Catching these kinds of accounting frauds, or even just errors, is rarely "simple". In WorldCom's case, it was pretty straight-forward. As you may know, these problems, along with the problems at Enron and Tyco International, were the main forces behind the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (of 2002) which attempted to prevent such problems. It is an open question to what extent laws like that one can actually prevent fraud though, and to what extent they place additional compliance-related burdens on "good" companies. Do you think any of your suggestions could be crafted into effective laws?