Shares of Indian IT outsourcing giant Satyam Computer Services (NYSE: SAY) got pummeled this morning, after Chairman B. Ramalinga Raju admitted that the company's books are cooked.

It's not pretty. Satyam's balance sheet cash is inflated by the rupees equivalent of more than $1 billion, as the result of several years of inflated profits.

"It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten," Raju confesses in a note to the company's board, presumably unaware of the chairman's number-crunching trickery. Fearing that the gaps would become public under a buyout -- and the stock had risen yesterday on newspaper reports that it was an acquisition target -- Raju came clean.

(Motley Fool)