A 20-year-old man who continued manipulating penny stocks even after a federal judge ordered him to stop has pleaded guilty to securities fraud for pump-and-dump schemes involving a half-dozen stocks.
A 20-year-old man who continued manipulating penny stocks even after a federal judge ordered him to stop has pleaded guilty to securities fraud for pump-and-dump schemes involving a half-dozen stocks.
Tovy Pustovit of Vancouver, Wash., will forfeit $266,373 in illicit profits and faces up to 20 years in prison, although prosecutors agreed to recommended no more than 63 months.
Pustovit and three other men were sued last summer by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a case involving alleged manipulation of two marijuana stocks, and the three others were charged with securities fraud by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Pustovit was with one of those men, Mikhail Galas, also of Vancouver, Wash., when Galas was arrested in that earlier case. And Pustovit was in court when U.S. District Court Judged Ronald Leighton in August 2014 issued a preliminary injunction ordering all four not to commit further securities violations.
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Yet by November, according to his plea agreement, Pustovit was participating in new plans to manipulate tiny stocks.
He provided the cash and expertise for another person identified only as M.M. to set up two stock promotion websites, create several trading accounts in the names of other individuals, and accumulate shares in three companies, Brighttech (ticker symbol BRTE), General Environmental Management (GEVI), and Green Street Capital Corp. (JAGR).
The plea document details how with GEVI, which traded over-the-counter and hadn’t filed SEC reports for years, they bought 2.7 million share of GEVI stock at per-share prices ranging from less than two-tenths of a cent to 2 cents.
Then, using the stock promotion websites, they issued wildly optimistic predictions that the stock was “ready to soar to gains over 450 percent.” As the stock rose, they reaped $83,000 by selling all their shares. Once they dumped their shares, says the document, “the price of GEVI collapsed.”
They also made profits of $6,254 and $9,046 from the BRTE and JAGR pump-and-dumps, says the plea agreement.
Pustovit also pleaded guilty to participating in the 2012 stock manipulation scheme in which his three associates were criminally charged last summer, involving a company called ISM International. The three — Galas, Alexander Hawatmeh of Lincoln City, Ore., and Christopher Mrowca, of Bradenton, Fla. — are due to be sentenced in that case on June 5, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
An attorney for Pustovit could not immediately be reached for comment.