On July 29, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Office of the Whistleblower posted nineteen new Notices of Covered Actions (NoCAs). Each NoCAs signals that individuals may now submit whistleblower award applications for a specific enforcement action. One newly posted NoCA covers the recent $100 million penalty imposed on Ernst & Young LLP (EY).
On June 28, the SEC announced charges that EY audit professionals cheated on ethics exams and that EY withheld information from the SEC on the matter. The $100 million penalty imposed by the SEC is the largest ever for an auditing firm. The cheating scandal was internally revealed at EY by a whistleblower.
The SEC found that EY audit professionals cheated on CPA ethics exams “by using answer keys they had received from colleagues to pass exams and sharing answer keys with others,” according to the agency’s enforcement action. Furthermore, the SEC found that EY failed to disclose evidence of this misconduct to the SEC during an investigation into the matter.
“This action involves breaches of trust by gatekeepers within the gatekeeper entrusted to audit many of our Nation’s public companies. It’s simply outrageous that the very professionals responsible for catching cheating by clients cheated on ethics exams of all things,” said Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division, in a press release announcing the charges. “And it’s equally shocking that Ernst & Young hindered our investigation of this...
Several accounts -- run by users in Vietnam and boasting tens of thousands of followers -- later shifted to focus solely on Australian national politics, linking to websites full of AI-generated a...