SEC Charges 58 With Penny Stock Manipulation

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday charged 58 defendants with penny stock manipulation, in one of the largest stock fraud cases ever.

The SEC filed four civil fraud lawsuits in New York and one in Salt Lake City. The suits allege that penny stock promoters and executives of small, publicly traded companies bribed brokers to get them to sell the companies’ stocks to brokerage customers.

The agency alleges that the five separate schemes caused unsuspecting investors to overpay for stocks whose prices were being secretly controlled by the defendants. The defendants were targeted in an undercover government sting and include 55 people throughout the U.S., two brokerage firms and one stock issuer, SEC regional director Henry Klehm said.

The seven companies whose stocks the defendants allegedly manipulated are Securitek International Corp.; Golf Ventures Inc.; Stocknet Inc.; International Investment Group Inc.; Interactive Information Solutions; Spaceplex Amusement Centers International Ltd.; and America’s Coffee Cup Inc., the SEC said.

The defendants include brokerage firms J.S. Securities Inc., La Jolla Capital and brokers at other securities firms. (In July, J.S. Securities changed its name to First National Equity Corp.)

Officials at First National of Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., were not available for comment. Officials at San Diego-based La Jolla Capital were also unavailable.

Many of the seven companies had disconnected phone numbers, were unlisted or were otherwise unreachable for comment.

The SEC said it expects to charge more people, but it declined to comment further.