My firm routinely advises clients to use that rule to spot fraud - among many other methods - so it would be depressing if they didn't use it themselves on the accounts they audit and sign off... And yet not surprising.
Yes, the less inept firms will have been using the law to file their fraudulent accounts for a long time, so what this trend means is that fraud has become mainstream faster than the knowledge of how to hide it from this simple and well-known test. It means we need a lot more market regulation, to discover and punish the fraud that is becoming rampant.
http://www.metafilter.com/108377/Corporate-fraud-Benfords-law#3974339
And yet not surprising.