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In what is sure to be an extremely embarrassing occurrence for Trump Media and Technology Group (NASDAQ: DJT), the SEC has now charged the company's audit firm with "deliberate and systemic failures to comply with Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) standards in its audits and reviews incorporated in more than 1,500 SEC filings from January 2021 through June 2023."
Trump Media and Technology Group engaged BF Borgers for the first time in January 2022 for a fee of $150,000 to perform its first annual audit. The firm is currently slated to perform an audit of Trump Media's consolidated financial statements for the 2024 financial year.
Coming back, the SEC has concluded that BF Borgers fabricated "audit documentation to make it appear that the firm’s work did comply with PCAOB standards." The SEC's press release notes:
"BF 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."
As another example of misconduct, the press release cites:
"Among other things, the workpapers regularly documented purported planning meetings – required to discuss a client’s business and consider any potential risk areas – that never occurred and falsely represented that both Benjamin Borgers, as the partner in charge of the engagement, and an engagement quality reviewer had reviewed and approved the work."
In order to settle these charges, BF Borgers will pay a fine of $12 million, while Benjamin Borgers has agreed to pay a civil penalty of $2 million. Moreover, both respondents will be permanently barred from carrying out accounting and audit-related functions.
Today's development has predictably hammered Trump Media and Technology Group's shares, with the stock currently down around 5 percent.
This upheaval comes at a time when Trump Media and Technology Group is waging a crusade of sorts against illegal short-sellers, going so far as to write letters to the US House of Representative's Committee on the Judiciary, Committee on Financial Services, Committee on Ways and Means, and Committee on Oversight and Reform into this brewing controversy, urging them to investigate the stock's persistent inclusion in the so-called threshold list.
About the author: Writing is my one incontrovertible passion. Over the past six years, he has authored over 2,200 distinct articles on financial and tech-related topics, spanning nearly 1 million words. And he has been a member of Wcctech mobile team since 2025. As an alumnus of the University of Toronto, Rotman Commerce Program, I bring nuance, in-depth knowledge, and a unique perspective to every topic that I cover. When I'm not writing, I'm traveling the world, exploring hidden confectionaries and restaurants as an aspiring food connoisseur.
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