To Green Mountain Coffee Roasters: My Questions for Today's Earnings Call (updated)

Update: After publishing the blog post below, I sent another email to Kathleen Shaffer from Green Mountain's investor relations alerting her to my questions. According to my Active Meter, Site Meter, and Google Analytics software, Green Mountain read this blog post 12 times before Thursday's conference call with investors and ignored my requests to participate in the call and for it to answer certain questions about its accounting errors.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (NASDAQ: GMCR) is scheduled to hold a conference call with investors and analysts today at 5:30 PM ET to discuss the status of an informal SEC inquiry, its restatement of financial reports from 2007 to 2010 due to certain accounting errors, and its "financial results for its fiscal 2010 fourth quarter and full year."

In a previous blog post, I raised certain issues:

To truly exonerate itself after the discovery of certain material violations of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (NASDAQ: GMCR) needs to come clean with investors and disclose exactly when it found certain accounting errors. In addition, Green Mountain needs to provide clearer and more transparent disclosures to investors about the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) inquiry and the discovery of those errors.

I sent the following email to Green Mountain's investor relations contact requesting that I participate with other investors and analysts in the conference call and that I be permitted to ask certain questions:

From: Sam E. Antar

Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2010 2:02 AM

To: 'Investor.Services@GMC...

Subject: Request Re Earnings Conference Call

Importance: High

Dear Kathleen Shaffer:

As you probably know, I have been closely covering events concerning Green Mountain Coffee in my blog. Please send me information on how I can dial in and listen to the live call via telephone, rather than listen to the live webcast. In the interest of transparency, I respectfully request that I be permitted to ask 2 or 3 questions during the Q & A.

Respectfully,

Sam E. Antar

I have not heard back from Green Mountain. Therefore, I am posting my questions here:

Question 1:
When did Green Mountain initially identify any weaknesses in internal controls and procedures which caused its recently disclosed accounting errors and led to its restatement of financial reports?

Question 2:
Please explain why the SEC Division of Corporation Finance was concerned about Green Mountain's "control and procedures" disclosures in its 2008 and 2009 10-K reports and why the company had to revise those disclosures?

Question 3:
Please explain why Green Mountain's margin error did not specifically meet any of the materiality criteria under SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 99 and why the company initially considered its margin error to be an "immaterial accounting error."

If Green Mountain is truly interested in transparency, they will answer my questions.

Written by:

Sam E. Antar

Disclosure

I am a convicted felon and a former CPA. As the criminal CFO of Crazy Eddie, I helped my cousin Eddie Antar and other members of his family mastermind one of the largest securities frauds uncovered during the 1980's. I committed my crimes in cold-blood for fun and profit, and simply because I could.

If it weren't for the heroic efforts of the FBI, SEC, Postal Inspector's Office, US Attorney's Office, and class action plaintiff's lawyers who investigated, prosecuted, and sued me, I would still be the criminal CFO of Crazy Eddie today.

There is a saying, "It takes one to know one." Today, I work very closely with the FBI, IRS, SEC, Justice Department, and other federal and state law enforcement agencies in training them to identify and catch white-collar criminals. Often, I refer cases to them. I teach about white-collar crime for professional organizations, businesses, and colleges and universities.

Recently, I exposed GAAP violations by Overstock.com which caused the company to restate its financial reports for the third time in three years. The SEC is now investigating Overstock.com and its CEO Patrick Byrne for securities law violations (Details here, here, and here).

I do not seek or want forgiveness for my vicious crimes from my victims. I plan on frying in hell with other white-collar criminals for a very long time.

I do not own any Green Mountain Coffee Roasters or Overstock.com securities long or short. My investigations of these companies is a freebie for securities regulators to get me into heaven, though I doubt I will ever get there. My past sins are unforgivable.