Ernie Cooper is a forensic accountant who gets hired when companies suspect there might be fraud on the inside. He’s also a former FBI special agent who once audited the Mafia and combed through suspicious balance sheets in Medellin, Colombia.
That made him the perfect person to join TheWrap for a screening of Warner Bros.’ guns-and-spreadsheets action flick “The Accountant” — and to make sure Ben Affleck’s number-crunching in the movie checked out.
And the verdict is good. “The ledgers that he’s looking through — those looked like real ledgers,” said Cooper, a partner at Glendora, Calif. firm Vicenti Lloyd & Stutzman. “The terminology they used was very accurate. From an accounting standpoint, I thought it was real cool.”
While it may seem far-fetched for Affleck’s autistic accountant Christian Wolff to lay waste to multiple heavily armed people at once — even for a guy who’s supposedly an expert sniper and martial artist — Cooper said the actual accounting scenes were legit.
For example, one scene in which Affleck’s Wolff examines the books of a medical robotics client to locate a suspicious discrepancy rang true to Cooper.
“It was very realistic when he came in and went to the conference room and he gets all those boxes,” said Cooper, who used to look at fraud at the FBI and now examines corporate clients’ books. “You get called in, ‘Hey, here’s all these boxes, go back X number of years and figure this thing out.'”
Cooper praised how Wolff became suspicious when he noticed that the company’s revenue was growing but its profit margin was falling, despite nothing that would increase its costs.
“That’s very, very classic,” he said. “You look at the numbers, you look at the years, you look at trends. You look at revenue, you look at expenses. That analytics is what he was doing mentally.”
Wolff also identified a series of suspicious transactions by the unusual frequency of the number 3 in their dollar values. Cooper said that was a use of Benford’s law, which lays out the predicted distribution of numbers in a naturally occurring set of data — and something accountants use all the time, through computer programs that analyze data, to sniff out possible problem spots.
“You apply Benford’s law to all your data,” Cooper said. “Say your disbursements to vendors for four or five years. You’re going to have millions of transactions. And what it does — exactly what he does — it identifies patterns that are against the normal. Because numbers go a certain way.”
Cooper also suspected the name of Wolff’s strip-mall based company — ZZZ Accounting — was a hat-tip to a famous accounting fraud, involving a company called ZZZZ Best Carpet Cleaning.
He said plenty of partners at accounting firms — including his own — already have nights out planned for staffers to celebrate the rare occasion of a badass accountant on the big screen. And he expects it to be a big hit in the CPA community.
“When they see him in that conference room, they’re going to love it,” he said.
15 Super-Fit Actors Over 40, From Ben Affleck to Jared Leto (Photos)
There's nothing like playing a superhero to motivate a middle-aged guy to get in shape. Our list of 15 ripped actors over 40 includes a lot of guys who look like they just stepped out of a comic book.
Omari Hardwick
The 42-year-old actor is seen au naturel a lot on his show "Power," much to the delight of his fan base.
The 54-year-old's impressive physique was front and center in last year's "Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation," which featured his Ethan shirtless for a chunk of the film.
Mark Wahlberg
This 45-year-old former Calvin Klein model hasn't let himself go. Exhibit A is 2013's "Pain & Gain."
Robert Downey, Jr.
Marvel's marquee star packed on 25 pounds of muscle when he first donned Tony Stark's armor in the first "Iron Man" film, according to Men's Fitness.
Matt Damon
Damon, 45, looked fantastic when producer Frank Marshall tweeted this picture from the first day of production on "Jason Bourne."
Jason Statham
The action star, pushing 50, has studied Wing Chun, kung fu, karate, and kickboxing, according to TheLADBible. He follows a strict diet and workout regime. Obviously.
Ben Affleck
The 44-year-old actor spent almost two years getting in shape to become the buffest Batman ever.
Rob Lowe
At 52, the actor and self-proclaimed adrenaline junkie stays in shape by avoiding alcohol altogether and surfing and skiing, according to the Daily Mail.
Daniel Craig
The most bad-ass double-0 since Sean Connery spent months with a personal trainer to make himself look like a killing machine, Nerd Fitness reports.
Jared Leto
The 44-year-old "30 Seconds to Mars" frontman has been in the same shape since his 20s. How does he do it? Leto put it down to two main factors in his interview with Rolling Stone. “Twenty solid years of eating vegetarian/vegan and taking care of myself,” Leto told the magazine. “It’s probably just down to sleep and diet.”
Terry Crews
The 48-year-old former NFL player and "Old Spice" pitchman told bodybuilding.com, "I always stay about two weeks out from being able take my shirt off. There's no off-season for me. I don't like this whole bulking up and getting down thing. You should be ready to look good all the time."
Dwayne "The Rock' Johnson
The actor has perhaps the strictest workout regimen in all of Hollywood.
"I start working out pretty early, around 4 a.m. When I'm filming, I do cardio and I lift before going to set. I train about six days a week, and even when I'm not filming I get up between 3 and 5 a.m. just to train. I love training when the sun is coming up because it allows me to put on my headphones and step off the crazy treadmill that is everyone's life," he told bodybuilding.com
JK Simmons
At 61, the Oscar winner is the oldest on this list. He sported impressive arms as he prepared to play Commissioner Gordon in the DC Universe.
Hugh Jackman
The 44-year-old "Wolverine" actor has had an impressive 16-year run as his signature character, and has set the gold standard for physiques in superhero movies.
Joe Maganiello
Honorable mention: The "Magic Mike" star & fitness-book author is just three months shy of turning 40. However, we're confident he'll still be in shape when he faces off against Ben Aflleck's Batman as Deathstroke.
1 of 16
Superhero movies have ushered in an era of actors looking incredible on screen
There's nothing like playing a superhero to motivate a middle-aged guy to get in shape. Our list of 15 ripped actors over 40 includes a lot of guys who look like they just stepped out of a comic book.