In the case of Bernie Madoff, it was Harry Markopolos, who knew instantly, easily, that he was looking at a Ponzi scheme.
In the littler case of Temple University’s Moshe Porat, who wangled a number one ranking for the university’s business school by similarly brazen malfeasance, it took John Byrne, founder of Poets & Quants, no time at all for grotesque numbers to jump out at him.
[O]nly 16% of students at the University of Maryland’s business school had submitted scores on the GMATs or GREs. At the University of North Carolina’s business school, only 15% did. Both schools show large enrollment increases that year…
“Contrast these numbers with number one Temple,” [John Byrne] wrote. “Temple was able to increase its online MBA enrollment by an impressive 57% to 546 students from 351. Yet, the school claimed that 100% of the incoming class provided either a GMAT score or a GRE.”
Of course, that 100% figure turned out to be false. It was actually 42 of 255 students, or 16%.
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UPDATE: Guilty.
Porat [and others] falsified how many students had taken standardized test scores to get in, faked incoming students’ GPAs, made it appear the college was more selective than it was and lowered how much its graduates owed in loans, according to the indictment.