In a startling reveal, the SEC has slammed accounting firm BF Borgers CPA PC and its head honcho, Benjamin F. Borgers, with charges of fraudulent activities that rocked over 1,500 SEC filings. In what seems like a betrayal of monumental proportions, the SEC has detailed out how this firm, tasked with the sacred duty of auditing, has played its trusting clientele for fools.
According to the heavy-hitting release from the Securities and Exchange Commission, the duo of BF Borgers and Benjamin Borgers orchestrated an elaborate scheme that flagrantly ignored PCAOB rules. It was a continuous spiral of deception running rampant from January 2021 through June 2023, massively impacting the integrity of public company filings. Gurbir S. Grewal, the SEC's Director of Enforcement, pulled no punches in his critique. “Ben Borgers and his audit firm, BF Borgers, were responsible for one of the largest wholesale failures by gatekeepers in our financial markets,” he stated.
In response to the SEC’s scathing charges, BF Borgers is shelling out $12 million in civil penalties, with Benjamin Borgers himself coughing up another $2 million. The settlement boots them from practicing as accountants before the Commission. It's a one-way ticket out of the industry, and it's effective immediately. The SEC's investigation turned up some serious dirt, exposing that a staggering 75 percent of the filings, from a sample of 369 BF Borgers clients, were riddled with audits that didn't measure up to standards. Benjamin Borgers directed his staff to cook up audit docs by simply changing dates from previous records as if they were fresh out of the oven.
The regulatory body also found that BF Borgers's so-called "planning meetings" were nothing but a work of fiction, and the sign-off by Benjamin Borgers and quality reviewers is a systematic fabrication of documents that are supposed to steer the financial world clear of catastrophe. BF Borgers and the big man himself, have now been ordered to cease and desist from committing or causing violations of the federal securities laws they once trampled.
