Production of Email to DoL Auditor

[JWRB]

Per our subpoena, we need to produce a large amount of emails to an auditor; over a few hundred, easily.  How have you guys produced emails in the past?  I can pretty easily get the totality of messages in an mbox format, or .EML, but I'm concerned we're going to need to produce as PDFs, which is going to take an absurd amount of time since batch export to PDF, frankly, doesn't work well.  

I appreciate any input you all may have, as I'm getting pretty concerned.  Our email is housed with GMail, but I can import to Thunderbird pretty easily and export that way, as well.  Thunderbird doesn't export attachments with PDF, however.

[Karoline Curran]

That's a lot of emails.  I had a plan long ago that was audited and I had to produce some emails - but like 15 or 20. I just forwarded them in an email to the auditor as attachments after I'd saved them in a file. Not sure that helps you. Our email is Outlook.

[Mike Preston]

I recently went through this.  The DOL investigator (they aren't auditors) took an mbox format without blinking.  mbox includes all embedded attachments, doesn't it?

[JWRB]

Thanks everyone.  I'm really hoping the .mbox method works; I'll report back when I hear back.

[Lois Baker]

If you can import to Thunderbird, it does appear there's a way to save all emails as PDFs -- with attachments.:

https://www.coolutils.com/Thunderbird-PDF-Attachments

No endorsement here, but I did run a trial and it appears to work. 

Hope that helps.

[JWRB]

39 minutes ago, Lois Baker said:

If you can import to Thunderbird, it does appear there's a way to save all emails as PDFs -- with attachments.:

https://www.coolutils.com/Thunderbird-PDF-Attachments

No endorsement here, but I did run a trial and it appears to work. 

Hope that helps.

I actually did a trial with that and it kept failing, but thank you!  I'm hopeful we can find an easy way to pass these on without going through extra processes, but we shall see. 

[Kevin C]

Have you asked the person who sent the subpoena? He/she may be able to suggest an easier format to use.  I've found most IRS and DOL people to be pretty reasonable when the format they request for information causes problems. Most of them have horror stories about plan sponsors that do not cooperate and they appreciate those that do.

[BrooklynNorske]

Agree with Kevin C, ask the auditor

[JWRB]

We got the greenlight for the .mbox!  Thanks for the help, everyone.  This makes life a lot easier.

[austin3515]

Can I ask what this was about?  I have never heard of a DOL audit (aka Investigation) getting to this level. just curious was this like embezzlement or someone who forgot to send an SAR or somewhere in between!  Perhaps you're not at liberty to say which I understand...

[Mike Preston]

I'm not at liberty to give specifics, but it is much more likely to be the former.