SEC charged a Canadian citizen with conducting a scheme to conceal his control of a microcap company whose price quickly spiked last year

SEC Charges Man With Microcap Fraud Involving Shares of Cynk Technology Corp. (press release):

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a Canadian citizen with conducting a scheme to conceal his control and ownership of a microcap company whose price quickly spiked last year. The SEC suspended trading in the stock, Cynk Technology Corp., before the alleged schemer, Phillip Thomas Kueber, could profit on the gains from the stock’s rise to more than $21 from less than 10 cents per share.

The SEC alleges that Kueber was behind a false and misleading registration statement filed by Cynk and enlisted a small group of straw shareholders and sham CEOs to conceal his control of purportedly non-restricted shares in Cynk stock. The complaint alleges that the straw shareholders – mainly Kuber’s family members and associates in British Columbia and California – never received the shares they “purchased.” Kueber allegedly transferred the shares to brokerage accounts and offshore shell companies he secretly controlled and misled broker-dealers about his ownership of the shares to create the false appearance of a company with publicly held shares.

According to the SEC’s complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Kueber was unable to cash in on selling his Cynk shares when the SEC suspended trading in Cynk on July 11, 2014 amid suspicious activity surrounding the company’s stock. Once trading resumed, the share price fell, closing at 60 cents per share on July 28, 2014.

“We allege that Kueber used straw shareholders, offshore dummy corporations, and puppet corporate officers to gain and conceal control over the majority of Cynk shares,” said Michael Paley, Co-Chair of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Microcap Fraud Task Force. “Law enforcement has again pierced through the layers of deceit to hold an alleged wrongdoer accountable, in this case before he could liquidate his shares in the open market and realize ill-gotten profits.”

The SEC’s complaint alleges that Kueber violated the antifraud provisions of federal securities laws and related SEC antifraud rules. The SEC is seeking to impose a civil monetary penalty, to bar Kueber from serving as a public company officer or director or participating in a penny-stock offer, and to be subject to a court-ordered injunction against future antifraud violations.

The SEC’s continuing investigation has been conducted by Joshua R. Geller, Joseph G. Darragh, and Michael Paley of the Microcap Fraud Task Force along with Wendy Tepperman of the New York office. The litigation will be conducted by Preethi Krishnamurthy and Mr. Geller. The case is being supervised by Sanjay Wadhwa. The SEC appreciates the assistance of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service, Department of Homeland Security, and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.