The SEC has charged the auditors of Bernard Madoff’s broker-dealer firm with committing securities fraud by falsely representing that they had conducted legitimate audits, when in fact they had not. The SEC announced today that it has filed a complaint in the SDNY alleging that from 1991 through 2008, certified public accountant David G. Friehling and his firm, Friehling & Horowitz, CPAs, P.C. (F&H), purported to audit financial statements and disclosures of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (BMIS).
The SEC alleges, however, that
Friehling enabled Madoff’s Ponzi scheme by falsely stating, in annual audit reports, that F&H audited BMIS financial statements pursuant to Generally Accepted Auditing Standards (GAAS), including the requirements to maintain auditor independence and perform audit procedures regarding custody of securities.
F&H also made representations that BMIS financial statements were presented in conformity with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and that Friehling reviewed internal controls at BMIS, including controls over the custody of assets, and found no material inadequacies. According to the SEC’s complaint, Friehling knew that BMIS regularly distributed the annual audit reports to Madoff customers and that the reports were filed with the SEC and other regulators.
The SEC alleges that all of the above statements were materially false because Friehling and F&H did not perform a meaningful audit of BMIS, and did not perform procedures to confirm that the securities BMIS purportedly held on behalf of its customers even existed. Rather, the SEC claims
Friehling merely pretended to conduct minimal audit procedures of certain accounts to make it seem like he was conducting an audit, and then failed to document his purported findings and conclusions as required under GAAS. If properly stated, those financial statements, along with BMIS related disclosures regarding reserve requirements, would have shown that BMIS owed tens of billions of dollars in additional liabilities to its customers and was therefore insolvent.
Read the SEC’s Litigation Release
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