"I believe they were treating the loan from FC as deferred revenue. Completely different from a risk perspective."
There seems a lot of issues with the financial statements - which I assume the auditor will have to answer at some stage.
First - to have deferred revenue, you need to have a legally enforceable sales agreement with the customer. There seems to be a lot of adhoc evidence floating around that the supposed 12 month term sales etc. may not have been enforceable - hence the ability of BIG to substitute a new customer for one that wasn't paying in their security portfolio of sales contracts for the loan. If no enforceable contract with customer, then it wasn't a sale and revenue is overstated anyway.
Second - if there was say $9m of deferred revenue, which BIG borrowed against, then the debt is owed by BIG to the financier, rather than from BIG's customers to the financier.
(I haven't seen any suggestion that there are hundreds of financial contracts out there between the financier and BIG's customers.)
But on the BIG balance sheet it's not shown as a financial liability (loan) - just as deferred revenue liability.
Third - if the bank account was in the name of BIG but the financier had to co-sign withdrawals (or some similar arrangement), I don't think that qualifies as a cash asset, and it probably should have been shown as some other sort of asset on the balance sheet. I don't know whether this was the arrangement - just reading the news reports sounds like there might have been an arrangement like that.
Fourth - the 4C statement at the end of Jan shows no cash flow in from financing. That seems at odds with what subsequently happened. If there was security over the cash deposits, was this just equitable or legal - ie. was all the proper paperwork done for a legally enforceable charge. If not, maybe the financier wasn't entitled to take the cash.
(20min delay)