Option Backdating

This form of garden-variety financial fraud appears surprisingly common:

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed: Option Backdating: Tech is the Worst Offender: A new paper by Eric Lie and Randall Herron on stock option backdating is going to get lots of attention. Among other things, it says that almost 30% of companies have used backdated options. I was particularly fond of the following table showing the worst backdating offenders stratified along various dimensions -- and tech is well out in front...