In Pictures: Hard time, 10 Tech CEOs sent to the slammer

Frances Flood, ClearOne Communications

The revenues being generated by ClearOne Communications under the leadership of Frances Flood seemed too good to be true, and apparently they were. She was convicted of inflating revenue figures by shipping products with the stipulation that retailers didn’t have to pay until they sold them but booking them as sales anyway, a practice known as channel stuffing. That helped the audio and video conferencing company appear to meet revenue targets, at least for a while. Flood was charged with fraud and keeping false books in 2003, quite a comedown from the year before when Forbes named the company one of the top 100 publicly traded small companies. She was sentenced to four years in 2009.