Orbit's Earnings Growth Edry was a Senior Vice President in the Customer Credit Department at Orbit International Broadcast Network (Orbit), a leading integrated consumer media entertainment group in Malaysia and South East Asia. Orbit operates in four areas of business, namely Pay-TV, Radio, Publications and Digital Media. Edry was responsible for customer payments, credits and reconciliations of accounts. The senior management gave him challenging monthly revenue growth targets. Edry felt pressured to achieve the targets, yet he knew that not meeting the targets would jeopardize his career. In Orbit, it was common for upper level management to manipulate the company's financial records. Edry was aware of this. They were willing to do whatever was necessary to achieve revenue growth without fail. The board of directors (BOD) did not know about this activity. They were happy to see performance growth and did not raise any queries. They put their complete trust in the senior management team to deliver results. A week before the end of the month, Edry was under tremendous stress. He had yet to meet the current month's target. He did not have much time left. He certainly did not want to be humiliated during the departmental heads' meeting for not meeting the target. He experienced it a few times last year; it was not pleasant. He did not get his annual bonus last year. He had also watched other heads of department go through a hellish time on many occasions. All of them were very fearful of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Edry knew his bosses altered financial records. Out of desperation, he thought to himself, "I should do the same this one time. Why not? My bosses never got caught. There is a slim chance that I will be discovered, but I control all the records." However, soon it became a habit for Edry to tamper with the financial records. Later, his subordinates would also do the same fraudulent activity under his watch. In fact, they worked together to 'brainstorm' creative ways to cook the company's books. The intention was to fraudulently state as if they were meeting revenue growth projections, albeit artificially. Edry wanted to keep his bosses happy and, more importantly, he could save himself from further humiliation. He had had enough. It was during the brainstorming sessions that Edry learned how to hide bad debt, which caused the assets and profits to be inflated. Eight months later, a team of internal auditors paid a visit to the Customer Credit Department at Orbit. They went straight to see Edry and demanded to examine the accounting records of the department. They did not take long to find unusual journal entries made and approved by Edry. They confronted him about the entries. Edry panicked and could not think of any plausible explanation. It was then that he confessed to his fraudulent practices.