This week, The Securities and Exchange Commission charged David M. Loflin for his role in a pump-and-dump scheme in the stock of Greenway Design Group, Inc., a Phoenix, Arizona company that was secretly controlled by Loflin’s now-deceased business partner. According to the SEC’s complaint, in 2013, Loflin helped his business partner gain control of Greenway, using a front company to
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This week, The Securities and Exchange Commission has obtained final judgments against a microcap company and its two undisclosed promoters who were charged with running a $3.3 million microcap fraud. In September 2017, the SEC charged Jason McDiarmid, Kenneth George Cedric Telford, and Stop Sleep Go, Inc., formerly known as Interactive Multi-Media Auction Corp, with running a pump-and-dump scheme in
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Yesterday, two South Florida men agreed to lifetime bars from participating in penny stock offerings to settle charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission alleging that they facilitated a pump-and-dump scheme involving shares of a Sunrise, Florida company that purported to be in the beauty products business. The SEC alleges that attorney Mark E. Fisher of Boca Raton, Florida
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A new article in S&P Global Market Intelligence by Declan Harty discusses “How OTC Markets fights stock fraud enabled by ‘fake news’.” The article highlights how technology has made it easier for fraudsters to implement “pump and dumps” of OTC stock, listed securities, crypto currencies, and more. “Technology certainly transformed the stock promotion business,” said John Reed Stark, a cybersecurity consultant who
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Last week, ex-lawyer Diane Dalmy was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer in New Haven to 36 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release, for her role in a securities fraud scheme. According to court documents and statements made in court, Dalmy, a former attorney, performed securities-related legal work on behalf of several public companies,
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On Thursday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida announced that a securities broker-dealer has been charged with participating in a conspiracy to unlawfully sell unregistered securities. This conduct was part of a scheme to sell shares of fraudulently registered companies that could then be used for pump and dump and other stock manipulation schemes. Delaney Equity
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Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced charges against Wedbush Securities Inc. for failing to supervise employee Timary Delorme after the broker-dealer ignored numerous red flags indicating that Delorme was involved in a long-running pump-and-dump scheme targeting retail investors. Delorme agreed to settle fraud charges stemming from the same scheme. This is the second SEC action against Wedbush this
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Last Friday, the SEC barred the president of a penny stock company from ever again serving as a public company officer or director after he was caught making false and misleading statements about the company to investors in an effort to increase demand for the stock. The SEC confronted him quickly and the misstatements were removed from the Internet and social
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Yesterday, the SEC announced that the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware entered a consent judgment in a penny stock manipulation case brought by the SEC against Richard A. Bailey, a former officer of GH3 International, Inc. The SEC’s complaint alleges that Bailey participated in a pump-and-dump scheme involving GH3’s common stock, generating more than $700,000 of illicit
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Guest Post By: Gregg Castano When most relatively knowledgeable investors think of the term “micro-cap”, the first word that comes to mind is “risk”. These companies, by definition, have low market capitalizations, but also low trading volume, limited assets and often no track record, operations, revenues or fully developed and tested products. These myriad factors can combine into a toxic mix
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