Xerox

When one hears the company name Xerox, a present Fortune 500 company in the United States of America, they may not have heard of the extreme downfall they encountered in the late 90s all the way through to the early years of the new millenia. Xerox's own research and development facility, The Palo Alto Research Center, has developed many technological breakthroughs such as the computer mouse and GUI (the graphical user interface). However, key events caused their company to spiral down. First of all, computer expert and programmer Steve Jobs left the company to build his own. Further environmental factors caused Xerox to lose its share in the photocopier market such as the explosive use of emails, sales representatives leaving the company, and other companies stealing sales, such as Canon. However, the big problem was Xerox was guilty of accounting fraud. With it, they were on the brink of bankruptcy due to their stocks falling to an all time low, and CEO Rick Thoman at the time, was fired.

Trying to meet the standards of Wall Street was the main reason why Xerox had to turn to accounting fraud for a company who meets the impecable standards deserves the world's attention. However, they met them through fake statements of their revenue over a period of time, and the only attention they deserved back then were investors pulling out of the company.