The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against the operators of an international pyramid scheme that raised more than $129 million from investors worldwide, primarily in the U.S., China, and Taiwan. The case follows another against a separate pyramid scheme that lured investors in the U.S., China, and Korea with seminars, webinars, and YouTube […]
The Securities and Exchange Commission (“Commission”) filed a civil injunctive action on August 26, 2014 against Oscar F. Villarreal, formerly of Gates Mills, Ohio. The Commission’s complaint alleges that Villarreal defrauded 51 investors out of more than $18 million in three securities offerings since 2009. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the […]
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced that it has filed a complaint against Los Angeles-based Wedbush Securities Inc. for systemic supervisory and anti-money laundering (AML) violations in connection with providing direct market access and sponsored access to broker-dealers and non-registered market participants. During the period at issue, Wedbush was one of the securities industry’s […]
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged the co-owner of two Bitcoin-related websites for publicly offering shares in the two ventures without registering them. An SEC investigation found that Erik T. Voorhees published prospectuses on the Internet and actively solicited investors to buy shares in SatoshiDICE and FeedZeBirds. But he failed to register the offerings […]
Aidikoff, Uhl & Bakhtiari partners, Philip M. Aidikoff and Ryan K. Bakhtiari, have filed comments with the Securities and Exchange Commission concerning proposed FINRA Rule 2081 (Prohibited Conditions Relating to Expungement of Customer Dispute Information). Proposed Rule 2081 seeks to add additional safeguards to the expungement process by prohibiting the conditioning of the settlement of […]