cooking the books

Verb

cook the books (third-person singular simple present cooks the books, present participle cooking the books, simple past and past participle cooked the books)

1. (idiomatic) To manipulate accounting information, especially illegally.
   • Enron Corp., once a major U.S. corporation, is now famous for cooking the books.
2. (broadly, idiomatic) To falsify an account of an event.
   • Those that cooked the books and presented them with bias minds; They sugar-coated the stories; and twisted and exaggerated events2012, R.I. Iyemere, The Ordeals: Poems in Memory of Ada-Emilia Valmori, →ISBN, page 146