The rule of accouting is that if anything excites you about accounting you shouldn't do accounting. The most fun I had studying accounting was learning about tax evasion, money laundering, defrauding stakeholders etc. Any academic book about forensic accounting could be deemed interesting if you just read only the case studies.
What book on forensic accounting would you recommend for entertainment value?
I have some knowledge of french accounting, been exposed to US style, and thoroughly enjoyed long forms involving forensic accounting, money laundering and the like...
Not a book but CNBC's series "American Greed" is great. My favorite episode was about a guy who was (on paper) the second largest biodiesel producer in the country. He was literally just making up fake green energy credit numbers in a spreadsheet and selling them to companies looking to buy green energy credits.
The EPA was made aware of him but did nothing even after they physically inspected his biodiesel "factory" and discovered it was basically just an empty warehouse.
What finally brought him down was his taste for expensive sports cars and his being an asshole neighbor. He was always parking his sports cars pn the street, blocking school bus stops, etc. Local parents suspected he might be a drug dealer because of how many cars he had and how lavishly he spent his money, and they asked the local police to look into him. It was the local investigation that uncovered the fraud and brought him down.
It's been a while since I saw the episode, so I don't recall. Also it's entirely possible that the film crew deceptively edited things to make the EPA look worse, but it didn't seem that way to me when I watched it.
I really enjoyed Fooling Some of the People All of the Time by David Einhorn. He goes clearly and deeply into his suspicions about Allied Capital, a company that he thought/thinks had unethical/illegal accounting and business practices.
The rule of accouting is that if anything excites you about accounting you shouldn't do accounting. The most fun I had studying accounting was learning about tax evasion, money laundering, defrauding stakeholders etc. Any academic book about forensic accounting could be deemed interesting if you just read only the case studies.