►EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1) $400K OF REAL EXPENSES BURIED ON THE BALANCE SHEET — AND NOBODY NOTICED: Seller was booking rent, travel, phones, and COGS as capital expenditures to remove them from the income statement. The result? EBITDA looked like $600K. Reality was $200K. That's a 67% overstatement designed to survive a lazy QoE. 2) MOST QOE PROVIDERS LIVE ON THE INCOME STATEMENT — THAT'S WHERE SELLERS WANT THEM: If your provider doesn't love the balance sheet, they'll miss the oldest trick in the book. CapEx lines growing year over year in a marketing company with no major assets? That's not investment — that's expense laundering. 3) BUY THIS DEAL WITHOUT CATCHING IT AND YOU'RE BANKRUPT IN MONTHS: My client would have paid a multiple on $600K SDE for a business that actually earned $200K. The cash wouldn't have lasted a quarter. If nobody's cross-referencing the balance sheet against the P&L, you're buying a time bomb.