... and then things get even worse....then you are screwed...hide some more....and on and on....

In this case, it looks like the head finance guy quit just before the year end audit when he new the game was up. No doubt the inventory number just needed a pin prick and it would have exploded all over management.

No I don't know for absolute sure, but I've seen this crap so many times. So many shareholders getting shafted. Where were the external auditors? Where were the internal auditors? Why wasn't their anyone on the Board that was concerned with an inventory number that was just getting too big and fat.

So many questions...and one cracker of a class action coming up.

Disclosure: not held, and I've never owned any. But I've seen too many innocent shareholders get done over by crap like this. Meanwhile the regulatory bodies are busy chasing some ASX junior company for failing to disclose what kind of tea bags management used for breakfast.

Rosco