{"id":3686,"date":"2016-05-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-04T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stockbrokerfraudblog.blawgcloud.com\/2016\/05\/nine_brokers_charged_in_131m_s"},"modified":"2016-05-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-05-04T05:00:00","slug":"nine-brokers-charged-in-131m-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/nine-brokers-charged-in-131m-s\/","title":{"rendered":"Nine Brokers Charged in $131M Stock Scam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nine financial professionals are charged with scamming investors in a $131M financial fraud involving Forcefield Energy Inc. According to authorities, from 12\/09 to 4\/15 the defendants, which include brokers, stock promoters, and investor relations officials, manipulated the LED lighting provider\u2019s stock by trading it in secret, using undisclosed accounts, hiding kickbacks that were paid to brokers and stock promoters to tout the stock, and inflating the volume of trades to make it seem as if there was a real demand for the stock. Also this week the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil fraud charges against the nine defendants and former ForceField executive chairman Richard St. Julien who was arrested last year on charges accusing him of running scams to inflate his company\u2019s stock price.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking about the criminal case, U.S. Attorney Robert Capers said that the defendants took a business that didn\u2019t have much revenue and \u201cessentially no business\u201d and fooled their clients and the market into thinking that it was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The nine defendant are charged with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stockbroker-fraud.com\">securities fraud<\/a>, and conspiracies to commit wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering.  They are former Stratton Oakmont Inc. broker Christopher Castaldo,  unregistered broker Louis F. Petrossi,  Mitchell &amp; Sullivan Capital LLC managing partner of investor relations Jared Mitchell, registered representatives Richard L. Brown, Naveed A. Khan, Gerald J. Cocuzzo, Maroof Miyana, and Pranav V. Patel, and Kenai Capital Management LLC head Herschel Knippa III. <\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.investorlawyers.com\/blog\/nine-brokers-charged-in-131m-s\/#more-3686\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nine financial professionals are charged with scamming investors in a $131M financial fraud involving Forcefield Energy Inc. According to authorities, from 12\/09 to 4\/15 the defendants, which include brokers, stock promoters, and investor relations officials, manipulated the LED lighting provider\u2019s stock by trading it in secret, using undisclosed accounts, hiding kickbacks that were paid to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3773,3772,3801,3760],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-broker-fraud","category-private-placements","category-sec","category-sec-enforcement"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Nine Brokers Charged in $131M Stock Scam &#8212; Investor Lawyers Blog &#8212; May 4, 2016<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Nine financial professionals are charged with scamming investors in a $131M financial fraud involving Forcefield Energy Inc. 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