Yes I completely agree... and I mentioned it in my comment! ;) When I said that auditing is hard, i meant that it's a painstaking process with a high employee turnover, isn't gratifying, at all and that doesn't and can't catch everything.

In some cases, I truly don't blame auditors when very sophisticated fraudulent schemes fall apart since a part from the basic checks auditors are mostly there to verify the reported numbers match the internal numbers. If those internal numbers are fudged then there's little that can be done expect to some small degree with simple cross checks, of which even the simplest has not been done in this case. It takes minutes to ask for a bank to confirm statements. I literally can't see how this doesn't involve colluding with EY to cook the books.