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Securities Fraud

This archive displays posts tagged as relevant to securities fraud. You may also be interested in the following pages:

Page 78 of 90

November 20, 2014

The SEC announced that Los Angeles-based broker-dealer Wedbush Securities agreed to settle a pending SEC case for market access violations by admitting wrongdoing, paying a $2.44M penalty.  The SEC’s order finds that Wedbush violated the market access rule by failing to have adequate risk controls in place before providing customers with access to the market, including some customer firms with thousands of essentially anonymous overseas traders.  SEC

November 20, 2014

The SEC suspended trading in four companies that claim to be developing products or services in response to the Ebola outbreak, citing a lack of publicly available information about the companies’ operations.  The SEC simultaneously issued an investor alert warning about the potential for fraud in microcap companies purportedly involved in Ebola prevention, testing, or treatment, noting that scam artists often exploit the latest crisis in the news cycle to lure investors into supposedly promising investment opportunities.  The companies whose trading was suspended were Bravo Enterprises Ltd., Immunotech Laboratories Inc.,Myriad Interactive Media Inc. and Wholehealth Products Inc.  SEC

November 17, 2014

The SEC charged three penny stock promoters Anthony Thompson, Jay Fung, and Eric Van Nguyen with conducting pump-and-dump schemes involving stocks they were touting in their supposedly independent newsletters for Blast Applications Inc., Smart Holdings Inc., Blue Gem Enterprise Inc., Lyric Jeans Inc.and Mass Hysteria Entertainment Company Inc.  According to the SEC, the defendants worked in coordinated fashion to gain control of a large portion of shares in the stock of these microcap companies and then hyped those stocks in newsletters they distributed to prospective investors.  After creating demand for the stock and increasing the value, they sold their holdings at the higher prices and earned significant profits.  Once they stopped their promotional efforts, the demand for the stocks subsided and the prices dropped, leaving investors who had purchased the promoters’ shares with significant losses.  The defendants allegedly conducted five separate schemes that resulted in more than $10M in ill-gotten gains.  SEC

November 17, 2014

The SEC charged Joseph A. Noel, CEO of San Francisco-based penny stock company YesDTC Holdings, with defrauding investors by issuing false and misleading press releases portraying his purported marketing and infomercial company as a successful venture in order to drive the stock price up while he covertly sold millions of shares into the public market for more than $300,000 in illicit profits. SEC

November 14, 2014

The SEC charged Wilfred T. Azar III, the owner of a Maryland-based real estate company Empire Corporation, with conducting an offering fraud and spending investor money on such personal expenses as his mortgage, country club dues, and season tickets to the Baltimore Ravens.  SEC

November 12, 2014

The SEC charged Pankaj Srivastava and Nataraj Kavuri, two India-based operators of an alleged high-yield investment scheme, with seeking to exploit investors through pervasive social media pitches on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.  According to the SEC, the two individuals offered “guaranteed” daily profits as they anonymously solicited investments for their purported investment management company called Profits Paradise, but the guaranteed returns were allegedly false and the investments being offered bore the hallmark of a fraudulent high-yield investment program.  SEC

November 6, 2014

The SEC charged California attorney Richard Weed behind a pump-and-dump scheme that defrauded investors in the Boston-based ticket brokering business CitySide Tickets, Inc.  According to the SEC, Weed created backdated promissory notes and authored false legal opinion letters that enabled Thomas Brazil and Coleman Flaherty to obtain millions of purportedly unrestricted shares of stock in the company.  Investors were then blitzed with a false and misleading promotional campaign touting CitySide Tickets as a budding national leader on the verge of acquiring smaller ticket firms across the country and positioning itself as an attractive takeover target for Ticketmaster.  As the company’s stock price increased on the false hype, Brazil and Flaherty sold their shares to unsuspecting investors for illicit proceeds of approximately $3M.  Shortly thereafter, the market for CitySide Tickets stock collapsed and the company eventually went out of business.  SEC  

November 6, 2014

The SEC charged the City of Allen Park, Michigan and two former city leaders, former mayor Gary Burtka and former city administrator Eric Waidelich, in connection with a municipal bond offering to support a movie studio project within the city.  An SEC investigation found that offering documents provided to investors during the Detroit suburb’s sale of $31 million in general obligation bonds contained false and misleading statements about the scope and viability of the movie studio project as well as Allen Park’s overall financial condition and its ability to service the bond debt.  SEC

November 5, 2014

The SEC announced enforcement actions against 10 companies for failing to make the required disclosures about financing deals and other unregistered sales that diluted their stock.  The relevant companies and the penalties they will pay are as follows: APT MotoVox Group Inc., formerly known as Frozen Food Gift Group Inc. ($25,000); CoroWare Inc. ($50,000); ERF Wireless Inc.($50,00); Green Automotive Company ($50,000); MineralRite Corporation($25,000); Mondial Ventures Inc. ($50,000); Monster Arts Inc. ($25,000); Red Giant Entertainment Inc. ($25,000); Seaniemac International Ltd. ($50,000); Worthington Energy Inc. ($25,000).  SEC

November 3, 2014

The SEC charged Canadian citizens Bruce D. Strebinger and Brent Howard Chapman with conducting an international microcap fraud scheme by stockpiling shares in the coal mining company Americas Energy Company and funding a multi-million dollar promotional campaign to hype the stock while simultaneously dumping their shares and routing the proceeds through offshore accounts.  According to the SEC, as the scheme was attracting new investors and Americas Energy’s share price was significantly increasing, Strebinger and Chapman were secretly selling their shares through an intricate web of offshore corporations, foreign accounts, and financial institutions located in Canada, Nevis, Panama, Switzerland, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.  Strebinger and Chapman generated proceeds of more than $17M through their elaborate scheme.  SEC
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