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Misrepresentations

This archive displays posts tagged as relevant to fraudulent misrepresentations in financial transactions and financial markets. You may also be interested in the following pages:

Page 56 of 60

August 8, 2014

The SEC charged Bahamas-based brokerage firm Alliance Investment Management Limited (AIM) and its president Julian R. Brown with misrepresenting themselves as the “custodian” for assets under the management of hedge fund manager Nikolai Battoo when they did not have such custody.  They also allowed Battoo to create false account statements on AIM letterhead that vastly overstated the value of investors’ assets by more than $150 million.  Brown and AIM then routinely provided the false account statements to auditors and others acting on behalf of Battoo’s investors.  SEC

Tagged in: Misrepresentations, Regulatory Violations, Securities Fraud,

August 8, 2014

The SEC charged New York-based brokerage firm Crucible Capital Group and its founder Charles “Chuck” Moore for allegedly violating net capital requirements and falsifying books and records to conceal the capital deficiencies.  According to the SEC, they attempted to disguise the firm’s extensive net capital insufficiencies by improperly off-loading its liabilities onto the books of an affiliated firm and improperly treating non-marketable stock as an allowable asset.  Moore went so far as to try to hide Crucible’s true financial condition from SEC examiners by providing them doctored invoices that sought to mask the extent of those liabilities.  SEC

Tagged in: Misrepresentations, Regulatory Violations, Securities Fraud,

August 7, 2014

The SEC charged Anthony G. Blumberg, the former CEO of a broker-dealer subsidiary of ConvergEx Group LLC, with deceiving brokerage customers with hidden fees to buy and sell securities.  According to the SEC, the scheme entailed concealing the practice of routing orders to an offshore affiliate in Bermuda to add mark-ups or mark-downs.  The hidden fees known as “trading profits” were in addition to and often much higher than the commissions paid by customers to have their orders executed.  The charges against Blumberg follow those announced in December by the SEC against three ConvergEx subsidiaries that agreed to pay more than $107 million and admit wrongdoing to settle the matter.  SEC

Tagged in: Misrepresentations, Regulatory Violations, Securities Fraud,

August 4, 2014

The SEC charged Houston-based oil-and-gas exploration and production company Houston American Energy Corp. and its CEO John F. Terwilliger with making fraudulent claims about the company’s oil reserves.  According to the SEC, Terwilliger and his company fraudulently claimed that a Colombian exploration concession in which Houston American only owned a fractional interest held between 1 billion and 4 billion barrels of oil reserves, and that the reserves were worth more than $100 per share to Houston American’s investors.  SEC

Tagged in: Misrepresentations, Securities Fraud,

July 31, 2014

LA-based broker Michael A. Horowitz agreed to pay more than $850,000 to settle charges he participated in a variable annuities scheme designed to profit from the imminent deaths of the terminally ill.  As part of his scheme, he deceived his own brokerage firm to obtain the approvals he needed to sell the annuities and generate hefty sales commissions.  He also falsified various broker-dealer forms used by firms to conduct investment suitability reviews, causing some insurance companies to unwittingly issue variable annuities they may not have sold otherwise.  SEC

Tagged in: Misrepresentations, Regulatory Violations, Securities Fraud,

July 29, 2014

The SEC charged penny stock company MSGI Technology Solutions and its CEO J. Jeremy Barbera with defrauding investors by touting a joint venture to develop and manage solar energy farms across the country on land purportedly owned by an electricity provider operated by Christopher Plummer.  Barbera and Plummer co-authored press releases falsely portraying MSGI as a successful renewable energy company on the brink of profitable solar energy projects.  However, MSGI had no operations, customers, or revenue at the time, and Plummer’s company did not actually possess any of the assets or financing needed to develop the purported solar energy farms.  SEC

Tagged in: Misrepresentations, Securities Fraud,

July 18, 2014

The SEC charged Christopher Plummer, a serial con artist and Lex M. Cowsert, the CEO of penny stock company CytoGenix, with misleading investors in a supposed vaccine development company by issuing false press releases portraying it as a successful venture when it was in fact a failing enterprise.  Specifically, the government alleged that Plummer and Cowsert teamed up to defraud investors with extravagant claims about the company’s revenues flowing from a “shared revenue agreement” with Franklin Power & Light, an electricity provider supposedly operated by Plummer.  However, Plummer’s entity was a complete sham and CytoGenix had actually lost all its vaccine patents and other intellectual property in a lawsuit.  SEC

Tagged in: Misrepresentations, Securities Fraud,

July 17, 2014

The SEC charged the CEO and president of a supposed merchant banking firm, braxas “A.J.” Discala and Marc E. Wexler, with teaming up with brokers and the CEO of the medical education company CodeSmart, Ira Shapiro, to inflate the price of the company’s stock and profit at the expense of the brokers’ customers.  According to the SEC, they acquired 3 million restricted shares of CodeSmart stock following its reverse merger into a public shell company in May 2013, and improperly flooded the market with the shares as though they were unrestricted.  CodeSmart’s stock price crashed from a peak of nearly $7 per share to where it is currently trading at below 10 cents.  SEC

Tagged in: Market Manipulation and Trading Violations, Misrepresentations, Securities Fraud,

July 16, 2014

The SEC charged Natural Blue Resources Inc. with concealing from investors that two lawbreakers actually ran the company.  According to the SEC, the company was to create, acquire, or otherwise invest in environmentally-friendly companies.  What investors didn’t know was that two individuals with prior fraud violations — James E. Cohen and Joseph Corazzi — secretly controlled the operational and management decisions of Natural Blue while calling themselves outside “consultants.”  SEC

Tagged in: Environmental Fraud, Misrepresentations, Regulatory Violations, Securities Fraud,

June 23, 2014

The SEC charged hedge fund advisory firm Weston Capital Asset Management LLC and its founder and president Albert Hallac with illegally draining more than $17M from a hedge fund they managed and transferred the money to a consulting and investment firm known as Swartz IP Services Group Inc.  The transaction went against the hedge fund’s stated investment strategy and wasn’t disclosed to investors, who received account statements falsely portraying that their investment was performing as well or even better than before.  Weston Capital and Hallac agreed to settle the SEC’s charges with monetary sanctions to be determined at a later date.  SEC

Tagged in: Misrepresentations, Securities Fraud,

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