Accountant booted from doing publicly traded work

CLEARWATER — Federal regulators suspended a pair of area audit firms and five accountants for bad audits.

The Clearwater-based firms, Messineo & Co. and DKM Certified Public Accountants, which merged in 2012, “performed deficient audits of public companies, jeopardized the independence of other audits, and falsified and backdated audit documents,” according to a statement from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

These are the penalties each firm and accountant faces, according to the SEC: