|  | | 2012 News and Press Releases | | |
HEADLINE NEWS:
SEC Charges Company Officers, Promoters In Kickback Schemes
Samuel Rubenfeld
The Wall Street Journal. June 4, 2012
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EXCERPT: The Securities and Exchange Commission said Monday it charged several penny-stock companies and their officers, as well as three penny-stock promoters, involved in various schemes in which bribes and kickbacks were paid to hype microcap stocks and illegally generate sales. The charges filed Monday are the latest in a series of cases in which the SEC worked with the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to uncover penny stock schemes, the SEC said. Some of the schemes involved in the series of cases involved companies or executives paying undisclosed kickbacks to a pension fund manager in exchange for the fund’s purchase of restricted shares in the companies, the SEC said. Others involved bribes paid to stockbrokers who agreed to buy shares of a microcap company. “The company officers and promoters in many of these schemes disguised their kickbacks as payments to phony consulting companies that performed no actual work,” said Eric I. Bustillo, director of the SEC’s Miami office, in the statement. “These illegal activities were fully intended to artificially inflate the stock volume and prices of these penny stock companies to the detriment of investors.” |
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