On August 13, 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued an order instituting public administrative proceedings and imposing remedial sanctions against Olayinka Oyebola & Co (the “Firm”) and its Managing Partner and Chief Executive Officer Olayinka Temitope Oyebola (“Oyebola”) (together, the “Respondents”). The order suspends the Respondents from appearing or practicing before the Commission as an accountant with the right to apply for reinstatement six years from the date of the order. The order was issued pursuant to Rule 102(e)(3)(i) of the SEC's Rules of Practice, which authorizes the SEC to suspend accountants from appearing or practicing before the Commission, without a preliminary hearing, if they have been permanently enjoined in a court action brought by the SEC for misconduct.

Two days earlier, on August 11, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (“SDNY”) entered final consent judgments permanently enjoining the Respondents from future violations of the Securities Act and the Exchange Act, and ordering Respondents to each pay $100,000 (totaling $200,000) in civil monetary penalties. The Respondents consented to the entry of the final consent judgments without admitting or denying the allegations in the SEC’s civil complaint.

The SEC’s civil complaint, filed September 30, 2024, alleges that the Respondents were aware that one of their audit clients fraudulently filed audit reports “massively overstating” the value of three U.S. companies and that the audit reports contained forgeries of the Firm’s letterhead and Oyebola’s signature. The SEC also alleged that Respondents deliberately failed to report the misconduct to the client’s audit committee, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), and the SEC. Moreover, the SEC alleged that Oyebola misled the auditor of the client’s publicly traded parent company by misrepresenting the authenticity and source of certain forged bank records.

According to the SEC, the Respondents’ assistance enabled their audit client and its affiliated entities to carry out “a multi-year scheme to inflate financial performance metrics and defraud investors worldwide.”

The SEC’s order instituting public proceedings and imposing remedial sanctions is available here. The SEC’s Litigation Release on the SDNY Final Consent Judgements is available here.