Friday, May 3, 2024 -The auditing firm for Trump Media and the auditor’s owner were charged Friday, May 3, with “massive fraud” by the Securities and Exchange Commission for work that affected more than 1,500 SEC filings, the federal regulator announced.
The auditor, BF
Borgers CPA, and its owner Benjamin Borgers have agreed to be
permanently suspended from practising as accountants before the SEC, and also
agreed to pay a combined $14 million in civil penalties, without admitting or
denying the allegations, the SEC said.
The agency, calling BF Borgers a “sham
audit mill,” said the company and its owner engaged in “deliberate and systemic
failures to comply with Public Company Accounting Oversight Board ... standards
in its audits and reviews incorporated in more than 1,500 SEC filings from
January 2021 through June 2023,” according to a press release.
BF Borgers during that same time acted as
the auditor for Trump Media, which was then privately held and moving toward a
planned merger with the publicly traded shell company Digital World Acquisition
Corp.
Trump Media and DWAC finalized that merger
in late March 2024, leading to Trump Media becoming publicly traded under the
DJT ticker.
The SEC said
the Lakewood, Colorado-based BF Borgers and its owner were charged with falsely
telling clients that the auditor’s work would comply with PCAOB standards,
fabricating audit documents to make it seem that the work did comply with those
standards, and “falsely stating in audit reports included in more than 500
public company SEC filings that the firm’s audits complied with PCAOB
standards,” the release said.
“Ben Borgers and his audit firm, BF
Borgers, were responsible for one of the largest wholesale failures by
gatekeepers in our financial markets,” SEC Enforcement Division Director Gurbir
Grewal said in a statement.
“As a result of their fraudulent conduct,
they not only put investors and markets at risk by causing public companies to
incorporate non-compliant audits and reviews into more than 1,500
filings with the Commission but also undermined trust and confidence
in our markets,” Grewal said.
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