Re: John W. Surgent
08/09/1984
The Wall Street Journal
(Copyright (c) 1984, Dow Jones & Co., Inc.)
NEW YORK -- The Securities and Exchange Commission penalized two brokers for alleged illegal trading of World Gambling Corp. stock.
One of the brokers, Harry Poole, of Doylestown, Pa., sold unregistered World Gambling securities in 1979, the SEC said. Mr. Poole has been prohibited from securities trading for a year.
The other broker, Bernard Feintuch, of Woodmere, N.Y., was charged with "willfully" violating anti-fraud provisions of federal securities law. Mr. Feintuch was barred from securities trading for six months, and from assuming a supervisory position in securities for 18 months.
Mr. Poole, who worked for Selheimer & Co. in Pennsylvania, and Mr. Feintuch, who worked for Norbay Securities in Bayside, N.Y., have neither admitted nor denied the charges, the SEC said. Neither could be reached to comment.
The SEC said that in 1979 and 1980, Mr. Feintuch falsely told more than 30 customers that World Gambling bought land in Atlantic City, N.J., for a gambling casino, and that the company's stock would increase to $100 a share from $4 a share within six months.
The SEC said that World Gambling never set up the casino. World Gambling was said to be based in Clifton, N.J., but no telephone number for the company was listed.
As reported in 1982, World Gambling's president, John W. Surgent Jr., was sentenced to 10 years in prison for violating securities law. The company's vice president and secretary, Mark A. Sroka, was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to using interstate commerce to sell unregistered securities.
=====
LAWYER DISBARRED FOR ROLE IN STOCK SCAM
By Mark J. Magyar, The Record's Trenton bureau
12/12/1986
The Record, Northern New Jersey
Passaic-Morris
Page c01
(Copyright 1986)
A Clifton lawyer who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for a stock scam was disbarred yesterday.
John W. Surgent II, 45, was convicted in 1982 of swindling investors in the defunct World Gambling Corporation, a bogus company he operated from his former law office in Clifton.
He was paroled in May from a halfway house in Montgomery, Ala., a federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman said.
Fake Atlantic City deal
Surgent masterminded a scheme under which two securities brokers told clients in late 1979 that the World Gambling Corporation had bought land in Atlantic City to open a casino, and that the corporation's stock was likely to jump from $4 to $100 within four to six months.
Surgent, who was president of the company, was fined $105,000 and ordered to make restitution of $52,675 swindled from 25 victims in return for a suspended sentence on the fraud counts.
In what was likely to be his last appearance as an attorney, Surgent argued his own case at the disbarment hearing before the state Disciplinary Review Board Oct. 20.
Unanimous ruling to disbar
The state Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Surgent should be disbarred. The court said his criminal convictions clearly demonstrated that he had engaged in "illegal conduct that adversely reflects on his fitness to practice law." The court also noted that Surgent was suspended from practicing law in 1979 for other ethical infractions, and found no reason not to recommend disbarment.
=====
There are also 16 listings in the Florida Corporate Database for "Surgent, John W." All the ones I checked seemed to have been "INVOLUNTARILY DISSOLVED".
=====
I do see a brand new company ("Incorporated On: August 04, 1999") in Nevada for a John Surgent called "JWSRHS, LLC". I presume "JWS" are his initials. Not sure about who "RHS" might be.
- Jeff |
