The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed charges against BF Borgers, an auditing firm recently hired by Trump Media and Technology Group, for engaging in “massive fraud.” However, it is important to note that these charges are not related to any services provided to former President Donald Trump’s media company.
The SEC alleges that BF Borgers and its owner, Benjamin F. Borgers, committed deliberate and systematic failures in over 1,500 audits. These failures include non-compliance with accounting regulations, creating false documentation to conceal their deficiencies, and inaccurately claiming in audit reports that their work met the required standards.
In order to resolve the charges brought by the SEC, BF Borgers has consented to a penalty of $12 million, while its owner has agreed to pay a fine of $2 million, as stated by the SEC. A response from Benjamin Borgers regarding this matter was not received promptly.
Additionally, both BF Borgers and Benjamin Borgers have mutually agreed to immediate and permanent suspensions, which will prohibit them from engaging in any SEC-related accounting activities.
Trump Media named BF Borgers as its auditor on March 28, according to the company’s most recent annual report filing. The company disclosed at the time that BF Borgers had also handled its audits before the company went public by merging with a cash-rich shell company called Digital World Acquisition Corp.
In a statement, Trump Media said it “looks forward to working with new auditing partners in accordance with today’s SEC order.”
The SEC found that BF Borgers’ shortcuts included copying audit documentation from a previous year, changing relevant dates and then passing it off as current documentation. In addition to falsely documenting work that was never actually done, that fake documentation detailed planning meetings with clients that never occurred and “falsely represented” that both Benjamin Borgers and another reviewer had approved the audit work.
