US SEC recently charged George Georgiou of Toronto, Ontario, with manipulating the market in four separate microcap stocks — Avicena Group, Neutron Enterprises, Hydrogen Hybrid Technologies, and Northern Ethanol. SEC alleges that Georgiou, who controlled the publicly traded stock of each company, manipulated the market from 2004 through Sep 2008 to artificially inflate each company's stock price or create the false appearance of an active and liquid market. He made at least US$20.9 million in ill-gotten gains from his manipulation schemes.
SEC alleges that each of the manipulation schemes followed a similar pattern. Georgiou controlled all or a large percentage of the unrestricted, publicly-traded stock of each company. He had influence with management, access to confidential shareholder lists, and was able to coordinate the release of company news with his illegal trading. In conversations and through his own e-mails, Georgiou admitted his intent to manipulate each of the stocks, and gave directions to his nominees.
Georgiou used many nominee accounts at offshore broker-dealers in Canada, the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, and other locations. He asserted direct control over some accounts by issuing trading and wiring instructions directly to broker-dealers, and indirect control over others by communicating trading instructions to nominees who, in turn, executed Georgiou's trading instructions.
Through these accounts, Georgiou used a variety of manipulative techniques in each scheme, including controlling the trading volume through promises of profits to nominees; executing or directing matched orders, wash sales, or other prearranged trades; marking-the-close; and paying illegal kickbacks in exchange for purchases.
Georgiou's manipulation of Hydrogen Hybrid Technologies was in the nature of a pump-and-dump scheme in which Georgiou arranged and paid for the publication of a promotional mailer sent to seven million US addresses. Georgiou coordinated manipulative trading with the publication of the mailer, and ultimately received more than US$3.8 million when he dumped his shares into the artificially inflated market. Part of Georgiou's manipulation of Northern Ethanol stock involved the payment of an illegal kickback to a person Georgiou believed was a corrupt registered representative, but who was in reality an undercover FBI agent.
Georgiou also defrauded two offshore broker-dealers by obtaining margin loans using the manipulated stocks as collateral, further funding his manipulations and allowing him to withdraw cash that he wired to offshore bank accounts.
This guy is really a manipulator at an "international level".
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