Archive

September 30, 2022

In order to settle charges of failing to perform proper audits of a company committing fraud, audit firm RSM US LLP has been ordered to pay $3.75 million and retain an independent consultant, while partners Steven Kirn and Richard Condon, and senior audit manager Michael Piqueira have agreed to be suspended for 1-3 years.  Over the four-year period in which RSM audited Revolution Lighting Technologies Inc., RSM allegedly failed to detect that the company was fraudulently inflating revenue with bill and hold sales in violation of accounting principles.  SEC

September 29, 2022

The Chinese affiliate of accounting firm Deloitte, known as Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Certified Public Accountants LLP, has agreed to pay a $20 million penalty and submit to extensive remedial measures for its failures to comply with fundamental U.S. auditing requirements in audits of companies listed on U.S. exchanges.  According to multiple SEC audits spanning multiple years, instead of properly reviewing client financial statements and internal controls, Deloitte-China had a practice of asking clients to select their own samples for testing and prepare their own audit documentation.  SEC

September 29, 2022

Barclays PLC and Barclays Bank PLC has agreed to pay $361 million following charges that they offered and sold an unprecedented $17.7 million in unregistered securities without setting up internal controls to track those transactions in real time.  The firms eventually self-reported to regulators and commenced a rescission offer.  SEC

September 29, 2022

CX Futures Exchange, L.P. has been ordered to pay $6.5 million and comply with certain conditions to settle charges of violating the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations.  The charges involved failing to comply with certain system safeguard regulations, failing to report certain data for over 200,000 options transactions, and falsely representing to CFTC staff that it was properly reporting such data.  CFTC

September 28, 2022

Alabama-based Regions Bank, which operates thousands of branches and ATMs across 16 states, has been ordered to pay $50 million to the CFPB’s victims relief fund and refund at least $141 million to customers, after the CFPB found it charged surprise overdraft fees to customers told they had sufficient funds.  Leadership was also found to have known about the illegal practice long before it ended in 2021, but chose to wait until they could make up the revenue, which made up 17.7% of their non-interest income, in other ways.  CFPB

September 27, 2022

Oracle Corporation has been ordered to pay more than $23 million to resolve charges that its subsidiaries in Turkey, the UAE, and India violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.  According to the SEC, between 2016 and 2019, the subsidiaries used slush funds to pay foreign officials and their families to attend international technology conferences in exchange for business.  Oracle India was previously sanctioned for similar charges in 2012.  SEC

September 27, 2022

Fifteen broker-dealers and one affiliated investment advisor has been ordered to pay combined penalties of more than $1.1 billion following SEC charges of violating the recordkeeping provision of securities laws.  Barclays, Bank of America (including Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith), Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and UBS each paid $125 million, while Jefferies and Nomura each paid $50 million and Cantor Fitzgerald paid $10 million, to settle charges of failing to prevent or preserve communications their employees made via messaging apps on their personal devices.  SEC

September 27, 2022

Eleven financial institutions—including Bank of America, Barclays, Cantor Fitzgerald, Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, Morgan Stanley, Nomura, and UBS—have been ordered to pay over $710 million total for violating CFTC recordkeeping and supervision requirements.  Each institution was found to have failed to prevent their employees from communicating both internally and externally about firm business using informal means, such as texts, Whatsapp, and Signal, and failed to preserve those communications.  The individual payments ranged from $100 million (Bank of America) to $6 million (Cantor Fitzgerald), with the majority of institutions ordered to pay $75 million.  CFTC

September 23, 2022

A man in Texas, James Clark Nix, has been sentenced to 48 years in federal prison after being found guilty of defrauding investors of at least $6 million in a Ponzi scheme spanning multiple decades.  Using his position as an accountant, Nix had promised investors—many of them his own friends—high interest returns of up to 10%, leading many to entrust him with their life’s savings.  USAO EDTX

September 22, 2022

The Boeing Company and its former CEO, Dennis A. Muilenburg, have agreed to pay $200 million and $1 million respectively, in order to resolve SEC charges of making materially misleading statements to investors following crashes of two 737 MAX planes in 2018 and 2019.  Despite knowing the MCAS system at fault would be an ongoing safety issue, Boeing and Muilenburg repeatedly assured investors and the public otherwise.  SEC