O.C. stock board founder pleads guilty to fraud 2/17/2010
Matthew Brown, founder of Orange County stock board InvestorsHub.com, pleaded guilty today to four counts of stock fraud and money laundering. He faces up to 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Brown entered his plea in U.S. District Court in Delaware.
Federal prosecutors charged Brown and six others with a pump-and-dump scheme to hype five lightly traded stocks on InvestorsHub, drive up the price and then sell. In his plea agreement, Brown admitted that investors lost at least $1 million because of his scheme.
Prosecutors said Brown and the others arranged with help from insiders to gain control of millions of shares in the target companies. Then they spread glowing rumors on InvestorsHub and other stock boards, prompting unwitting buyers to rush in. Then they sold.
A key figure in the case, Polish citizen Pawel Dynkowski, also known as “Evo”, remains at large, Assistant U.S. Attorney Shannon Hanson said.
Another defendant, Gerard D’Amaro of Lighthouse Point., Fla., is scheduled to change his plea from innocent to guilty on March 11, Hanson said.
Since the original indictment of Brown, Dynkowski, D’Amaro and two others last May, a federal grand jury indicted two more alleged participants, Florian Ternes and Richard Bailey. They were insiders at one of the target companies, GH3 International, and allegedly arranged to provide 312 million shares for the scheme.
Read Brown’s plea agreement here. Read our May 2009 coverage of the first indictments and Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit here.
ocbiz.freedomblogging.com/2010/02/17/...guilty-to-fraud/16849/
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