Green Technology Archives

SEC charges green-product company with running a $26 million Ponzi scheme

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced today that it obtained an emergency court order to halt a Ponzi scheme that promised investors high returns on water-filtering natural stone pavers but bilked them of approximately $26 million over a four-year period.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the SEC alleges in its complaint that between 2006 and 2010, convicted felon Eric Aronson and others defrauded about 140 individual investors in PermaPave Companies, a group of firms based on Long Island, NY, and controlled by Aronson. According to the complaint, the investors were told that PermaPave had a tremendous backlog of orders for pavers imported from Australia, which could be sold in the U.S. at a substantial mark-up, yielding monthly returns of 7.8% to 33%. But in reality, the complaint states, there was little demand for the product, and the cost of the pavers far exceeded the revenue from sales.

In their Ponzi scheme, Aronson and two other PermaPave executives, Vincent Buonauro Jr. and Robert Kondratick, used the new funds to make payments to earlier investors and then siphoned off much of the rest for themselves, buying luxury cars, gambling trips, and jewelry, according to the complaint. Aronson also allegedly used the investors’ money to make court-ordered restitution payments to victims of a previous scheme to which he pleaded guilty in 2000.

The complaint further states that when investors began demanding their money, Aronson accused them of committing a felony by lending the PermaPave Companies money at the interest rates he promised them, which he suddenly claimed were usurious. Aronson and his attorney, Fredric Aaron, then allegedly made false statements to persuade investors to convert their securities into ones that deferred payments for several years.

The SEC also charges that the defendants used some of the money raised through the Ponzi scheme to purchase a publicly traded company, Interlink-US-Network, Ltd. Several months later, the SEC said that Interlink issued a Form 8-K, signed by Kondratick, which falsely claimed that LED Capital Corp. had agreed to invest $6 million in Interlink. According to the complaint, LED Capital Corp. did not have $6 million and had no dealings with Interlink.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, which conducted a parallel investigation, filed criminal charges against Aronson, Buonauro, and Kondratick.

|Green Technology|

Seven individuals charged by SEC in global warming scheme

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today charged seven individuals with perpetrating a fraudulent pump-and-dump scheme in the stock of a sham company that purported to provide products and services to fight global warming. The scheme resulted in more than $7 million in illicit profits from the sales of stock in CO2 Tech Ltd. at artificially inflated prices. The company, based in London, touted impressive business relationships and anti-global warming technology innovations, but was found to have no significant assets or operations.

According to the SEC’s complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the scheme was enacted through Red Sea Management Ltd., a Costa Rican asset protection company that laundered millions of dollars in illicit trading proceeds out of the United States on behalf of its clients. Charged in the in the fraudulent pump-and-dump scheme were: Jonathan R. Curshen, a Florida resident who founded and led Red Sea, David C. Ricci and Ronny Morales Salazar of Costa Rica, who were Red Sea stock traders, Ariav “Eric” Weinbaum and Yitzchak Zigdon of Israel, who were Red Sea clients, Robert L. Weidenbaum, of Florida, who was a stock promoter and operator of CLX & Associates, and Michael S. Krome, a New York lawyer who allegedly wrote a fraudulent opinion letter. Without admitting or denying the allegations in the complaint, Ricci settled the SEC’s charges by agreeing to an injunction against future violations of these provisions and a penny stock bar.

In a related criminal action, charges brought by the Justice Department’s Criminal Division were unsealed today against Curshen, Krome, Salazar, Weidenbaum, Weinbaum, and Zigdon. The defendants were charged variously with conspiracy to commit securities, mail and wire fraud, violating securities regulation laws and obstruction of justice.

|Criminal Activity, Fraud, Green Technology|

Green-energy scams put portfolios in the red

The emerging green-energy market has created a horde of fraudsters. So many, in fact, that late last year, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) warned about schemes that promise large gains from investments in companies that pitch alternative, renewable or waste-to-energy products. And in May of this year, the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) followed with its own alert about potential scams that exploit the Gulf oil spill and related cleanup efforts.

The green-energy get-rich-quick schemes are showing up in blog posts, e-mail, infomercials, Internet message boards, text messages, and Twitter. As with most investment scams, all promise unrealistic returns, such a 200 percent stock gain by a solar panel company, a one-in-a-million deal to get a “51 times” return on current stock value from a China wind-power enterprise, and a 500 percent one week stock gain by a hydrogen-based energy outfit.

Of course, the regulators are on the lookout for the scammers. In one recently filed case, the SEC charged that promoters of eco-friendly investment opportunities lured 300 investors into a $30 million Ponzi scheme, encouraging the participants to finance “green” initiatives of Mantria Corporation, including a purported “carbon negative” housing community in rural Tennessee and a “bio-char” charcoal substitute made from organic waste. Investors were promised returns ranging from 17 percent to “hundreds of percent” annually. But, according to the SEC’s complaint, Mantria did not generate any income from which such extraordinary returns could be paid.

As cautioned by the SEC, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico brought additional scam opportunities for cons promising financial gains from investments in companies that claim to be involved in the cleanup operations. In May and June 2010, the SEC suspended the trading in shares of ACT Clean Technologies Inc. of Huntington Beach, CA, and Green Energy Resources, Inc. of New York, NY, because, among other issues, questions arose about the accuracy and adequacy of the publicly disseminated information by the companies.

To dodge green-energy investment scams (and other frauds) investigate before investing! And:

Never rely solely on information contained in an unsolicited communication.
Find out who sent the investment recommendations; many companies and individuals that tout stocks are paid by the company being promoted.
Examine the fine print for any statements indicating payments in cash or in stock for issuing the report or message.
Find out where the stock trades. Most unsolicited recommendations involve stocks that do not meet the listing requirements of the major stock exchanges; they are usually quoted on the OTC Bulletin Board or in the Pink Sheets, which do not impose minimum qualitative standards. Many of the OTC or Pink Sheets stocks trade infrequently which can make shares difficult to sell. When these stocks do trade, they may fluctuate in price very rapidly.
Read the company’s SEC filings to verify information.
Exercise skepticism and be wary of any pitch that suggests immediate pay-offs, especially if the investment involves a start-up company or a product or service that is still in development.

|Educational Series, Green Technology|