Fraudulent Cherry-picking. On Jun 17th, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) charged[1] Ramiro Jose Sugranes, a licensed financial adviser who had been in the financial market for over twenty years, for fraudulent cherry-picking. What Is Cherry Picking? According to Investopedia cherry picking is the process of choosing investments and trades by following other investors…
Raising Capital Properly – A Case Study On June 29, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) charged Matthew J. Skinner (“Skinner”) of Santa Clarita, California, and five entities he owns and controls, for conducting four unregistered and fraudulent real estate investment offerings between 2015 and 2020. In these offerings, Skinner raised more than…
Investor Disclosure Laws – A Case Study On May 3, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) charged Under Armour Inc. with “misleading investors as to the bases of its revenue growth and failing to disclose known uncertainties concerning its future revenue prospects.” In 2015 and 2016, Under Armour engaged in what is known as…
The SEC reopened the comment period for Universal Proxy Rules and accepted comments until June 7th, 2021. The reopened comment period is regarding the Commission’s proposal of amending the proxy rules to permit shareholders to vote by proxy for any combination of candidates for the board of directors, as they could if they attended the…
The SEC Charged Promoters of BitConnect. On May 28th, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announced[2] its charge against five individuals with promoting a global unregistered digital asset security offering in 2017 and 2018. The five defendants, Trevon Brown, Craig Grant, Ryan Maasen, Michael Noble, and Joshua Jeppesen, belonged to a promoter network working…
On June 11th, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announce[1] the charge against Radjabli for orchestrating three individual fraudulent schemes. The amount of money involved in each scheme increased as Radjabli went further. For example, in his third scheme, he took advantage of being a former practicing dentist and unlawfully raised approximately $20 million…
On June 7th, 2021, the Security and Exchange Committee (“SEC”) announced[1] a charge against Holly Hand, a former senior project manager at Neuralstem, a biopharmaceutical company currently known as Palisade Bio, Inc., and her intimate Chad A. Calice with violating the insider trading policy. Hand provides Calice with Neuralstem’s unpublic information, resulting in Calice avoiding…
What are IPOs? What are IPOs – IPO stands for Initial Public Offering. This signifies a private corporation going through a stock distributing process to offer shares to the public. The shift from private to public is pivotal for many corporations and can reveal the value of the company to private investors. What has…
Beware of Investment Fraud Schemes! The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued an alert to investors about fraudulent schemes being promoted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The SEC can issue trading suspensions and use other enforcement tools, as needed, but that doesn’t always make the investor, who was misled, entirely whole. The best way to avoid…
An accredited investor – How is the definition being expanded? The proposed rule will amend the definition of an “accredited investor” as follows: With regard to individuals, the proposed rule would add the term “spousal equivalent” to the definition of a spouse, and give accredited investor status to individuals: that have certain professional certifications or…
