Offer and sale of securities sold in violation of the registration provisions of Section 5 of the Securities Act of 1933 – South Florida Unregistered Sale of Securities Litigation and Arbitration Attorney:
Securities and Exchange Commission v. Dawn Wright-Olivares and Daniel Olivares, Civil Action No. 3:13-CV-700
SEC Charges Woman and Stepson for Involvment in Zeekrewards Pyramid and Ponzi Scheme; Parallel Criminal Charges and Plea Agreements Also Announced:
Recnetly, the Commission announced that the United States District Court for the Central District of California entered a final, settled judgment against defendants Nicholas Louis Geranio, The Good One, Inc., and Kaleidoscope Real Estate, Inc. for their roles in a $35 million scheme to manipulate the market and to profit from the issuance and sale of certain U.S. companies’ stock through offshore boiler rooms.
The Securities and Exchange Commission recently announced an emergency asset freeze to halt a Ponzi scheme involving U.S. and New Zealand-based companies peddling sham investment opportunities ranging from a bank trading program to kidney dialysis clinics.
The SEC alleges that Christopher A.T. Pedras, who has residences in Turlock, Calif., and New Zealand, misled his initial investors into believing they were investing in a profitable trading platform in which his company served as an intermediary between global banks. When Pedras and his companies encountered difficulty paying the promised 4 to 8 percent monthly returns, they began steering investors to a different investment program to purportedly increase the value of their investment by 80 percent by funding kidney dialysis clinics in New Zealand. Pedras’s business partner Sylvester M. Gray II and lead sales representative Alicia Bryan helped him solicit investors for both programs, and the money was never invested as promised. Earlier investors were paid supposed returns with funds received from newer investors, and Pedras stole more than $2 million and spent another $1.2 million on sales agents.
According to the SEC’s complaint unsealed late Friday in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Pedras raised more than $5.6 million from at least 50 investors in the U.S. since July 2010 by selling securities in two phases. Pedras, Gray, and Bryan first solicited investors for their Maxum Gold Small Cap Trade Program in which Pedras’s company Maxum Gold purportedly serves as the intermediary between banks that can’t legally trade with each other directly, so they use Maxum Gold’s trade platform to do so indirectly. Maxum Gold purports to share portions of the trading profits with investors.
The Florida Department of Insurance:
The mandate of the Florida Department of Insurance is to ensure that insurance companies licensed to do business in Florida are financially viable, operating within the laws and regulations governing the insurance industry; and offering insurance policy products at fair and adequate rates which do not unfairly discriminate against the buying public.
As part of its responsibility, the Florida Department of Insurance may elect to bring an enforcement action against those companies and licensed agents who it believes may be operating in violation of the laws and regulations governing the insurance industry.
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Investor Education and Advocay recently issued an Investor Alert: Beware of Pyramid Schemes Posing as Multi-Level Marketing Programs. Excerpts from this release follow:
Have you ever been tempted by an advertisement or offer to make “easy money” or “online income” out of your own home? Multi-level marketing (“MLM”) programs are promoted through Internet advertising, company websites, social media, presentations, group meetings, conference calls, and brochures. In an MLM program, you typically get paid for products or services that you and the distributors in your “downline” (i.e., participants you recruit and their recruits) sell to others. However, some MLM programs are actually pyramid schemes — a type of fraud in which participants profit almost exclusively through recruiting other people to participate in the program.
Pyramid schemes masquerading as MLM programs often violate the federal securities laws, such as laws prohibiting fraud and requiring the registration of securities offerings and broker-dealers. In a pyramid scheme, money from new participants is used to pay recruiting commissions (that may take any form, including the form of securities) to earlier participants just like how, in classic Ponzi schemes, money from new investors is used to pay fake “profits” to earlier investors. Recently, the SEC has sued the alleged operators of large-scale pyramid schemes for violating the federal securities laws through the guise of MLM programs.
Master Limited Partnership v. Public Limited Partnership – Florida Limited Partnership – Federal and State Litigation Attorney: Fraud in the Inducement, breach of the partnership agreement, mismanagement of the partnership, self-dealing and fraud in the operation of the partnership.
A limited partnership is a form of legal entity created under the law of a particular state. In Florida, the statute dealing with limited partnerships is Florida Statute Sections 620.1101 through 620.2205. To review a complete copy of this state, please follow the highlighted link:
Corporate Annual Report (10-K) – Florida Business Practice and Corporate Litigation and Arbitration Attorney:
An “Annual Report” is a record of a corporation’s annual financial condition that is required to be distributed to shareholders under Securities and Exchange Commissions rules and regulations. Included in the report is a description of the company’s operations as well as its certified balance sheet and income statement. The full version of the annual report is called the 10-K. It is available from the company or or on-line at the Edgar Website of the SEC. Other reports issued by a reporting company include forms 10-Q (quarterly reports) and 8-K (material disclosures).
As an investor, these reports provide invaluable information when considering to purchase, hold or sell a security. However, please keep in mind that this information is being provided for educational purposes only. It is not designed to be complete in all material respects. Thus, it should not be relied upon as legal or investment advice. If the reader has any questions concerning this post, you should contact a qualified professional.
The Securities and Exchange Commission Halts a Texas-Based Scheme Targeting Foreign Investors Seeking U.S. Residency Through EB-5 Visa Program:
The Securities and Exchange Commission recently announced fraud charges against a husband and wife in Texas for stealing funds from foreign investors under the guise of an investment opportunity to create U.S. jobs and a path to U.S. residency.
The SEC alleges that Marco and Bebe Ramirez and three companies they own have fraudulently raised at least $5 million from investors by falsely promising that their money would be invested as part of the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Pilot Program. Through the program, foreign investors can earn conditional visas and eventually green cards by making investments in U.S. economic development projects that will create or preserve a minimum number of jobs for U.S. workers. Instead of investing the money as promised, the Ramirezes routinely diverted investor funds to other undisclosed businesses and for their personal use. In at least one instance, they used new investor funds to make Ponzi-like payments to an existing investor.
Investment Scams That Exploit The Immigrant Investor Program:
Recently, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) jointly issued an Investor Alert to warn individual investors about fraudulent investment scams that exploit the Immigrant Investor Program, also known as “EB-5.”
The EB-5 program provides certain foreign investors who can demonstrate that their investments are creating jobs in this country, with a potential avenue to lawful permanent residency in the United States. Business owners apply to USCIS to be designated as “regional centers” for the EB-5 program. These regional centers offer investment opportunities in “new commercial enterprises” that may involve securities offerings. Through EB-5, a foreign investor who invests a certain amount of money that is placed at risk, and creates or preserves a minimum number of jobs in the United States, is eligible to apply for conditional lawful permanent residency. Toward the end of the two-year period of conditional residency, the foreign investor is eligible to apply to have the conditions on their lawful permanent residency removed, if he or she can establish that the job creation requirements have been met. Foreign investors who invest through EB-5, however, are not guaranteed a visa or to become lawful permanent residents of the United States. For more details, read the EB-5 Immigrant Investor section of USCIS’s website at www.uscis.gov.
Leverage Abuse, Exploitation and Manipulation – South Florida State and Federal Fraud, Misrepresentation and Breach of Contract Attorney:
Leverage may be used in a number of circumstances. In the business arena, three common uses, of leverage, relate to investments, financial leverage and operating leverage.
Investment Leverage (also known as margin) uses the equity in your brokerage account as a means of attempting to enhance the return on your equity without increasing your investment capital. Using margin, as part of your investment strategy, carries with it a number of risks, which you should fully understand before putting this strategy into effect. Both the Federal Reserve and brokerage firms have a number of rules that regulate the use of margin. Some key phrases are “initial margin,” “maintenance margin,” “house call,” and “Reg. T. Call.”
South Florida Arbitration & Litigation Lawyer Blog