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Microcap & Penny Stocks : TGL WHAAAAAAAT! Alerts, thoughts, discussion. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StockDung who wrote (147585)	6/9/2006 4:20:19 PM
From: Jim Bishop	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 150070

SEC wins $522,000 (U.S.) in Freedom Surf penalties 2006-06-06 14:23 ET - Street Wire by Mike Caswell The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has won $522,000 in penalties in Freedom Surf Inc., the 2000 market manipulation run through four unwitting Canadian brokerages by now-jailed promoter Allen Wolfson and others. The highest penalty in the case, $214,000, went to Mr. Wolfson, who is facing a potential 10-year jail sentence in a separate Freedom Surf criminal case. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) The SEC says Mr. Wolfson, 60, and his co-accused ran Freedom Surf from $5 to $40 in 2000 with wash trades at unknowing Canadian brokerages Canaccord Capital Corp., Union Securities Ltd., Rampart Securities Inc. and Toronto-based Credifinance. Although Mr. Wolfson received the highest civil penalty, the SEC said a California co-defendant, Mervyn Phelan, controlled Freedom Surf and gave Mr. Wolfson shares in exchange for boosting the stock. Mr. Phelan received $206,000 in fines and penalties while a third accused, John Cruickshank (not to be confused with the former editor of The Vancouver Sun), received $102,000. The SEC secured a permanent penny stock ban for Mr. Phelan. For Mr. Wolfson, Freedom Surf capped a history of fraud cases going back to 1977, when he received 10 months of probation for defrauding a Florida bank. When prosecutors indicted him for Freedom Surf, he was free on bail in a much larger case, a New York broker bribery prosecution. In that case, prosecutors said he masterminded a pump-and-dump in which brokers were paid commissions as high as 65 per cent to dump shares of six stocks on retail clients. Clients lost big as the stocks, ATR Industries Inc., Learner's World Inc., Rollerball International Inc., Healthwatch Inc. and Hytk Industries Inc., money-losing dogs every one. That bust was part of Operation Uptick, the massive FBI sting in which 120 promoters, brokers and organized crime family members were indicted. A federal jury convicted Mr. Wolfson in the bribery case in 2003 and he pled guilty to the Freedom Surf charges in 2004. While the pair of 10-year recommended sentences may not amount to life in jail for 60-year-old Mr. Wolfson, prosecutors recently indicted him in yet another fraud, an Asian boiler room. Just before he went to jail in 2003, Mr. Wolfson apparently used a boiler room in Thailand to bilk investors of $6.6-million by selling pre-IPO shares of Stem Genetics Inc., a Utah company purportedly doing embryonic stem cell research. That indictment included Mr. Wolfson's son David, 26, and Michael Newman (aka Marcus Wiseman), 45, a British national believed to be in a Thai jail. They apparently offered investors a chance to buy discounted shares of Stem Genetics before a purported $7 debut on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The company never went public. If convicted on all nine counts of the indictment, Mr. Wolfson could spend the rest of his life behind bars. The SEC banned Mr. Wolfson from penny stocks for life last September, citing his broker bribery conviction. The SEC's Freedom Surf victory was a summary judgment, Mr. Wolfson having already admitted to his crimes under oath in criminal court.