Wahba agreed to a suspension on Jan. 4, 2004 for his role in surprise audits of Sagam Capital Management Corp. in 1997 and 1998. Without admitting to wrongdoing, Wahba accepted a four-year ban for his role as partner in charge of surprise inspections of Sagam under the Investor Adviser's Act of 1940. Wahba is currently partner-in-charge of Weiser's New York office and a member of its executive board.

Wahba had begun working with Sagam while a partner at the former Weber Lipshie & Co., which dissolved in 1994. He then joined M.R. Weiser & Co., now know as Weiser, all firms based in New York City, and continued his work with Sagem. Sagam was accused of sending letters to its clients overstating the value of their accounts and overstated the value of the accounts of its 10 largest clients by roughly $182 million.

Wahba, who was 39 years old in 2004, was subject to discipline for signing off on audits conducted by Stuart A. Nussbam, who was the manager on the Sagam audits, because they did not contact Sagam's clients to confirm the value of investments in their accounts.

Sagam and its president, Yehuda Shiv, had been under a 1993 SEC cease-and-desist order and Weber Lipshie was hired to help ensure compliance with that order and Wahba continued working with Sagam after joining Weiser. The SEC filed suit against Sagam in 2001 for its actions and Shiv, an Israel citizen, was sent to prison early in 2003 for misappropriating client assets and securities fraud for 15 months.

Michael S. Joseph, then 55 years old, agreed to his suspension on Dec. 11, 2006 for actions that occurred in 2001. The SEC said the CPA helped develop and market an accounting product for American International Group, an E&Y client, and was on an audit team that advised another client, PNC Financial Services Group. AIG sold three of those products to PNC in 2001.

The software was designed to enable companies to transfer volatile assets to a special purpose entity and remove them from a public company's balance sheet. As a result of his advice, PNC improperly excluded several assets from its financial statements that were then filed in quarterly statements with the SEC. Joseph was cited for auditing the software he helped develop and thus violating auditor independence and for giving advice that did not conform to GAAP in terms of the excluded assets.