SEC FREEZES ASSETS OF FOUR CHINESE CITIZENS CHARGED WITH INSIDER TRADING

The following excerpt is from the SEC website: “On December 5, 2011, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged four Chinese citizens and a Chinese-based entity with insider trading and obtained an emergency court order to freeze their assets after they reaped more than $2.7 million in profits by trading in advance of a recent public announcement of a merger agreement between London-based Pearson plc and Beijing-based Global Education and Technology Group, Ltd. The SEC’s complaint names Sha Chen, Song Li, Lili Wang, Zhi Yao, All Know Holdings Ltd., and one or more unknown purchasers of Global Education stock as defendants. The SEC alleges that they purchased American Depository Shares (ADS) of Global Education in the two weeks leading up to a November 21 public announcement of a planned merger between the two education companies. Some of the defendants’ brokerage accounts were dormant until they bet heavily on Global Education shares, and some of the purchases made either equaled or exceeded the stated annual income of that trader. After the agreement was announced, they immediately began selling some of their Global Education shares. Their illicit gains totaled more than $2.7 million. According to the SEC’s complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court in Chicago, Pearson and Global Education each announced before trading began on November 21 that Pearson agreed to acquire all of Global Education’s outstanding stock for $294 million ($11.006 per share traded in the U.S.). Global Education’s stock price increased 97 percent that day, from $5.37 to $10.60. The SEC alleges that the defendants made their purchases of Global Education’s shares while in possession of material, non-public information about the merger. A Global Education co-founder apparently tipped Wang and possibly others about the potential acquisition. Wang then transferred new funds into her previously dormant brokerage account and bought 28,000 Global Education shares. The others also engaged in similarly suspicious trading in Global Education stock, which was typically thin. On November 18, the last trading day before the acquisition announcement, their purchases accounted for more than 35 percent of the entire day’s trading volume for the company’s shares, which trade on the NASDAQ. The SEC alleges that the defendants each violated Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder. In addition to the emergency relief, the SEC seeks permanent injunctions, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains with prejudgment interest, and financial penalties. The emergency court order that the SEC obtained on December 5 on an ex parte basis freezes approximately $2.7 million of defendants’ assets held in U.S. brokerage accounts and, among other things, grants expedited discovery and prohibits the defendants from destroying evidence. The investigation is continuing.

SEC MAKES COMMENT ON CITIGROUP CASE

The following excerpt is from the SEC website:

“Washington, D.C., Dec. 15, 2011 — The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Director of the Division of Enforcement, Robert Khuzami, today made the following statement on the Citigroup case:
Last month, a federal district court declined to approve a consent judgment because, in its view, the underlying allegations were ‘unsupported by any proven or acknowledged facts.’ As a result, the court rejected a $285 million settlement between the SEC and Citigroup that reasonably reflected the relief the SEC would likely have obtained if it prevailed at trial.
We believe the district court committed legal error by announcing a new and unprecedented standard that inadvertently harms investors by depriving them of substantial, certain and immediate benefits. For this reason, today we filed papers seeking review of the decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
We believe the court was incorrect in requiring an admission of facts — or a trial — as a condition of approving a proposed consent judgment, particularly where the agency provided the court with information laying out the reasoned basis for its conclusions. Indeed, in the case against Citigroup, the SEC filed suit after a thorough investigation, the findings of which were described in extensive detail in a 21-page complaint.
The court’s new standard is at odds with decades of court decisions that have upheld similar settlements by federal and state agencies across the country. In fact, courts have routinely approved settlements in which a defendant does not admit or even expressly denies liability, exactly because of the benefits that settlements provide.
In cases such as this, a settlement puts money back in the pockets of harmed investors without years of courtroom delay and without the twin risks of losing at trial or winning but recovering less than the settlement amount - risks that always exist no matter how strong the evidence is in a particular case. Based on a careful balancing of these risks and benefits, settling on favorable terms even without an admission serves investors, including investors victimized by other frauds. That is due to the fact that other frauds might never be investigated or be investigated more slowly because limited agency resources are tied up in litigating a case that could have been resolved.
In contrast, the new standard adopted by the court could in practical terms press the SEC to trial in many more instances, likely resulting in fewer cases overall and less money being returned to investors.
To be clear, we are fully prepared to refuse to settle and proceed to trial when proposed settlements fail to achieve the right outcome for investors. For example, in the cases that the SEC identifies as core financial crisis cases, we filed unsettled actions against 40 of the 55 (70 percent) of the individuals charged — including the action filed against Brian Stoker in this matter. Similarly, we filed unsettled actions against 11 of the 26 (42 percent) of the entities we charged — eight of which we did not litigate against because they were bankrupt, defunct or no longer operating.
In deciding whether to settle, the SEC considers, among other things, limitations under the securities laws. In a case like Citigroup, the applicable statute does not entitle the SEC to recover the amount lost by investors. Instead, in addition to recovering a defendant’s ill-gotten gains, the statute allows a monetary penalty only up to the amount of a defendant’s gain.
The $285 million obtained from Citigroup under the proposed settlement, while less than investor losses, represents most of the total monetary recovery that the SEC itself could have sought at trial. An SEC settlement does not limit the ability of injured investors to pursue claims for additional relief.
Moreover, while the court alluded to Citigroup’s size, the law does not permit the Commission to seek penalties based upon a defendant’s wealth.”

SEC CHARGES FORMER EXECUTIVES AT FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC WITH SECUITIES FRAUD

The following excerpt is from the Securities and Exchange Commission website:

“Washington, D.C., Dec. 16, 2011 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged six former top executives of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) with securities fraud, alleging they knew and approved of misleading statements claiming the companies had minimal holdings of higher-risk mortgage loans, including subprime loans.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac each entered into a Non-Prosecution Agreement with the Commission in which each company agreed to accept responsibility for its conduct and not dispute, contest, or contradict the contents of an agreed-upon Statement of Facts without admitting nor denying liability. Each also agreed to cooperate with the Commission's litigation against the former executives. In entering into these Agreements, the Commission considered the unique circumstances presented by the companies' current status, including the financial support provided to the companies by the U.S. Treasury, the role of the Federal Housing Finance Agency as conservator of each company, and the costs that may be imposed on U.S. taxpayers.

Three former Fannie Mae executives - former Chief Executive Officer Daniel H. Mudd, former Chief Risk Officer Enrico Dallavecchia, and former Executive Vice President of Fannie Mae's Single Family Mortgage business, Thomas A. Lund - were named in the SEC's complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The SEC also charged three former Freddie Mac executives — former Chairman of the Board and CEO Richard F. Syron, former Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer Patricia L. Cook, and former Executive Vice President for the Single Family Guarantee business Donald J. Bisenius — in a separate complaint filed in the same court.
"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives told the world that their subprime exposure was substantially smaller than it really was," said Robert Khuzami, Director of the SEC's Enforcement Division. "These material misstatements occurred during a time of acute investor interest in financial institutions' exposure to subprime loans, and misled the market about the amount of risk on the company's books. All individuals, regardless of their rank or position, will be held accountable for perpetuating half-truths or misrepresentations about matters materially important to the interest of our country's investors."

The SEC is seeking financial penalties, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains with interest, permanent injunctive relief and officer and director bars against Mudd, Dallavecchia, Lund, Syron, Cook, and Bisenius. Both lawsuits allege that the former executives caused the federal mortgage firms to materially misstate their holdings of subprime mortgage loans in periodic and other filings with the Commission, public statements, investor calls, and media interviews. The suit involving the Fannie Mae executives also includes similar allegations regarding Alt-A mortgage loans. The suit against the former Fannie Mae executives alleges they made misleading statements — or aided and abetted others — between December 2006 and August 2008. The former Freddie Mac executives are alleged to have made misleading statements — or aided and abetted others - between March 2007 and August 2008.

The SEC's complaint against the former Fannie Mae executives alleges that, when Fannie Mae began reporting its exposure to subprime loans in 2007, it broadly described the loans as those "made to borrowers with weaker credit histories," and then reported — with the knowledge, support, and approval of Mudd, Dallavecchia, and Lund — less than one-tenth of its loans that met that description. Fannie Mae reported that its 2006 year-end Single Family exposure to subprime loans was just 0.2 percent, or approximately $4.8 billion, of its Single Family loan portfolio. Investors were not told that in calculating the Company's reported exposure to subprime loans, Fannie Mae did not include loan products specifically targeted by Fannie Mae towards borrowers with weaker credit histories, including more than $43 billion of Expanded Approval, or "EA" loans.
Fannie Mae's executives also knew and approved of the decision to underreport Fannie Mae's Alt-A loan exposure, the SEC alleged. Fannie Mae disclosed that its March 31, 2007 exposure to Alt-A loans was 11 percent of its portfolio of Single Family loans. In reality, Fannie Mae's Alt-A exposure at that time was approximately 18 percent of its Single Family loan holdings.

The misleading disclosures were made as Fannie Mae's executives were seeking to increase the Company's market share through increased purchases of subprime and Alt-A loans, and gave false comfort to investors about the extent of Fannie Mae's exposure to high-risk loans, the SEC alleged.

In the complaint against the former Freddie Mac executives, the SEC alleged that they and Freddie Mac led investors to believe that the firm used a broad definition of subprime loans and was disclosing all of its Single-Family subprime loan exposure. Syron and Cook reinforced the misleading perception when they each publicly proclaimed that the Single Family business had "basically no subprime exposure." Unbeknown to investors, as of December 31, 2006, Freddie Mac's Single Family business was exposed to approximately $141 billion of loans internally referred to as "subprime" or "subprime like," accounting for 10 percent of the portfolio, and grew to approximately $244 billion, or 14 percent of the portfolio, as of June 30, 2008.

The SEC's complaint alleges that Mudd violated Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the "Exchange Act") and Rules 10b-5(b) and 13(a)14(a) thereunder, and Section 17(a)(2) of the Securities Act of 1933 (the "Securities Act"); and that Mudd aided and abetted Fannie Mae's violations of Sections 10(b) and 13(a) of the Exchange Act and Exchange Act Rules 10b-5(b), 12b-20, 13a-1, and 13a-13 thereunder. The SEC complaint also alleges that Dallavecchia violated Section 17(a)(2) of the Securities Act and aided and abetted Fannie Mae's violations of Sections 10(b) and 13(a) of the Exchange Act and Exchange Act Rules 10b-5(b), 12b-20, 13a-1, and 13a-13 thereunder. Finally, the SEC complaint alleges that Lund aided and abetted Fannie Mae's violations of Sections 10(b) and 13(a) of the Exchange Act and Exchange Act Rules 10b-5(b), 12b-20, 13a-1, and 13a-13 thereunder.
The SEC's complaint alleges that Syron and Cook violated Exchange Act Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5(b) thereunder and Securities Act Section 17(a)(2); that Syron violated Exchange Act Rule 13a-14; and that Syron, Cook and Bisenius aided and abetted violations of Sections 10(b) and 13(a) of the Exchange Act and Rules 10b-5(b), 12b-20 and 13a-13 thereunder.
The SEC's investigation of Fannie Mae was conducted by Senior Attorneys Natasha S. Guinan, Christina M. Marshall, Liban Jama, Mona L. Benach, and Associate Chief Accountant, Peter Rosario, under the supervision of Assistant Director Charles E. Cain, and Associate Director Stephen L. Cohen. Sarah Levine and James Kidney will lead the SEC's litigation efforts.”

COMCAST CEO TO PAY $500,000 FOR VIOLATING PREMERGER NOTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS

The following excerpt is from the Department of Justice website:

December 16, 2011
“WASHINGTON – Comcast Corporation’s CEO Brian L. Roberts will pay a $500,000 civil penalty to settle charges that he violated premerger reporting and waiting requirements when he acquired Comcast voting securities, the Department of Justice announced today.

The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, at the request of the Federal Trade Commission, filed a civil antitrust lawsuit today in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., against Roberts for violating the notification requirements of the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act of 1976.  At the same time, the department filed a proposed settlement that, if approved by the court, will settle the charges.

Roberts is also chairman of the board of Comcast, a leading provider of cable television services headquartered in Philadelphia.

According to the complaint, Roberts failed to comply with the antitrust premerger notification requirements of the HSR Act before acquiring voting securities of Comcast as part of his compensation as chairman and chief executive officer of Comcast beginning on Oct. 22, 2007, which resulted in his holding more than $119.6 million of Comcast stock.  On Aug. 25, 2009, Roberts made a corrective filing for Comcast voting securities he had acquired.  Although this is the first time Roberts has been charged with an HSR Act violation, previously he had twice made corrective filings regarding transactions that he acknowledged were reportable under the HSR Act, asserting that the failures to file and observe the waiting period were inadvertent.

The Hart-Scott-Rodino Act of 1976, an amendment to the Clayton Act, imposes notification and waiting period requirements on individuals and companies over a certain size before they consummate acquisitions resulting in holding stock or assets above a certain value, which was $59.8 million in 2007 and is currently $66 million.

Federal courts can assess civil penalties for premerger notification violations under the HSR Act in lawsuits brought by the Department of Justice.  For a party in violation of the HSR Act before Feb. 10, 2009, the maximum civil penalty is $11,000 a day for each day it is in violation of the Act.  For a party in violation of the HSR Act on or after Feb. 10, 2009, the maximum penalty is $16,000 a day.”

SEC ALLEGES SPORT DRINK COMPANY STOCK USED IN PUMP AND DUMP SCAM

The following excerpt is from the SEC website:

“Washington, D.C., Dec. 16, 2011 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Daniel Ruettiger and 12 other participants in a scheme to deceive investors into buying stock in his sports drink company. Ruettiger is widely known for having inspired the 1993 motion picture "Rudy."

According to the SEC’s complaint filed in federal court in Las Vegas, Ruettiger founded Rudy Nutrition to compete with Gatorade in the sports drink market. Rudy Nutrition produced and sold modest amounts of a sports drink called “Rudy” with the tagline “Dream Big! Never Quit!” However, the company primarily served as a vehicle for a pump-and-dump scheme that occurred in 2008 and generated more than $11 million in illicit profits.

The SEC alleges that investors were provided false and misleading statements about the company in press releases, SEC filings, and promotional materials. For example, a promotional mailer to potential investors falsely claimed that in “a major southwest test, Rudy outsold Gatorade 2 to 1!” A promotional e-mail falsely boasted that in “several blind taste tests, Rudy outperformed Gatorade and Powerade by 2:1.” Meanwhile, the scheme’s promoters engaged in manipulative trading to artificially inflate the price of Rudy Nutrition stock while selling unregistered shares to investors. The SEC suspended trading and later revoked registration of the stock in late 2008. Rudy Nutrition is no longer in business.

“Investors were lured into the scheme by Mr. Ruettiger's well-known, feel-good story but found themselves in a situation that did not have a happy ending,” said Scott W. Friestad, Associate Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “The tall tales in this elaborate scheme included phony taste tests and other false information that was used to convince investors they were investing in something special.”
According to the SEC’s complaint, Ruettiger was the principal founder and namesake of a company called Rudy Beverage Inc. that he and a college friend ran out of South Bend, Ind. until October 2007, when Rocky Brandonisio became the company’s president and day-to-day business manager. He moved the company’s operations to Las Vegas, where he and Ruettiger live. Ruettiger remained CEO. During this time, the company struggled financially with few customers, few assets, and no profits.

The SEC alleges that Ruettiger and Brandonisio brought in an experienced penny stock promoter named Stephen DeCesare to orchestrate a public distribution of company stock in late 2007. Ruettiger knew DeCesare from previous business dealings, and they were neighbors in Las Vegas. Ruettiger and Brandonisio gave DeCesare sufficient control to turn Rudy Beverage into a publicly traded company. DeCesare became the primary organizer of the resulting pump-and-dump scheme
According to the SEC’s complaint, DeCesare identified a shell corporation quoted on the Pink Sheets for use in what’s known as a reverse merger, which occurs when a private company acquires a public company (typically a shell company) in order to become publicly-traded. DeCesare tasked a business consultant named Kevin Quinn with executing the merger and working with the company’s transfer agent to issue purportedly unrestricted stock. On Feb. 11, 2008, they acquired the shell company in a reverse merger and changed its name to “Rudy Nutrition.” Ruettiger authorized his signature to be placed electronically on an SEC filing four days later, and Rudy Nutrition began to be quoted on the Pink Sheets on Feb. 21, 2008, under the ticker symbol RUNU. DeCesare and Quinn, who is a disbarred California lawyer, arranged for three billion RUNU shares to be issued to nominee entities, which sold almost one billion shares to unsuspecting investors in the public market during the scheme.

The SEC alleges that DeCesare then organized the efforts to pump RUNU stock by partnering with other penny stock promoters to inflate the price and volume artificially through fraudulent touting and manipulative trading. The scheme’s participants made a series of false or misleading statements about RUNU to the public in mailers sent to millions of U.S. investors, messages posted in Internet chat rooms dedicated to penny stocks, and videos placed on the Internet for public viewing. False and misleading statements about the company also were made in press releases and filings with the SEC. These disingenuous promotional efforts had the predictable effect of attracting buyers to RUNU stock. In less than a month, RUNU went from trading 720 shares to more than 3 million shares, and within two weeks the price of RUNU stock climbed from 25 cents to $1.05 per share. After March 12, 2008, RUNU stock began a roller coaster ride as the scheme’s participants sold millions of RUNU shares to the market amid their simultaneous efforts to pump the stock.

According to the SEC’s complaint, the scheme eventually ended when theSEC issued a trading suspension against RUNU on Sept. 12, 2008 for delinquent periodic filings. Only days before the trading suspension, arrangements were being made to issue another two billion shares that scheme participants planned to dump on the market at the end of September 2008. But they were unable to do so because of the SEC’s trading suspension. The SEC revoked the registration of Rudy Nutrition securities on Nov. 14, 2008.
Ruettiger and 10 of the scheme’s other participants have agreed to settle the SEC’s charges without admitting or denying the allegations. The settlements, which are subject to court approval, impose penny stock bars and officer-and-director bars as appropriate. Ruettiger agreed to pay $382,866 in settling the charges, and other participants consented to final judgments also ordering disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and financial penalties.”

SEC ALLEGES PRIME BANK SCHEME WAS OPERATED BY WASHINGTON D.C. LAW FIRM

The following is an excerpt from the SEC website: “On November 30, 2011, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed an enforcement action under seal in federal court in Washington D.C. and obtained an emergency court order to halt a prime bank scheme that defrauded at least 13 investors out of more than $2 million since August 2010. The Court unsealed the action on December 5, 2011, at the SEC’s request. The SEC’s complaint alleges that Pennsylvania resident Frank L. Pavlico III and Washington D.C. attorney Brynee K. Baylor operated a prime bank scheme, offering investors risk-free returns of up to 20 times the original investment within as few as 45 days through the purported “lease” and “trading” of foreign bank instruments, including “standby letters of credit” and “bank guarantees,” in highly complex transactions with unidentified parties and secretive “trading platforms.” However, the bank instruments and trading programs were entirely fictitious. Pavlico and Baylor provided investors with phony contracts and legal documents, digitally-created computer screen shots, and copies of fictitious foreign bank instruments as purported proof of the ongoing success of the transactions. Baylor and her law firm Baylor & Jackson P.L.L.C. acted as “counsel” for Pavlico’s company The Milan Group, vouching for Pavlico and acting as an escrow agent that in reality was merely receiving and diverting the majority of investor funds. According to the SEC complaint, Pavlico and Baylor lured investors into believing they were being given an exclusive chance to participate in an international investing program involving complex financial instruments that generated astronomical profits. They used vague and complex terms in their communications to confuse investors, and claimed that confidentiality concerns prevented them from providing more complete details regarding the status of the investment. Pavlico and Baylor also provided investors with bogus excuses attempting to explain the delay in providing the promised returns, such as feigned illnesses and false representations that the European bankers supposedly involved in the transaction were on extended vacation. In furtherance of the scheme, the complaint alleges that Baylor provided investors with “attorney attestation” letters that assured them the investments were legitimate, and investor contracts that promised investment profits would be shared among investors, Milan, and Baylor & Jackson. Meanwhile, Pavlico was using a fake name of “Frank Lorenzo” to conceal his 2008 money laundering conviction from investors. He failed to disclose that he served 10 months in prison and was on supervised release at the time he was soliciting their investments. According to the SEC’s complaint, Pavlico and Baylor used investor funds to pay Baylor & Jackson business expenses as well as personal expenditures. Pavlico purchased a Range Rover and a Jaguar, and Baylor made purchases at expensive restaurants and retailers including Jimmy Choo, and financed a trip to the Bahamas in September 2010. Investor funds also were used to make payments to nine individuals and entities – including Baylor’s law partner Dawn R. Jackson – named as relief defendants in the SEC’s complaint for the purpose of recovering funds unrightfully in their possession. None of the defendants charged in the SEC’s enforcement action has ever registered with the SEC to sell securities. On November 30, 2011, the Honorable Rosemary M. Collyer granted the SEC’s request for a temporary restraining order to prevent Pavlico, Milan, Baylor, and Baylor & Jackson from further engaging in the alleged investment program. The Court also granted the SEC’s request for an order freezing the assets of all the defendants and relief defendants, requiring accountings, prohibiting the destruction or alteration of documents, and allowing for expedited discovery. The SEC’s complaint alleges that Pavlico, Baylor, Milan, and Baylor & Jackson violated various antifraud, broker-dealer, and securities registration provisions of the federal securities laws. Specifically, the complaint alleges that they each violated Sections 5(a), 5(c), and 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder; that Pavlico, Baylor, and Baylor & Jackson aided and abetted violations of Securities Act Section 17(a) and Exchange Act Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5; that Baylor and Baylor & Jackson aided and abetted violations of Securities Act Sections 5(a) and 5(c); and that Pavlico and Baylor also violated Exchange Act Section 15(a). The SEC seeks permanent injunctions, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains with prejudgment interest thereon, and civil penalties against each defendant, and bars prohibiting Pavlico and Baylor from serving as an officer or director of a public company. Separately, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Pavlico on November 29, 2011, charging him with wire fraud. The SEC’s complaint alleges that the defendants in this matter offered fictitious investments involving so-called "bank guarantees," “stand-by letters of credit,” or foreign “trading platforms,” among other purported investment vehicles.”