The former BF Borgers office at 5400 W. Cedar Ave. in Lakewood in seen on Tuesday, June 11, 2024. (Justin Wingerter/BusinessDen)
An auditing firm in Lakewood that federal regulators closed last month for allegedly perpetrating a wide-scale fraud is now being sued by some of its former clients.
BF Borgers and its owner, Ben Borgers, were charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on May 3 with failing to properly audit the public companies that were their clients and instead filing hundreds of false audit reports between 2021 and 2023.
The SEC called it “one of the largest wholesale failures by gatekeepers in our financial markets.” To settle the charges, the firm agreed to pay a $12 million fine, Ben Borgers agreed to pay a $2 million fine and both agreed to stop appearing before the SEC as accountants.
“Thanks to the painstaking work of the SEC staff, Borgers and his sham audit mill have been permanently shut down,” the SEC’s Gurbir Grewal said in a press release then.
Among the 370 clients that BF Borgers worked for between 2021 and 2023 was Electronic Servitor Publication Network, a digital marketing firm in Minneapolis, according to a lawsuit that public company filed in Jefferson County District Court at the end of May.
ESPN said that it paid $98,000 for audits that had to be entirely redone by another firm, at a cost of $96,000, after Borgers’ audit reports were found to have been fraudulent.
So, the marketing firm is suing BF Borgers and Ben Borgers for negligence, deceptive trade practices, breach of contract and unjust enrichment. Its complaint is a class-action lawsuit that it hopes will include hundreds of other companies allegedly defrauded by Borgers.
Attempts to contact BF Borgers and Ben Borgers were not successful this week and an attorney has not entered an appearance for them in ESPN’s case. When it was sued by a consultant in Boulder for unpaid invoices early last year, BF Borgers ignored that lawsuit and was ordered by a judge in Golden to pay $27,000. A year later, it has not paid that judgment.
ESPN is represented by attorney Alexander Hood with the Towards Justice firm in Denver.
The former BF Borgers office at 5400 W. Cedar Ave. in Lakewood in seen on Tuesday, June 11, 2024. (Justin Wingerter/BusinessDen)
An auditing firm in Lakewood that federal regulators closed last month for allegedly perpetrating a wide-scale fraud is now being sued by some of its former clients.
BF Borgers and its owner, Ben Borgers, were charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on May 3 with failing to properly audit the public companies that were their clients and instead filing hundreds of false audit reports between 2021 and 2023.
The SEC called it “one of the largest wholesale failures by gatekeepers in our financial markets.” To settle the charges, the firm agreed to pay a $12 million fine, Ben Borgers agreed to pay a $2 million fine and both agreed to stop appearing before the SEC as accountants.
“Thanks to the painstaking work of the SEC staff, Borgers and his sham audit mill have been permanently shut down,” the SEC’s Gurbir Grewal said in a press release then.
Among the 370 clients that BF Borgers worked for between 2021 and 2023 was Electronic Servitor Publication Network, a digital marketing firm in Minneapolis, according to a lawsuit that public company filed in Jefferson County District Court at the end of May.
ESPN said that it paid $98,000 for audits that had to be entirely redone by another firm, at a cost of $96,000, after Borgers’ audit reports were found to have been fraudulent.
So, the marketing firm is suing BF Borgers and Ben Borgers for negligence, deceptive trade practices, breach of contract and unjust enrichment. Its complaint is a class-action lawsuit that it hopes will include hundreds of other companies allegedly defrauded by Borgers.
Attempts to contact BF Borgers and Ben Borgers were not successful this week and an attorney has not entered an appearance for them in ESPN’s case. When it was sued by a consultant in Boulder for unpaid invoices early last year, BF Borgers ignored that lawsuit and was ordered by a judge in Golden to pay $27,000. A year later, it has not paid that judgment.
ESPN is represented by attorney Alexander Hood with the Towards Justice firm in Denver.
