To: John Paquet who wrote (58534 ) 9/21/2000 7:20:27 AM From: long-gone Respond to of 116762 OT(?) Top World News Thu, 21 Sep 2000, 7:12am EDT SEC Charges 15-Year-Old Boy With Internet Stock Fraud (Update3) By Neil Roland Washington, Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) -- A 15-year-old New Jersey boy agreed to pay $285,000 to settle regulators' civil fraud charges that he used the Internet to manipulate stock. The Securities and Exchange Commission said it is the first case it has brought against a minor. Jonathan G. Lebed of Cedar Grove, New Jersey, used e-mail messages when he was 14 years old to tout nine small stocks he bought, the SEC alleged. He then sold all these shares, usually within 24 hours of the e-mail, on 11 occasions for a total of $272,826 in illegal profits, the SEC said. Lebed sometimes placed a so-called ``limit order'' late in the day to sell the stock at a specified price so that he wouldn't miss an anticipated increase in the stock price while he was in school the next day, the SEC said. The boy used many fictitious names for the 500 or so messages he posted on Yahoo! Finance message boards each time he touted a stock, the federal agency alleged. Lebed neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing under the settlement. ``Mr. Lebed feels it's a fair settlement, and he and his family are happy to put the matter behind them,'' said the boy's attorney, Kevin Marino of Newark, New Jersey. Public School Lebed, a sophomore at a New Jersey public high school, placed the trades from a home computer, Marino said. He's ``an accomplished trader, very talented and very knowledgeable,'' who won an award in a national investing contest, the lawyer said. Lebed's parents ``are fully informed of what's transpiring,'' Marino said, though he declined to say whether they are disciplining him. The SEC alleged Lebed traded in custodial accounts that were in his father's name. He bought large blocks of thinly traded stocks, purchasing as much as 46 percent of the volume in a stock that day, between August 1999 and February 2000. (cont)quote.bloomberg.com