Markets

Washington D.C. — The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that California-based Mattel Inc. has agreed to pay $3.5 million to settle charges relating to misstatements in its third and fourth quarter 2017 financial statements. Separately, the SEC is initiating litigation against Joshua Abrahams, a former audit partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, or PwC, to determine whether he engaged in...

Washington D.C. — The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against Kim Kardashian for touting on social media a crypto asset security offered and sold by EthereumMax without disclosing the payment she received for the promotion. Kardashian agreed to settle the charges, pay $1.26 million in penalties, disgorgement, and interest, and cooperate with the Commission’s ongoing investigation. The SEC’s...

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged 18 individuals and entities for their roles in a fraudulent scheme in which dozens of online retail brokerage accounts were hacked and improperly used to purchase microcap stocks to manipulate the price and trading volume of those stocks. Those charged include Rahim Mohamed of Alberta, Canada, who is alleged to have coordinated...

Former CEO Agrees to Settle to Same Charges and Pay $1 Million The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged The Boeing Company and its former CEO, Dennis A. Muilenburg, with making materially misleading public statements following crashes of Boeing airplanes in 2018 and 2019. The crashes involved Boeing’s 737 MAX airplane and a flight control function called the Maneuvering Characteristics...

Defendant Defrauded Investors of Over $6 Million A federal jury convicted a New York man this week in connection with a scheme to defraud investors by marketing and selling fraudulent virtual currency. According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Randall Crater, 51, of East Hampton, founded My Big Coin Pay Inc. (My Big Coin), a purported cryptocurrency and virtual...

Washington D.C. — The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced insider trading charges against a former Coinbase product manager, his brother, and his friend for perpetrating a scheme to trade ahead of multiple announcements regarding certain crypto assets that would be made available for trading on the Coinbase platform. The SEC’s complaint alleges that, while employed at Coinbase, Ishan Wahi...

Washington D.C. — The Securities and Exchange Commission this week announced charges against Health Insurance Innovations (HII) and its former CEO Gavin Southwell for concealing extensive consumer complaints about short-term and limited health insurance products HII offered. HII has since changed its name to Benefytt Technologies and become a private company. According to the SEC’s order, from March 2017 through...

As scheme collapsed, defendants stopped investor withdrawals and relocated to Brazil Washington D.C. — The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced fraud charges against Empires Consulting Corp. (EmpiresX), its founders Emerson Sousa Pires and Flavio Mendes Goncalves, and its head trader Joshua David Nicholas, for a scheme that allegedly raised at least $40 million by luring investors with false claims...

The Department of Justice, together with federal law enforcement partners, has announced criminal charges against six defendants in four separate cases for their alleged involvement in cryptocurrency-related fraud, including the largest known Non-Fungible Token (NFT) scheme charged to date, a fraudulent investment fund that purportedly traded on cryptocurrency exchanges, a global Ponzi scheme involving the sale of unregistered crypto...

Washington D.C. — The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced that UBS Financial Services Inc. has agreed to pay approximately $25 million to settle fraud charges relating to a complex investment strategy referred to as YES, or Yield Enhancement Strategy. According to the SEC’s order, UBS marketed and sold YES to approximately 600 investors through its platform of domestic financial...