Behind an Economy of Fake 'Worths' and Fictional 'Valuations' or 'Market Caps'
The famous plot (or even ploy) goes something like this: get someone (maybe a family member) to buy 1% in your company for $X, then your company can boast about being "worth" $X times 100. Or claim to buy some company for $X, when in practice all you really do is add its staff to your company (but the acquisition gives a fake appearance of illusion of great wealth, hence "credit"). Another common thing is, claiming a "cash only" (or some similar wording) acquisition when in fact only paying in shares, i.e. producing or minting some fictional "asset" tied to fictional "worth" (it's also a form of buyback, a bit like paying one's staff in "shares" with restrictions on their sale). This is all too common, it's a surrogate of pyramid schemes, and they might call it "shrewd" or "creative" accounting, not accounting fraud, which is typically what it boils down to (the latter). They are just - to be blunt about it - gaming the system and paying the "important" media to play along as if all this is normal, never to be credibly questioned. They normalise white-collar crime and say "everyone is doing it!"
In some recent months, honest investors (a rarity) questioned the rampant practice of circular financing, in effect companies buying from themselves or financing the acquisition of their own products/services. How is that not fraud? NVIDIA and Microsoft both do this, for sure! Before the Cheeto came in the FTC looked into it. Now? Not so much. They don't want to lift that rock to find what's under it. Not even the media bothers. █