TThe Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday accused the accounting firm of former President Donald Trump’s social media company of “massive fraud” after an investigation found “deliberate and systemic failures” to comply with auditing standards. from the USA.
According to the SEC, BF Borgers and its owner Benjamin Borger allegedly fabricated documents and falsely represented to clients that their audit work would comply with accounting rules following a review of more than 1,500 SEC filings from 2021 to 2023. The Colorado-based company and its owner agreed to pay a combined total of $14 million to settle the allegations and was ordered to stop filing audited returns on behalf of his clients, which include Trump’s social media company.
“Ben Borgers and his auditing firm, BF Borgers, were responsible for one of the largest wholesale failures by gatekeepers in our financial markets,” SEC Director of Enforcement Gurbir Grewal said in a statement. “Not only have they put investors and markets at risk by causing public companies to incorporate non-compliant audits and analyzes into more than 1,500 filings with the Commission, but they have also undermined confidence in our markets.”
The regulator said it discovered that the audit firm sometimes copied work from previous audits and simply changed the relevant dates, passing them off as working papers for a current audit period. BF Borgers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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The SEC has not made any allegations of wrongdoing against the former president or Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of the Truth Social platform, which has been a client of BF Borgers since 2022, according to regulatory filings. Trump Media was a private company for most of that time, suggesting that its records were not among those investigated as part of the SEC’s review. The company went public in March.
A Trump Media spokesperson said in a statement that the company “looks forward to working with new audit partners in accordance with today’s SEC order.” Trump Media saw its share price fall 5% on Friday morning but has since recovered slightly.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
