One of them, the papers say, was Steven Corso, a crooked accountant who, according to the defense, entrapped Mr. Eppolito in a federal drug case.

He springs back into action when the cliff-hugging mansion of a crooked book-cooking corporate accountant (Mr. Pollak) is simultaneously invaded by a posse of teenage punks and by a S.W.A.T. team of high-tech gangsters.

"Get out of my way, " the crooked accountant said.

Right now Morgan's security division was stretched pretty thinly defending the company from conventional threats - industrial sabotage, industrial espionage, crooked accountants, hotrod hackers infiltrating the datanet.

Their lawyers, however, say that the men were entrapped in the drug deal by a crooked accountant who became a government witness, and that the drug case is unrelated to the Mafia charges.

Episode 4 reaches beyond the ghetto of Italian-Americans to a louche Jewish milieu - the lavish wedding of the daughter of a crooked accountant who is a poker buddy and "friend" of Tony.

But the financial statements were phony, certified by a crooked accountant, and the money raised financed Mr. Hoffenberg's lavish lifestyle.

He played a crooked accountant in ITV's 1982 drama Muck and Brass, and later guest starred in BBC1's Jonathan Creek and Channel 4's Phoenix Nights.

A crooked company needs a crooked accountant, and a willing lawyer, to make the fraud stick.

It turns out that he is the mysterious Freddie Denmark; he is on his way to Kansas City to find the crooked accountant who got him into trouble with the IRS.