For public companies in the U.S., the audit committee plays a critical role in maintaining investor confidence and ensuring accountability. Audit committees sit at the intersection of corporate governance, financial integrity, and risk oversight. If you serve on a board—or advise one—understanding the rules that govern audit committees is essential.
Read MoreThe NASDAQ listing process involves several steps and requirements for companies seeking to list their securities on one of NASDAQ’s three market tiers: the NASDAQ Capital Market, NASDAQ Global Market, or NASDAQ Global Select Market. Companies going public seeking to list on Nasdaq should be familiar with the process and documentation required to ensure time…
Read MoreThe Whistleblower Program was created by Congress to provide monetary incentives for individuals to come forward and report possible violations of the federal securities laws to the SEC. Under the program, eligible whistleblowers are entitled to an award between 10 and 30% of the monetary sanctions collected in actions brought by the SEC and related actions…
Read MoreFINRA Rule 6490 has had an important impact on going public transactions specifically reverse mergers with public shell companies.
Read MoreWhile going public offers many benefits, it also comes with risks and a large number of regulations with which issuers must become familiar. Despite the risks, the U.S. capital markets remain one of the most attractive sources of financing in the world. Going public is a complicated and intricate procedure. So, it is essential to […]
Read MoreOn May 3, 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced an enforcement action against auditing firm BF Borgers CPA PC and its principal, Benjamin F. Borgers. The regulator charged the firm with “deliberate and systemic failures to comply with Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) standards in its audits and reviews incorporated in more t…
Read MoreWe’ve often written about “toxic” promissory notes or preferred stock and the unregistered dealers who purchase them. These dealers are not the broker-dealers ordinary retail investors have accounts with. They are individuals with companies of their own that they use to provide financing to mostly microcap companies desperate for cash. In the long run, these…
Read MoreShort selling, the practice of betting a stock will go down, not up, has been controversial since it was invented more than 400 years ago in the Netherlands. In the early 1600s, there was only one stock in Holland, or anywhere else. It was the Dutch East India Company, or VOC (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie). Formed […]
Read MoreOn December 4, 2023, Swiss private bank Banque Pictet et Cie SA admitted to conspiring with U.S. taxpayers and others to hide more than $5.6 billion in 1,637 secret bank accounts in Switzerland and elsewhere and to conceal the income generated in those accounts from the IRS. As part of the resolution, Banque Pictet entered […]
Read MoreIn the past three years, some important changes have occurred to how “penny stocks” or “microcaps” trade and are regulated. By the early 2000s, they’d moved from the obscurity of the National Quotation Bureau’s Pink Sheets to a new trading platform, Cromwell Coulson’s Pink Link. The accompanying website, initially called Pink Sheets, made quotations much [&…
Read MoreJust about everybody knows what a “pump-and-dump” scheme is. It’s a type of price manipulation where bad actors use falsified, heavily promoted news, financial statements or other marketing communications to increase volume and manipulate the market price of a stock while simultaneously selling their cheap stock into the market. In a “…
Read MoreOn May 18, 2023, Mark Miller became the last of three men to be sentenced for a securities fraud scheme that involved hijacking several abandoned penny stocks, then using them for an illegal pump-and-dump stock manipulation scheme. Miller pleaded guilty to count 1 of the Indictment, Conspiracy to Commit Securities Fraud, and was sentenced to […]
Read MoreOn Thursday, April 20, 2023, Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Michael J. Driscoll, the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), and Ivan J. Arvelo, the Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Office of […]
Read MoreCharles McGonigal, a former top counterintelligence official in the FBI’s New York Field Office, who retired from the FBI in 2018, has been arrested and charged in two separate cases involving his dealings with foreign operatives, including billionaire Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska. He was arrested Saturday afternoon after he arrived at JFK Airport follow…
Read MoreA week before the 2022 midterm elections, the ranking members of four important committees of the House of Representatives composed and jointly signed a letter to Gary Gensler, Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, demanding answers to a number of important questions. The ranking members—the most senior members of each committee from the minority…
Read MoreBy now, most people have heard about the epic collapse of FTX. The crypto exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried (“SBF”) was once the 3rd largest crypto exchange, with an estimated valuation of $32 billion, and is now in Bankruptcy, facing a flurry of allegations of illegal activities and misappropriation of customer funds. It all began [&hellip…
Read MoreAccording to various internet reports, Nasdaq Inc has halted the initial public offerings (IPOs) of at least four small Chinese companies while it investigates short-lived stock rallies of other recent Chinese IPOs after going public. Several small Chinese companies that raised small amounts, typically $50 million or less, in their IPOs, saw their stock pric…
Read MoreThe China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) and U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) announced Friday that both sides signed an agreement to allow U.S. regulators to inspect the audits of Chinese companies whose stocks are traded on U.S. exchanges. U.S. regulators have long demanded access to audit papers of Chinese companies listed…
Read MoreOn March 24, 2022, as an anxious world hoped for positive results from a NATO meeting convened to address the ongoing war in Ukraine, former President Donald Trump sought to redress the harm he believes was done to him by Hillary Clinton “and her cohorts” in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, an election […]
Read MoreIn mid-January 2022, British tabloid the Daily Mail published a long story about U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s son Paul Jr, in which it was alleged that he’d been involved in a number of shady businesses, some of them targets of Securities and Exchange Commission investigations and enforcement actions. The piece was subsequently picked up […]
Read MoreOn May 20, 2021, Ted Brent Alexander and Jon Darrell Seawright both of Jackson, Mississippi, were indicted by a federal grand jury for their roles in a large multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme that adversely affected hundreds of victims across multiple states over about eight years.
Read MoreThe Securities and Exchange Commission case against Robinhood Financial moved one step closer to a payout when the SEC issued an Order appointing JND Legal Administration as the Fund Administrator of the Fair Fund established for the $65,000,000 that Robinhood Financial had agreed to pay on December 17, 2020.
Read MoreOn Wednesday, April 7th, six South Florida residents were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges that they defrauded investors of approximately $21 million by falsely claiming that the investors’ money would go towards the development of a lucrative mobile gaming application that, in reality, never launched and generated no revenues. The fraud sch…
Read MoreOn December 17, 2020, the US Department of Justice unsealed an Indictment against nine individuals charged in a "pump and dump" stock manipulation scheme involving Global Resource Energy Inc (GBEN) filed in the Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division.
Read MoreThe U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed legislation on Wednesday that would kick Chinese companies off U.S. stock exchanges if they do not fully comply with the U.S. auditing rules.
Read MoreAs business owners, it’s important that you watch out for all of these forms of business identity theft. Your business, whether big or small, is vulnerable to all of these schemes, just by virtue of being in business.
Read MoreSwedish multinational corporation Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, better known as simply “Ericsson”, was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) “with engaging in a large-scale bribery scheme involving the use of sham consultants to secretly funnel money to government officials in multiple countries. The bribes netted Erics…
Read MoreThough FINRA’s principal mandate is to regulate broker-dealers, historically it has always exercised some oversight of the over-the-counter markets including all tiers of the OTC Markets. Part of that oversight involves processing corporate action requests from issuers of equity and debt securities not listed on national securities exchanges. Significant cha…
Read MoreOn October 24, 2019, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced a settled enforcement action involving BNP Paribas Securities Corp. and BNP Paribas Prime Brokerage, Inc. A lengthy FINRA investigation found that although the firms did a brisk business in penny stocks between February 2013 and March 2017, their anti-money laundering (AML) p…
Read MoreThe Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have announced charges against five individuals, who the authorities allege attempted to manipulate shares of Boston-based Amogear Inc. A review of other recent enforcement cases reflects that hijacked she…
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