Kenneth L. Creal, CPA

Ken Creal was born and raised in the South Bay, and also raised his family in the area. In 1975, he graduated from the University of Southern California with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Accounting. He passed all parts of the Uniform CPA exam at his first sitting in May 1975. Upon graduating, Ken was employed for several years with a Big Eight firm as a Senior Auditor, responsible for all facets of audit engagements including planning, supervision and financial reporting.

In 1978, he became a California licensed Certified Public Accountant and partnered a practice with his brothers in Hawthorne.

In 1982, Ken made the decision to move his offices to Torrance and became a sole proprietor. Since then, Ken has grown his practice into a small corporation with degreed and licensed accountants, enrolled agents and experienced support staff who serve over 600 individual clients and nearly 200 small businesses and trusts in the Southern California. His services include financial accounting, taxation, and litigation support services; his clients include construction contractors, physicians, escrow trust companies, radio broadcasting, manufacturing, wholesale, retail sales, service, technology, and real estate partnerships and brokerage offices.

In 2003, Ken was asked to perform a forensic audit of a $20M bond fund on behalf of the Board of a Southern California school district. His previous forensic work dating back to 1980 was primarily related to family law, so the request by the school board sparked a deeper interest in forensic matters outside the family law area. Shortly after the forensic audit, Ken was asked to assess wage & hour damages for a putative class of over 2,500 employees working in oil fields in central California. From there, the forensic side of his practice has grown dramatically.

Ken has testified or provided declarations or expert reports in over 200 cases involving the economic damages in wrongful termination cases, business litigation, shareholder and partner disputes, wage & hour claims, employee commission disputes, and embezzlements. He has also testified or provided reports in cases involving fraudulent conveyances, loan sharking, securities fraud, and the application of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. He’s provided expert damage analyses in more than 60 wage & hour class action law suits – some with over 10,000 affected employees. He has testified on numerous occasions before the Superior Court of the State of California in the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Kern, Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Ventura, as well as Arizona Superior Court in Maricopa County, Arizona. Ken has also testified as an expert in U.S. District Court, both Central and Southern Districts, and as served as a court appointed referee in business litigation in Ventura County.

Ken has also testified at binding arbitrations and also regularly attends mediations with clients involved in litigation. He has also served as a joint expert in wage & hour class actions and has also served as a claims administrator in a wage & hour class action. He has also served as a contractor to the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board on several occasions to provide economic analyses for “make-whole” calculations in cases before the Board.

Additionally, Ken has been a guest lecturer at the 2007 Vermont State Auditor’s Conference on the topic of forensic accounting, and has lectured on several occasions at Chapman University School of Law in its L.L.M. program..