CUC (Comp-U-Card) International Inc. was a membership-based consumer services conglomerate with travel, shopping, auto, dining, home improvement and financial services offered to more than 60 million customers worldwide based in Stamford, Connecticut, USA, and founded in 1973 by Kirk Shelton and Walter Forbes. In 1998, it became involved in a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into what, at the time, was the biggest accounting scandal in corporate history. History Their main product, a shopping service, originally a membership telephone-based drop-ship service called Comp-U-Card begun in 1973, was made available online to users of The Source in the mid-1980s, and later CompuServe after its purchase of The Source. It later offered its Shoppers Advantage service on America Online, Prodigy, GEnie and Delphi as well. It was perhaps the first company conducting electronic commerce, although its web based service first went online in 1995. CUC's main line of operations was its mail-order clubs such as Shopper’s Advantage, AutoVantage, Traveler’s Advantage and its Comp-U-Card program, and it had been trying to find a way to streamline its clubs and sell retail through a kind of interactive television. In an age before the internet and sites such as Amazon.com, this idea was innovative. CUC went through various company presidents and lost a lot of money during the 1970s. By 1979, it was losing more than $2 million a year. By 1983, Forbes and his company had found investors such as Reader's Digest and Eckerd Drugs but had lost nearly $14 million. After licensing their "interactive shopping" idea in Europe, the Morgan Stanley group took CUC public in the United States in 1983 and raised $20 million. During the 1980s and early 1990s, CUC continued to grow and acquire other companies. It made strategic deals with other entertainment, communication, retail and investment companies such as America Online and AT&T. and grew to have over 30 million customers via its mail order clubs. CUC did not make any large acquisitions until 1995. Before that time, all acquisitions were relatively small and strategic. In February 1996, seeking to expand its operations into the field of interactive entertainment, CUC approached the software companies Sierra On-Line Inc. and Davidson & Associates Inc. It bought Sierra for $1.5 billion and Davidson for $1.6 billion, both in stock. These acquisitions allowed CUC, as a larger outlet, to streamline its distribution network. In addition, product placements and advertisements in these software companies'