A Las Vegas based firm which failed to comply with Public Company Accounting Oversight Board standards and gave responsibility to students who were inadequately trained to carry out audits has been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Michael J.Moore and his firm Moore & Associates Chartered (M&A) allegedly issued unqualified audit reports which lacked further records as its employees had little or no knowledge of auditing procedures on the financial statements of their clients. Moore and M&A have not admitted or denied the allegations against them but are to settle its disciplinaries with the SEC and the PCAOB separately. Rosalind Tyson, director of the SEC's Los Angeles regional office said: 'Moore and M&A falsely stated that their audits were conducted in accordance with PCAOB standards when in fact their audits were so deficient that they amounted to no audits at all.' She add: 'Even when there were red flags that a client's financial statements were materially mis-stated, the firm did not perform any meaningful audit procedures.' According to the complaint filed with the SEC, some M&A staff had little or no guidance from the firm and one of its employees said that the training at the firm was 'defunct'. So far, Moore has agreed to pay a penalty of $13,000(£8,000)to the SEC among other charges and the PCAOB has set out in its disciplinary proceedings a bar to prevent Moore from being an associated person of a registered public accounting firm and revoke M&A's registration with the PCAOB.