Earmark Team

This $600,000 Lesson Proves You Can’t Outsource Your Filing Deadline

Earmark Team · February 17, 2026 ·

Wayne Lee, a Florida surgeon, hired CPA Kevin Walsh to prepare and file his tax returns. From 2014 through 2016, Wayne provided Kevin with all necessary documents and signed Form 8879 e-file authorizations each year. As far as Wayne knew, Kevin was doing exactly what he’d been hired to do: preparing and filing returns, each showing mid-six-figure tax liabilities but also substantial refunds due.

Wayne discovered the truth on December 5, 2018, when an IRS agent showed up at his office. Kevin had never filed any of those returns. He’d never told Wayne about a software issue that supposedly prevented e-filing. The IRS notices had piled up at an incorrect address that Kevin promised but failed to update. By the time Wayne discovered the problem, the three-year statute of limitations had expired on his $288,000 refund from 2014. Instead of rolling that refund forward as planned, Wayne ended up paying $289,000 to the IRS in 2019 to settle unpaid liabilities, penalties, and interest.

Wayne sued Kevin (settling out of court) and the federal government for a refund. The government won.

In a recent episode of Tax in Action, host Jeremy Wells, CPA, EA, uses Wayne’s case to explore a principle the Supreme Court established decades ago: you can delegate tax return preparation, but you can’t delegate responsibility for filing deadlines. Understanding this distinction and the penalties that follow when taxpayers miss deadlines is crucial for tax professionals and their clients.

How Failure to File and Failure to Pay Penalties Work

The penalties Wayne faced were calculated additions to tax that accrued interest and turned a potentially manageable balance into a serious financial burden.

The failure to file penalty under IRC Section 6651(a)(1) is the more severe of the two delinquency penalties. It’s 5% of the net amount due for each month or fraction of a month the return is late. That “fraction of a month” language carries real weight. File your return one day late, and you owe a full month’s penalty. The penalty maxes out at 25% of the net amount due, unless fraud is involved. In fraud cases, the penalty jumps to 15% per month with a 75% ceiling.

“The net amount due means the tax liability shown on the return less any withholding credits, estimated payments, or any other payments made on or before the due date,” Wells explains, emphasizing a critical point. This definition, from IRC Section 6651(b)(1), means even if you can’t file on time, making payments reduces the base amount for penalty calculations.

The failure to pay penalty under IRC Section 6651(a)(2) is gentler at 0.5% per month, but it comes with its own trap. As Wells explains, “An extension of time to file is never an extension of time to pay.” Treasury Regulation 1.6081-4(c) makes this explicit. That six-month extension gives you time to finish the paperwork, not time to find the money.

When both penalties apply, as in the case of an unfiled return with an unpaid balance, they don’t stack. The failure to file penalty gets reduced by the failure to pay amount, keeping the combined rate at 5% per month. But both count as “additions to tax,” meaning interest accrues on the penalties themselves, compounding the total amount owed over time.

The math drives the strategy. As Wells puts it, “Why pay 5% when you only have to pay 0.5%?” Always file on time, even with a balance due. Always request extensions if you need more preparation time. And make estimated payments before April 15th to reduce the net amount due that serves as the penalty base.

Partnerships and S Corporations Face Different Rules

Pass-through entities don’t pay income tax directly, so there’s no failure to pay penalty. But their failure to file penalties can be devastating.

Under IRC Sections 6698 (partnerships) and 6699 (S corporations), the penalty is an inflation-indexed amount per partner or shareholder, per month the return is late. For 2025, that’s $245 per partner or shareholder, increasing to $255 in 2026 and $260 in 2027.

Wells stresses the multiplication effect. “By definition, a partnership has at least two partners. So if you have a late 1065, then at a minimum, the penalty will be doubled.” A small partnership with four partners and a three-month late filing would owe nearly $3,000 in penalties for 2025.

The penalty amount is determined by the year the return should be filed, not the tax year of the return. So if you file a 2024 partnership return late in 2025, you use the 2025 penalty amount.

Relying on Your Tax Professional Won’t Save You

Wayne’s defense seemed reasonable. He hired a licensed CPA, signed e-file authorizations, provided all documents, and was repeatedly assured his returns were being handled. Surely that demonstrates ordinary business care?

The courts said no, following precedent from United States v. Boyle (1985). In that case, the Supreme Court reversed an appeals court that sided with a taxpayer whose attorney missed an estate tax filing deadline. The Supreme Court held that taxpayers cannot delegate filing and payment deadlines to professionals.

When Wayne’s case reached the 11th Circuit in 2023, his attorneys argued that e-filing changes this dynamic. If only the professional can electronically submit returns, doesn’t that shift responsibility? The court rejected this argument entirely. “E-filing does not change the taxpayer’s duty,” they ruled.

So what actually qualifies as reasonable cause? The IRS outlines acceptable categories in Internal Revenue Manual 20.1.1.3.2:

Death or serious illness of the taxpayer, immediate family member, or key employee within an organization (not an outside professional)
Fire, casualty, or natural disaster directly causing non-compliance
Legitimate inability to obtain essential records after reasonable efforts (poor recordkeeping doesn’t count)
Reliance on erroneous written IRS advice specifically addressing your situation
Ignorance of the law, but only if you had no prior filing requirement, tried to learn the law, and the issue was genuinely complex

Wells notes a crucial limitation: if you’re “demonstrably competent enough to carry on other transactions,” like hiring and working with a tax professional, “reasonable cause won’t work.”

The message is clear: tax professionals can prepare returns and provide advice, but the legal duty to ensure filing and payment remains with the taxpayer.

First-Time Abatement Is Your Best Shot at Relief

While reasonable cause rarely succeeds, taxpayers have another option that’s often more accessible: First-Time Abatement (FTA).

The IRS evaluates penalty relief requests in a specific order, outlined in IRM Chapter 20:

Correction of IRS error
Statutory and regulatory exceptions
Administrative waivers (including FTA)
Reasonable cause

Notice that FTA comes before reasonable cause, even though reasonable cause is statutory. The National Taxpayer Advocate has criticized this ordering, but for taxpayers, it creates opportunity.

FTA covers failure to file, failure to pay, and failure to deposit penalties, but not the underpayment penalty. To qualify, you need:

Clean penalty history for three prior years (no unreversed penalties)
All required returns filed
Tax paid or payment arrangement in place

A critical change occurred in March 2023. “If you have a taxpayer with a relatively small penalty and you don’t ask for first time abatement, and then the following year they get an even bigger penalty, first time abatement is not available because it should have been used on that first penalty,” Wells explains.

The old strategy of “saving” FTA for a potentially larger future penalty no longer works. Use it when you’re eligible, or lose it.

Timing matters for requesting FTA. You can’t abate a penalty before it’s assessed, so wait for the notice—typically a CP14 or CP162. Get Form 8821 or 2848 authorization from clients and check the box to have notices forwarded to your office. When the notice arrives, respond immediately or call the Practitioner Priority Service for faster resolution.

Good news is coming: the National Taxpayer Advocate announced that starting with tax year 2025 returns, the IRS will begin automatically applying FTA to eligible penalties. Until then, it remains a manual process.

Protecting Yourself and Your Clients

“Penalty abatement is really less about proving innocence and more about understanding the timing, the procedures and how the IRS operates,” Wells says to summarize the episode’s overarching message.

For tax professionals, this means building clear communication into every client engagement. Clients must understand that while you prepare returns, they’re still responsible for confirming filing and payment. This isn’t about avoiding responsibility; it’s about accurately representing how tax law works.

Wayne Lee did everything a reasonable person would do, yet still lost nearly $600,000. His case is a reminder that in tax compliance, good intentions and professional help aren’t enough. The responsibility to file and pay on time ultimately rests with the taxpayer, and they can’t delegate that duty.

Listen to the full episode of Tax in Action for Jeremy’s’ complete analysis of IRC Section 6651, including detailed penalty calculations and step-by-step guidance for requesting abatement.

The Accounting Profession Is Growing—So Why Can’t New Graduates Find Jobs?

Earmark Team · February 17, 2026 ·

Something strange is happening in accounting right now. The profession is growing, with employment for accountants projected to increase by 10% through 2026, faster than most other careers. Yet new accounting graduates are struggling to find jobs. How can both things be true at the same time?

In a recent episode of The Accounting Podcast, hosts Blake Oliver and David Leary tackled this paradox head-on, sparked by a sobering prediction from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei: AI could displace 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs in the next one to five years.

“Accountants coming out of school are having a hard time getting jobs right now, which is strange,” Blake said during the discussion. “The profession is growing, but entry-level jobs are declining.”

The reason behind that paradox is AI is automating exactly the kind of work that new accountants traditionally cut their teeth on. And that’s creating a bigger problem than just unemployment. It’s threatening the way accountants have learned their craft for generations.

The Work That’s Disappearing

Think about what entry-level accountants actually do (or used to do). They gather documents for audits and organize them into folders. They copy last year’s work papers and update them with new numbers. They reconcile accounts, enter data, and basically do the grunt work that teaches them how financial information flows through a business.

These aren’t exciting tasks, but they serve a purpose. By doing this work, new accountants develop an eye for what looks right and what doesn’t. They learn where errors hide and build intuition.

Now, AI is making all of that work disappear.

During the episode, Blake described Anthropic’s new Claude Cowork feature. It’s AI that can literally click around on your computer as a human would. In one example, a journalist asked it to organize a messy folder of business receipts. The AI asked a few questions about how to sort them, then went to work. Five minutes later, it produced a clean Excel spreadsheet listing two years of expenses.

“File management, organizing folders, batch renaming, generating summary spreadsheets,” Blake noted. This is exactly the kind of work that used to take hours of a staff accountant’s time.

The capabilities keep expanding. Claude now has an Excel integration that lets you skip learning formulas entirely. Need to split a column with full names into separate first and last name columns? Just type what you want in plain English.

“All the Excel wizards are going to be in trouble,” David joked, “because I’ll be able to type in ‘put two more columns, first name, last name separately,’ and it’ll go do the formula for me.”

Another striking example is that Gusto now lets you run payroll directly through ChatGPT. Just type “@Gusto, help me run payroll” and have a conversation. No separate login or clicking through menus—just chat.

Where Do New Graduates Go Now?

This automation creates a problem that goes way beyond individual job losses. Most accountants start their careers in public accounting, doing exactly this kind of entry-level work. That’s how they learn the skills they’ll need to become managers and partners later on.

“Where do accounting graduates go to get their first jobs if they don’t go into public accounting?” Blake asked. “Who’s going to want to hire them?”

The challenge is that new graduates don’t have the experience to do the mid-career jobs that are actually in demand. They can’t review work they’ve never done themselves. As David put it, “They don’t have the skills to monitor AI yet, or know when AI is wrong.”

Workers sense this shift happening. According to a survey mentioned by CFO.com, 60% of U.S. adults believe AI will eliminate more jobs than it creates by 2026. Only 16% think AI could never replace what they do.

This fear is already changing behavior. Last year, 51% of workers said they’d quit if their company demanded a return to the office. This year, that number crashed to just 7%.

“The pendulum has swung back to employers,” Blake observed. “Employers have the power in the market.”

The Industry Starts to Respond

Some companies are beginning to tackle this problem, though it’s unclear if their efforts will be enough.

Intuit announced its most ambitious initiative so far: a program to upskill 1 million accounting students over the next five years. They’re focusing on “digital data and advisory skills,” basically teaching students to work alongside AI rather than compete with it.

The program includes online learning, mentorship, and certifications like QuickBooks ProAdvisor. It kicked off with a virtual event in early February about “Skills for the New Era of Accounting.”

But beyond formal programs, the hosts suggested that individual accountants need to change how they think about their work entirely.

“The most important skill in the AI era is going to be curiosity,” Blake argued.

He shared a practical tip for working with AI. Instead of trying to write the perfect prompt, have the AI ask you questions. His go-to addition to any request is, “First, ask me questions to clarify exactly what I’m looking for. After each of my answers, reply with your next question. Include a confidence score as a percentage. When you achieve 100% confidence, ask me to confirm I am ready for you to do the task.”

David added another crucial insight. “That ‘please wait until I say go’ is the most important prompt.” Without explicit instructions to wait, AI tools tend to race ahead with incomplete information.

A Paradox for Payroll Companies

The episode raised an interesting question about companies like ADP, which announced new AI agents for payroll and HR tasks. These agents can audit for errors, flag missing tax IDs, and answer HR questions using company handbooks.

But as David pointed out, there’s something odd about payroll companies embracing AI so enthusiastically. “If you believe AI is going to be important, that’s going to kill millions and millions of these jobs that get paid through ADP,” he said. If AI eliminates 50% of entry-level jobs, that’s potentially half of ADP’s revenue from running payroll.

Paychex mentioned AI 50 times in their recent earnings call. Investors are clearly asking hard questions about how payroll companies will survive if their customer base of employed humans shrinks dramatically.

What Happens Next?

The tools reshaping accounting are here now. Claude can organize receipts. ChatGPT can run payroll. AI agents can audit for errors. Every month brings new capabilities that used to require human hands and human hours.

The mismatch is striking. Technology advances in months, while professional training evolves over years or decades. Universities design programs on multi-year cycles. Firms have hiring patterns built over generations. Everyone assumes the entry-level work that has trained accountants forever will continue to exist.

That assumption is crumbling. The document gathering, data entry, and reconciliations are becoming prompts typed into AI interfaces rather than skills learned through repetition.

For firms, this means rethinking how new hires develop competence. For educators, it means teaching students to verify and question rather than just execute. For students and early-career professionals, it means learning to supervise technology rather than compete with it.

As Blake put it near the end of the episode, “I can be ten times as productive now doing everything I do with AI, and I don’t need to hire a huge team to do it.”

That’s great news for experienced professionals who already know their craft. For those just starting out, it’s an entirely different story—one the profession is only beginning to write.

Listen to the full episode of The Accounting Podcast for more insights on AI tools reshaping accounting workflows, practical prompting techniques, and updates from Intuit, Xero, ADP, and other platforms. Understanding how AI affects entry-level work is table stakes for anyone making decisions about talent and training in the years ahead.

The 90 Days After Closing That Most Firm Buyers Never Talk About

Earmark Team · February 17, 2026 ·

When an accounting firm announces an acquisition, the industry responds with congratulations and LinkedIn likes before quickly moving on. But for the acquiring firm, that’s when the real work begins and when most deals quietly succeed or fail.

In a recent episode of Who’s Really the BOSS?, Marcus and Rachel Dillon sit down with Amy McCarty, MBA, to discuss what actually happens after signing on the dotted line. Having completed two acquisitions in 2025—one in January and another on October 1—the Dillon Business Advisors (DBA) team shares the specific decisions, timelines, and hard-won lessons that transformed signed deals into a unified firm.

When “Growth, Not Comfort” Means More Than You Bargained For

At the start of 2025, Marcus proposed “growth, not comfort” as DBA’s rally cry for the year. Rachel and Amy thought he meant leadership development and personal growth. They discovered later he had something else in mind entirely.

“You totally tricked us,” Rachel tells Marcus during the podcast. “You said it was completely about leadership growth and personal and professional development. You never let on that this was really about revenue, team size, acquisitions.”

Marcus’s real motivation was building the budget to hire director-level talent. The firm brought on Angel Sabino as Director of Technology in January and Arin Neucks, CPA, CFP, as Director of Tax and Financial Planning in August. Supporting these hires required top-line growth, and acquisitions offered the fastest path to it.

“To have the budget to do great things, the top line had to grow a little bit,” Marcus admits with characteristic understatement.

The first acquisition closed in January with a longtime friend from a consulting organization. It was intentionally small, what Marcus calls a “dip your toes in the water acquisition.” They retained most of the revenue and one excellent team member who now has a clear career path at DBA.

After news of the January acquisition spread through their St. Louis market, other firm owners approached them directly, asking to be considered for future acquisitions. By Q2, DBA was in serious discussions about a second acquisition that would be three times the size of the first.

The First 30 Days: Change Nothing (Except Communication)

The October 1 acquisition created an immediate challenge because it closed just two weeks before the October 15 tax deadline. DBA’s response was counterintuitive but crucial: they changed almost nothing.

“The biggest changes for them are the name of the company that they worked for changed, and where they’re getting their paycheck from changed,” Amy explains. “But otherwise, same clients, same daily functions.”

This restraint matters because acquired team members arrive in a fundamentally different situation than new hires. A new employee has time to learn systems and absorb culture. An acquired team member comes with a full client roster and deadlines that can’t wait. DBA’s standard two-week onboarding stretched to four to six weeks for acquired teams, with the timeline threaded between ongoing client work.

The single exception to the “change nothing” rule was communication infrastructure. Getting the acquired team into Microsoft Teams became the only day-one priority, even though the acquired firm ran on Google and Slack. Angel worked his technical magic to make it happen.

“That is where we live from an internal communication standpoint,” Amy notes. Without unified communication, the teams coordinated work via email, creating delays and missed context they couldn’t afford during the integration.

This stability was possible because they laid the groundwork long before closing. In late September, DBA visited the acquired team in person to present job offers and handbooks. Rachel initially thought this pre-close access seemed risky. She learned it’s actually common practice. Some private-equity-backed firms even begin data migration before deals close.

Days 31-60: Methodical Technology Migration

After maintaining stability through the October deadline, DBA began the complex work of technology consolidation. The preparation made all the difference.

When Angel joined as Director of Technology, he knew acquisitions were coming. Within 30 days—while tax season was underway—he built an enterprise-level Azure environment from scratch. This meant when October’s acquisition arrived, DBA had infrastructure ready to absorb new users rather than scrambling to build it during integration.

Similar tech stacks between firms simplified everything. Both acquired firms used Thomson Reuters UltraTax and QuickBooks Online, matching DBA’s setup. This synergy was a factor in acquisition decisions.

Where systems differed, results varied. Intuit’s realm consolidation tool worked beautifully. Marcus migrated all the acquired firm’s QuickBooks accounts from his phone’s hotspot while driving to his child’s swim meet. ADP proved more challenging because they wanted to re-onboard clients with new signatures. Rather than confuse clients, DBA maintained two separate ADP logins and will migrate opportunistically over time.

Client communication platforms required careful handling. Both acquired firms used Liscio, while DBA uses Canopy. For the January acquisition, DBA kept Liscio running through tax season before transitioning. The October firm had already been planning its own Canopy migration.

“We told them, ‘We love that you’re going to be on Canopy. Why don’t you hold off on that migration for now?”‘ Marcus recalls. “Because we’re going to have to migrate everything into DBA anyway.”

For systems they couldn’t immediately eliminate, Amy reduced subscriptions to the minimum level rather than canceling them completely. “It’s like when you clean your closet, and you turn the hanger the other way,” she explains. “If you don’t ever use it, then you need to get rid of it.”

Protecting the Cash Flow You Bought

“From a business owner standpoint, I would much rather talk about getting paid and sales and receipts and deposits over tax returns and general ledgers,” Marcus says bluntly.

The revenue structure of the October acquisition required immediate attention. Two-thirds was monthly recurring revenue with auto-drafted payments. Without intervention, that money would continue to flow into the previous owners’ bank accounts.

Rather than rushing clients onto new systems during integration chaos, DBA kept the acquired firm’s payment processor running for three months. The previous owners were a husband-and-wife team, with the husband joining DBA. They agreed to reconcile deposits and forward funds within days. This required an enormous amount of trust, built during 90 days of pre-close due diligence.

The arrangement had a natural endpoint. Monthly clients’ annual agreements expired with their January payment, creating a perfect transition moment. DBA sent new engagement letters with updated payment information to all DBA clients, using the acquisition as a catalyst for firm-wide standardization.

Alison Sharp, the operations and administrative professional who came over from the acquired firm, proved invaluable during this transition. She handled client communications about payment changes, maintaining continuity for clients who knew and trusted her.

Looking Ahead to Tax Season and Beyond

As 2026 begins, DBA faces its first full tax season serving both acquired client bases. The January-acquisition clients are returning for their second year, while the October clients will experience DBA’s processes for the first time.

“It’s going to be a fun tax season,” Amy says with a laugh that suggests “fun” might be understating the challenge.

The integration work continues, but with infrastructure in place and teams unified in communication and technology, DBA has transformed two separate acquisitions into growth that actually supports their expanded director team, even if that wasn’t quite what Rachel and Amy thought they were signing up for with “growth, not comfort.”

For accounting firms considering acquisitions, the DBA team’s experience shows how crucial it is to invest as much in planning the 90 days after closing as you do in the months before. The deal terms matter, but integration execution determines whether you build something lasting or buy an expensive headache. Listen to the full episode for all the details.

Rachel and Marcus Dillon, CPA, own a Texas-based, remote client accounting and advisory services firm, Dillon Business Advisors, with a team of 15 professionals. Their latest organization, Collective by DBA, supports and guides accounting firm owners and leaders with firm resources, education, and operational strategy through community, groups, and one-on-one advisory.

The Auditors, Lawyers, and Bankers Who Watched a Fraud Unfold and Kept Billing Hours

Earmark Team · February 17, 2026 ·

Two men stood at an LAX mailbox, passing an envelope between them like a hot potato.

“I don’t want to mail it. You mail it.”

Hours earlier, they’d flown from Chicago with no plan. Their mission was to intercept a confirmation letter before lawyers could verify lease terms with a customer. They’d arrived at the customer’s Los Angeles office just as a courier walked in ahead of them. While one man distracted the customer with lunch options, the other snuck into a nearby room, forged a signature, and faxed it back to the law firm.

Now they just had to mail the original back and catch their flight home. The envelope slipped from their hands and fell to the ground. They checked their watches—the flight was boarding. Without another word, they picked it up together and dropped it into the mailbox.

This scene captures exactly where OPM Leasing Services ended up. In a recent episode of Oh My Fraud, host Caleb Newquist traces how two childhood friends built one of America’s largest computer leasing companies, only to watch it collapse into a fraud worth more than $190 million.

Two Friends, One Dangerous Bet

Mordecai “Morty” Weissman and Myron Goodman went way back. Same Brooklyn yeshiva. Same college. By 1969, they were brothers-in-law when Myron married the sister of Morty’s wife. So when they started a business together in 1970 above a candy store in Brooklyn, it probably felt natural.

They called it OPM Leasing Services. The name supposedly stood for “Other People’s Machines.” But as Caleb points out, the interpretation that stuck was more cynical and ultimately more accurate: “Other People’s Money.”

In the early 1970s, if you were in the computer business at the enterprise level, there was one company that mattered: IBM. As Caleb puts it, “they were the only game in town.” These days, IBM is what he calls “the Norma Desmond of tech companies”—iconic but past its prime. Back then, they were creating the future.

OPM’s business model seemed straightforward. Borrow money to buy IBM mainframes. Lease them to corporations. Use the lease payments to service the loans and pocket the difference.

But Morty and Myron had a clever angle. While competitors wrote three- or four-year leases, OPM offered seven-year terms. The result was lower monthly payments that customers loved. As Caleb observes, “there’s never a shortage of price-conscious customers out there.”

The catch was that OPM required “hell or high water” clauses—lease payments had to be made no matter what. To sweeten the deal, customers could sublease computers back to OPM after three years, and OPM would re-lease them to someone else. If those payments didn’t cover the original amounts, OPM would eat the difference.

The entire model rested on one huge gamble: that IBM wouldn’t release better computers for seven years.

When Technology Refuses to Stand Still

Throughout most of the 1970s, the gamble seemed to pay off. OPM grew to 250 employees across 11 offices, including plush Manhattan headquarters. Their customer list read like a Who’s Who of American business: AT&T, Revlon, Polaroid, Merrill Lynch, Xerox, American Express, General Motors. Their biggest customer was the aerospace and defense giant Rockwell International.

Morty and Myron lived well. They settled into estates in Lawrence, Long Island. Myron decorated what the New York Times called his “baronial estate” with a disco and a small movie theater. He pledged $10 million to Yeshiva University and became its youngest trustee ever.

Competitors remained skeptical. Edward Czerny, president of the nation’s second-largest leasing company, said OPM was “going 180 degrees against what the industry was doing.” But as Caleb notes, skeptics don’t always get it right. People were skeptical of Amazon losing money for a decade. They thought automobiles would never replace horses.

Then came 1978.

IBM launched its Series 3000 computers, which were faster, smaller, and cheaper than anything on the market. Every big business wanted one, including OPM’s customers. As the New York Times reported, customers immediately started turning in their old computers. OPM had to accept “knock down rentals” for obsolete equipment, resulting in shortfalls of up to $40,000 per month on individual deals.

That same year, Morty and Myron purchased First National Bank of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. Why would two computer leasing guys from New York buy a bank in Louisiana? As Caleb dryly notes, owning a bank might come in handy “for one reason or another, like for a check kiting scheme.”

The Desperate Descent

Check kiting exploits the “float,” or the days it takes checks to clear. You write checks between accounts with insufficient funds, timing deposits to create the appearance of money that doesn’t exist. Caleb calls it “the financial equivalent of the spinning plate routine.”

Those plates stayed airborne for six months before bank officials caught on. In March 1980, OPM pleaded guilty to 22 felonies and paid a $110,000 fine. “Virtually no one outside of Morty and Myron heard anything about it,” Caleb notes.

But the desperation only grew. Single computers became collateral for multiple loans at different banks, and they fabricated lease documents. In one example, OPM claimed monthly lease payments of $54,500 when the actual amount was $463. Documents described four IBM computers worth $3.1 million in Texas, when Rockwell’s records showed three pieces of equipment worth $20,000 in Los Angeles.

Judge Charles Haight Jr. later revealed the forgery technique. “Mr. Goodman would crouch under a glass table with a flashlight, and Mr. Weissman would trace the forged signatures.”

Warning signs accumulated. Business Week questioned OPM’s practices in 1978. Goldman Sachs resigned as their investment bank. But customers wanted to keep believing. When Edward Czerny showed the Business Week article to customers, he said, “most of them didn’t care.”

Everything unraveled in February 1981 when a routine inquiry discovered “rather poor forgeries” of a Rockwell executive’s signature. Within a month, lenders sued, alleging fraud exceeding $100 million. The final tally would reach $190 million from 19 lenders.

The Professionals Who Should Have Said No

The bankruptcy examiner’s report revealed a network of enablers who chose client relationships over professional responsibilities.

Lehman Brothers knew about the check kiting but never reported it. They continued representing OPM to lenders in “the best possible light,” downplaying concerns when convenient.

Fox and Company, the audit firm, “yielded to pressure to certify materially false and misleading financial statements.” In 1976, they initially drafted statements showing large losses. Myron Goodman told the audit partner to “get back to the grindstone and try to figure out a way to show a profit.” Because the firm was being paid by the guy yelling at them, that’s exactly what they did, using what the report called “questionable accounting techniques.”

Singer Hutner Levine and Seeman, OPM’s law firm, took the brunt of the blame. Partner Andrew Reinhard, Myron’s close friend, allegedly knew about the fraud as early as 1978. The report called him “a reluctant but knowing accomplice,” though he was never charged.

The story of John Clifton, OPM’s internal accountant, shows how badly the system failed. Clifton found evidence of bogus Rockwell leases, consulted a lawyer, turned the information over to Singer Hutner Levine & Seeman, and quit, hoping they’d handle it. His letter arrived while Myron Goodman happened to be at the firm’s offices making a “partial confession of unspecified past wrongdoing.” Goodman intercepted the letter, and the specifics stayed hidden.

Singer Hutner Levine & Seeman continued working for OPM, closing more than $70 million in fraudulent loans before finally resigning in September 1980. The bankruptcy report said they’d gotten “the worst possible advice about its ethical obligations.”

The Reckoning and the Lessons

OPM filed for bankruptcy in March 1981. By December, five executives had pleaded guilty to defrauding lenders. A year later, Morty and Myron pled guilty and received 10 and 12 years, respectively.

Judge Haight didn’t hold back. OPM was “basically insolvent” almost from the start and “survived by means of just fraud and bribery.” The frauds were “without parallel in the history of this court.”

Caleb draws several lessons from the wreckage:

Unorthodox business models deserve scrutiny. They’re not automatically fraudulent. After all, plenty of skeptics have been wrong. But when a company’s entire advantage rests on assumptions that defy common sense, like technology standing still for seven years, that’s worth examining.
Desperation breeds fraud. “Fraud is often a temporary solution to a problem,” Caleb observes. People convince themselves it’s just this once, they’ll pay it back, everything will be fine. “It’s almost never fine.”
“Too good to be true” still applies. OPM’s customers got deals nobody else could match. Even when Business Week raised questions, “most of them didn’t care.” People don’t want to stop believing they’re getting a great deal.
Professional enablers make large-scale fraud possible. Banks, auditors, and lawyers “didn’t say no to their client. They were conflicted in many ways and allowed things to go on for too long.”

And finally, Caleb calls the check kiting “the dumbest fraud on Earth.” There’s only one way it ends. Either you stop and face the consequences, or “money falls out of the sky.” The sky rarely cooperates.

For accounting professionals, the pressure to find creative solutions hasn’t changed since 1978. When clients pay your fees and threaten to fire you if they don’t like your answers, the temptation is real. The OPM case reminds us that professional independence is the only thing standing between aggressive accounting and criminal fraud.

“If your plan B is kiting checks, then plan A might need some work,” Caleb concludes:

Listen to the full episode for more details about this spectacular fraud, including the thorny attorney-client privilege issues that emerged from Singer Hutner Levine & Seeman’s conduct. It’s a story that proves some lessons in fraud never get old; they just get more expensive.

The Voice That Told You to Stay Quiet Wasn’t Yours

Earmark Team · February 17, 2026 ·

What if the biggest roadblock in your career path isn’t a lack of skills or experience, but the voice in your head that’s been telling you to stay quiet since you were a little girl?

That voice is familiar to many women in accounting, tax, and bookkeeping. It’s the one that whispers “don’t brag” when you land a major client. It suggests you “soften” your opinion in the board meeting. It convinces you that speaking up will somehow offend someone. Most of us inherited this voice through years of well-meaning feedback that taught us to make ourselves smaller.

In a recent episode of the She Counts podcast, hosts Nancy McClelland and Questian Telka tackle this topic head-on with special guest Misty Megia. Misty is the CEO and creative force behind Theatre of Public Speaking, where she helps women and underrepresented voices unmute themselves, whether in a conference room, a technical breakout session, or a keynote spotlight. Nancy and Questian are proud graduates of her TOPS program and can speak about the transformation from their firsthand experience.

The trio discussed how to reclaim the voices we’ve learned to silence, and it doesn’t involve generic confidence mantras or vague advice to “just think positive.” Real change comes from understanding why our brains cling to negativity in the first place, building specific action plans that outsmart procrastination and fear, surrounding ourselves with people who tell us the truth, and recognizing that self-promotion isn’t ego; it’s service to the people who need exactly what we have to offer.

The Power of Building Your Dream One Step at a Time

Misty opens the episode with a story. While working on a film in Armenia, she asked the director for advice about making a documentary. “I hate documentaries,” the director replied. “And while we’re at it, I’m not a fan of rom coms either.”

The twist? They were literally filming a rom-com at that moment.

The director explained that her real dream was to make a sci-fi film she’d written. But she knew she wasn’t ready. So she made documentaries first to learn how to tell stories and frame scenes. Then she wrote the rom-com they were filming because it was “a massive playground and the stakes were low, but the lessons were high.”

“Watching a woman who fully owned the climb,” Misty reflects. “Not waiting for permission, not waiting to be ready, not apologizing for learning. She was building her dream, one imperfect moment at a time.”

The lesson hit Misty hard. “We often wait to begin until we are an expert. But we need to begin because that’s how we become an expert.”

Understanding What’s Keeping You Muted

Before you can reclaim your voice, you need to understand what silenced it in the first place and why your brain makes it so hard to break free.

When Misty talks about “unmuting,” she’s not just referring to the moment you turn on your microphone in a Zoom call. “There are so many components in our life that are muscles we need to constantly exercise, whether it’s our creativity, how we show up in a space, or how we support one another,” she explains. “To me, that’s the act of unmuting. What do we dream of doing? And what steps do we need to take to move toward that dream?”

Nancy keeps a Post-it note next to her computer (right beside the one reminding her of the cost of goods sold formula) that reads, “Be the best version of yourself you can be. But who is that?” That question is crucial. “It reminds me to make sure it’s my own definition of who I am,” Nancy explains. “It’s easy to get lost and start being who we think the world wants us to be.”

The muting happened gradually for Questian. “When I was really young, I was very, very vocal, very outspoken,” she shares. She beat all the boys in pull-ups in elementary school. She was “born a feminist,” convinced she could do anything. But somewhere along the way, the feedback started coming. “You are bothering other people. You have to say things in a certain way as a woman so you don’t upset someone or offend them.”

By the time she joined Misty’s program, Questian was “absolutely terrified to go into a Zoom meeting or conference and have a conversation with someone.”

There’s a scientific reason those negative messages stick so hard. “Our mind is wired to keep us safe, and that negative comment can be perceived as a threat,” Misty explains. “Your mind thinks it’s unsafe, so it circles around it like crazy to figure out how to be safe.”

But what makes the situation even more complicated is that the systems around us compound these struggles. Men experience imposter syndrome too, but they tend to move through it faster. She shares a telling example of a male head of sales who was competing against a woman with more experience for a VP role. Despite his “massive anxiety,” he got the job because the hiring committee saw themselves in him.

“We internalize a lot of the external conversations,” Misty observes. “How did those even become internal conversations? We weren’t born with that.”

Building Your Action Plan for Breaking Through

Understanding why you’re muted is important, but your brain needs more than awareness. It needs concrete action.

“A lot of people say just start thinking positive. Just think happy, joyful thoughts and counteract it,” Misty says. “That is so difficult. Your body and your mind are so much better when they have a specific action to take.”

When Misty finds herself stuck on a presentation, procrastinating instead of working, she has a diagnostic process. She asks herself, Is it the people making her nervous? Is it her skill set? Does she lack confidence in how she’ll show up? Or is it the overall situation causing anxiety?

“Once I have an action plan, because I’ve focused on where that anxiety is coming from, then I can move forward and I stop procrastinating,” she explains. Often she’ll discover something specific. “I don’t feel strong about my opener. Let me fix that.”

The procrastination itself becomes information. For Misty, it’s housework. Suddenly, folding laundry seems urgent. For Questian, it’s doomscrolling. “I’ll be working and my brain will just come to a moment where I stop, and then all of a sudden I find myself on my phone.”

Nancy, who describes herself as a “cognitive behavioral therapy nerd,” points out that you have to notice yourself being in anxiety before you can address it. “You have to notice that it’s happening, which takes a lot of practice and honestly, a lot of friends who can see it in you.”

Misty shares two powerful techniques for reframing negative self-talk:

The Best Friend Technique. When negative self-talk starts, Misty literally names it after her best friend Christina. “To me, she’s my biggest supporter. She’s my cheerleader. She also will give it to me honestly if I’m not doing something right.” Christina would never say the brutal things that inner voice dishes out. “We truly talk to ourselves worse than we would talk to our best friend.”
The Childhood Photo Technique. Years ago, Misty took a class that had participants put a picture of themselves as a child next to their bed. “Anytime we had that negative self-talk, we would see our younger self and go, ‘Would you say that to this little girl?”‘ The protective instinct kicks in immediately.

Questian loves this approach. “We’re all still that little girl inside, right?” And as Misty points out, that little girl “would be so impressed with how far you’ve made it, who couldn’t even dream of where you are and what you’re doing.”

Sometimes, hitting bottom provides the clearest view. Questian shares that after a year of family challenges, loss, and professional setbacks with nonprofits losing funding, she recently told someone, “I feel like a failure.”

But the next day, she had clarity. “Here are the things I have to take a step back from,” she told Nancy. “I need to do it so I can focus on these other areas.”

“You got clarity when you saw that low point happen,” Nancy observed. “If those things are really the most important to you, then you need to focus on those.”

The reframe matters. Failure becomes information about what needs to change.

The Power of Community and Authentic Self-Promotion

Individual techniques can transform how you handle fear and self-doubt. But the people you surround yourself with are the accelerator.

“If you surround yourself with people who believe in you and think you are the sun, moon and stars, then that will be contagious to you. And it’s based in reality because they see the work you put in,” Misty explains. “If you surround yourself with doubters, then that’s what you start to believe.”

The key phrase is “based in reality.” This isn’t about empty cheerleading. Nancy demonstrates authentic support when she tells Questian, “You wrote that 100-minute session for the main stage at the Women Who Count conference on sexual harassment. You changed lives. I have no doubt that you changed lives with that.”

Questian knows Nancy means it because, as she puts it, “You will tell me if I’m full of shit.”

Now for the uncomfortable part: self-promotion.

“I know for the podcast to be successful, for Ask a CPA to be successful, for the work I’m doing as a public speaker to be successful, I need to self-promote,” Nancy admits. “But I am turned off by self-promotion. It’s icky.”

Questian adds, “We were told when we were little girls, don’t brag. You’re not allowed to brag. Don’t talk about yourself too much.”

“There are so many people out there to tell you no. Do not be the first one to say it,” Misty says, offering a powerful reframe. You’re not promoting to everyone. “You’re doing it for that one person who needs your services. They need to hear what you have to say on this podcast. They need that little bit of validation to say, ‘I can do this too.'”

When Nancy and Questian promote She Counts, they’re saying, “Hey, there’s a space for you where you count.” That’s not self-promotion; it’s service.

Self-affirmation needs evidence, though. “We don’t take enough proof points that we didn’t die doing something,” Misty points out. You posted on social media and didn’t die. You presented to the board and didn’t die. Each survival is data your brain needs.

The final lesson is to stop copying others. “We are such unique individuals. Every single one of us brings something totally different to the table,” Misty says. “Yet any time we want to show up, we want to look at who else was successful and follow that to the T so much that we forget our own voice.”

Instead, she’s taking an upholstery class and consuming content outside her niche, finding what excites her so she can bring something authentically new to her work.

Your Turn to Unmute

Questian’s transformation tells us what’s possible. She went from being terrified to speak in a Zoom meeting to presenting to 400 people on a main stage (twice). “Now I won’t shut up,” she jokes. But that’s not a problem. It’s proof that unmuting works.

The conversation makes several things clear:

Unmuting is about becoming who you want to be, not who others expect
Your brain’s negativity bias isn’t broken; it’s overprotective
Vague positivity doesn’t work; you need specific action plans
How you talk to yourself matters. Would you say those things to your childhood self?
Real community provides honest feedback and genuine support
Self-promotion serves those who need what you offer

Brené Brown, whom Nancy recently met at Intuit Connect (and gave a She Counts pin!), puts it perfectly: “When we screw up or fall down, many of us talk to ourselves in ways that we would never talk to someone we love and respect. Talking to ourselves from self-love and self-respect is a practice.”

Your homework is to notice when your inner critic pipes up and answer it the way you’d answer your best friend.

If you’re ready to start your unmuting journey, Misty’s Theatre of Public Speaking women’s cohort starts the first Wednesday of March, and seats are already half full. There’s also a beginner’s course for those who need foundational help before jumping into live sessions.

Listen to the full episode for the complete conversation, including the vulnerable moments, practical techniques, and the kind of honest talk that makes She Counts a valuable resource for women in accounting.