In “All the President’s Men,” it was Deep Throat who said, “Follow the money.”
Larry Johnson, a highly successful forensic accountant, does just that.
In a good year, the 65-year-old Loudoun County numbers sleuth earns a couple million dollars chasing the cash behind big scandals, such as those involving Enron and Bernie Madoff.
In the accounting profession, Johnson’s job description is known as litigation support, which is a technical way of saying he helps lawyers prove their case and helps them debunk the other side’s arguments.
It is unglamorous but lucrative stuff. Johnson — a certified public accountant — charges between $500 and $600 an hour. His firm, which is called Veris Consulting, grosses more than $15 million a year, allowing him to live the life of a country squire, sort of. He routinely gets offers from suitors to buy the firm, which probably is worth millions.
His Reston staff of 70 number crunchers does pretty well, too. Accountants fresh out of college start at $60,000 a year. Seasoned people can earn six-figure salaries.
“I’m good,” said the entrepreneur, whose real talent lies not in research but in making cryptic financial transactions understandable to judges and juries.
When investment bank Credit Suisse First Boston wanted to convince a judge it was not culpable in the Enron debacle, it hired Johnson. He and his financial investigators followed the money trail. Credit Suisse won.
He worked for the defense of one of the families that had invested hundreds of millions of dollars over several decades in Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. When a court-appointed trustee wanted the family to give back the earnings, Johnson helped the family reach a compromise that significantly reduced the trustee’s take.
Occasionally Johnson loses.
For five days on behalf of a big accounting firm, he provided testimony that involved lots of complicated math. The jury ruled against Johnson’s client, resulting in a $150 million payout. But even that had a silver lining: The opposing attorneys hired him for their future cases.
Equine enthusiast
Johnson is flashy, especially for a buttoned-down profession such as accounting.
He owns 100 thoroughbred racehorses that he keeps on his 275-acre farm in Loudoun County, not far from Middleburg. He built his own racetrack. He also has a home on Florida’s Gold Coast.
Although the horse-racing business barely breaks even after expenses, the Prince George’s County native follows his ponies to upscale habitats like Saratoga Race Course in New York, Gulfstream Park in South Florida and Keeneland in Lexington, Ky.
His biggest home run, however, was far from the swells. Strike the Moon nailed a $400,000 purse in the relatively downscale environs of Charles T own, W.Va.
Johnson attended DeMatha Catholic High School, dreaming of being a basketball star. When he stopped growing, he transferred to Northwestern High School in Hyattsville. He studied accounting at the University of Maryland at College Park, where he graduated in 1968. He worked summers for $2.40 an hour installing elevators, thanks to his father, who was a construction supervisor for Otis Elevators.
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