The company subsequently dismissed KPMG and hired PricewaterhouseCoopers to audit its 2001 financial statements. Xerox's accountant troubles date to June 2000,when the company acknowledged that its Mexican businesses had committed accounting fraud. Xerox fired the Mexican executives it deemed responsible and conducted an internal investigation that, it said, confirmed that the fraud had not extended beyond Mexico. But the S.E.C. did not take the company's word for it and began its own inquiry. The accounting scandals could not have come at a worse time. Competitors like Canon and Ricoh had been making huge inroads into the market for superfast copiers -- a high-margin market that Xerox once dominated -- while Xerox was having little luck unseating anyone in the market for low-end printers. The company's sales force, which had been reorganized along industry rather than geographic lines, was in disarray.