James Treacy was found guilty of securities fraud and conspiracy in a scheme which ran from 1997, in which prosecutors said Monster's management understated compensation by 9m (£223m) over nine years.Mr Treacy was accused of conspiring with other members of the management team to backdate option grants to staff between 19, and so falsely inflate the company's profits.Last week, federal judge threw out a criminal backdating complaint -- and a guilty plea -- relating to backdating allegations against Broadcom executives.And yesterday brought the second biggest backdating settlement of all time.But Apple makes clear that Jobs was directly involved in some instances of backdating.

There may not be a big firm associate alive that did not have the taks of investigating out how, when and why options were issued.After accounting for forfeitures, Apple was forced to recognize stock-based compensation expense of 5 million on a pretax basis that it hadn't done so previously.Apple has essentially blamed former chief financial officer Fred Anderson and former general counsel and board secretary Nancy Heinen, both of whom are no longer with the company.have led to the resignation of dozens of top executives and investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors. 29, Apple discussed the report and accounted for the impact of the earnings restatements in its 10-Q.But the options scandal has never touched a more exciting company than Apple or a more thrilling executive than Jobs. In June 2006, a special committee of Apple outside directors, chaired by former Vice President Al Gore, hired its own attorneys to investigate options backdating at the company. It turns out there were literally thousands of examples of backdating at Apple—6,428 options grants on 42 dates over a period of several years.In 2001, Monster reported a profit after tax of m, but in fact, after accounting for options expenses, it was .4m.In court, Mr Treacy's lawyers said he relied on Monster founder and chief executive Andrew Mc Kelvey and others to decide how to account for the options.