Nobody does a billion dollar deal without a very thorough investigation. They do this even when you're hiring someone, imagine for deals like this. It would be virtually impossible to fake everything needed for a deal of this size to go through.
The article is about a company which fell for a fraud like this. They did not lose a lot of money, but they lost a lot of credibility. I, for one, found it interesting that all the investigation and due diligence didn't catch the fraud before investor relations published their press release. The checks and balances definitely failed in this instance, and I am sure this is not the worst case of such fraud in the history.
