SEC charges former Infinium CEO with fraudTampa Bay Business Journal - May 16, 2006
http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2006/05/15/daily25.html
The Securities and Exchange Commission said it has charged Timothy Roberts, former chief executive of Infinium Labs Inc., for his role in a scheme to promote the company's stock.
In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, the commission alleged that Roberts, 36, of Longboat Key, authorized a fraudulent "junk fax" promotion and reaped more than $400,000 by unloading his Infinium Labs shares in the ensuing run-up in trading volume.
Roberts stepped down as Infinium CEO in August, when Infinium Labs moved its corporate headquarters from Sarasota to Seattle. Roberts remains on the company's board of directors.
Michael Ference, an attorney in New York representing Roberts, said the allegations are without merit. He said he intended to defend Roberts vigorously and ultimately he expected Roberts would be found to have done nothing wrong. A call to Infinium (OTCBB:IFLB) for comment was pending return.
Roberts hired stock promoter Michael Pickens in November 2004 to send faxes to tens of thousands of potential investors, according to a release from the SEC. The faxes made it appear Infinium was on the verge of launching its flagship product, a home videogame system called "Phantom," when the company actually lacked the financial resources needed to market the product, the release said.
Over the four months of the fax campaign, Roberts took advantage of increased trading volume to sell about $422,500 of his personal stock holdings, and many of those sales went unreported to the public, the SEC said. Roberts also paid Pickens with four million shares of his own Infinium Labs stock, in violation of registration provisions of the federal securities laws, according to the release.
The SEC is seeking to enjoin Roberts from future violations of the antifraud, stock registration and ownership disclosure provisions of federal securities laws. It also is requesting that Roberts give back the money he made on the stock stales, along with fines and interest, and that he be barred from serving as an officer or director of a publicly traded company.
Pickens was previously charged by the SEC for his role in a related scheme, the release said, and he is under criminal indictment by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Scam stock pitch faxed to SF SEC officeSilicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal - July 19, 2005
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2005/07/18/daily12.html
In the securities world equivalent of a burglar breaking into a police station, three suspects are accused of faxing stock scams to over 1 million fax machines, including one in the San Francisco office of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The SEC filed charges against Joshua Yafa, of Coral Gables, Fla., for a scheme in December 2004 in which a confidential memo from a financial planner to a client was made to look like it had been inadvertently faxed to the recipients, urging the client to quickly buy stock in AVL Global Inc., an over-the-counter stock. Both the financial planner and the client were fictitious.
Michael O'Brien Pickens, of Nocona, Texas, was accused of perpetrating a copycat scheme, sending faxes with a hot stock tip for Infinium Labs Inc., one of which was sent to the San Francisco SEC office, said Robert Tashjian, an SEC attorney in San Francisco. A third suspect, Serafin Sierra, allegedly perpetrated another copycat scam.
Complaints were filed in federal District Court in New York's southern district, alleging that the three defendants collected more than a half million dollars perpetrating the schemes, the SEC stated Monday.
"Investors need to be wary of stock manipulation schemes," said Marc Fagel, head of enforcement in the SEC's San Francisco office, "and consider the possibility that what looks like a hot stock tip may actually be part of a well-orchestrated scam."