By the early 1990s, Forbes had built CUC into a $2 billion direct-marketing company with more than 50 million members buying from a database of more than 250,000 products.
Forbes' tenure as CEO ended in 1997 when CUC merged with HFS Inc. to form Cendant Corporation.
After the merger, in April 1998, Cendant uncovered accounting improprieties at CUC which resulted in one of the largest financial scandals of the 1990s.Forbes was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey.
After two mistrials where jurors deadlocked,[5] he was convicted in a third trial of one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and two counts of making false statements, for inflating reported incomes for the Cendant Corporation, when he was Chief Executive Officer of that company in the 1990s, and at its predecessor company CUC International.
On 2007 January 17, the 64-year-old Forbes was sentenced to over 12 years in prison, and ordered to make restitution amounting to $3.28 billion.