You can’t be too careful out there! Fraud is a risk in every area of finance — even the auditor hired to analyze data and file truthful reports may be cutting corners.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged a Colorado auditor with violating multiple Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) standards in more than 1,500 filings to the SEC between 2021 and 2023. Ben Borgers and his firm BF Borgers allegedly mismanaged financial reports for more than 300 clients.
One of Borgers’ clients was Trump Media & Technology Group. Trump’s company launched the social media platform Truth Social after he was banned from Twitter in 2021. The SEC may have been investigating Trump and took a close look at Borgers’ books.
Auditor Played Fast & Loose With Paperwork
The SEC charged BF Borgers with falsely representing to clients that its work complied with PCAOB standards and fabricating audit documentation. Investigators found the CPA:
- failed to adequately supervise and review the work of the team performing audits and reviews
- didn’t properly prepare and maintain audit workpapers, and
- failed to obtain engagement quality reviews required for audit reports.
Borgers’ staff “copied workpapers from previous engagements for their clients, changing only the relevant dates, and then passed them off as workpapers for the current audit period. … [Workpapers also] documented purported planning meetings – required to discuss a client’s business and consider any potential risk areas – that never occurred,” the SEC found. Commission enforcement chief Gurbir Grewal called the actions “one of the largest wholesale failures by gatekeepers in our financial markets.”
The SEC banned Borgers and his company from ever participating in an audit again. Borgers is also on the hook for $14 million in fines.
Did Borgers’ clients overlook an obvious red flag? The “Meet Our Team” page on the BF Borgers website is all about Ben and no one else. His career bio goes into a lot of unnecessary detail regarding every job he held, and even lists his many hobbies.
