Laguna Man Sent to Prison for $2-Million Stock Fraud
A Laguna Beach man who admitted that he improperly used the identity of a Canadian company to sell $2 million in stock has been sentenced in federal court to 30 months in prison.
Nicolas Myles Garcia, 37, also was ordered Tuesday by Judge Florence Marie Cooper to pay back more than $1 million to investors.
Garcia, owner and operator of the Geneva Group in Costa Mesa, pleaded guilty last summer to two counts of securities fraud. The firm no longer is in business, authorities said.
In the scheme, Garcia and his associates bought a shell company--a business that exists only on paper--and changed its name to ForceTek to try to deceive potential investors into believing that the company was related to a Canadian firm called Force Technologies, the U.S. attorney’s office said. ForceTek used marketing materials similar to those used by Force Technologies and adopted the same Nasdaq ticker symbol used by the Canadian firm.
Garcia, who portrayed himself as an investment banker, touted his stock on radio commercials, selling more than $2 million in ForceTek shares and boosting the price from about 10 cents a share to more than $5. He funneled money through the Geneva Group, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has already recovered about $350,000, which is being distributed to investors, Mrozek said.
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