cook the books

Definitions

1. To manipulate accounting information, especially illegally.
   idiomatic
2. To falsify an account of an event.
   broadly, idiomatic

Equivalents

Examples

“Enron Corp., once a major U.S. corporation, is now famous for cooking the books.”

“Those that cooked the books and presented them with bias minds; They sugar-coated the stories; and twisted and exaggerated events”

“Two years after he received his piece of the Nobel Prize, Mann was drawn into controversy over a series of e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom that some climate change⟳ skeptics charged provided proof that Mann and his fellow scientists were cooking the books on climate, though for what reason⟳, the skeptics never made clear.”

“One does suspect⟳ that the authors of Numbers cooked the books a bit to make⟳ the more important and respected tribes (Judah, for instance) look⟳ good with higher population numbers.”

CEFR level