SEC Charges “Magic Mushroom” Company and Two Individuals with Multimillion Dollar Pump-and-Dump Scheme

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Minerco Inc. (former over-the-counter ticker: MINE), Bobby Shumake Japhia, and Julius Makiri Jenge, for their roles in an alleged pump-and-dump scheme that defrauded investors out of approximately $8 million while generating millions of dollars in ill-gotten proceeds from sales of Minerco stock. According to the SEC’s complaint, in the fall of 2019, Shumake, who was formerly known as Robert Samuel Shumake, Jr., secretly gained control of a large stock position in Minerco, an inactive penny stock company, and then arranged for Jenge to assume control of Minerco. The defendants then began pumping Minerco’s stock price by promoting Minerco as the “first publicly traded company focused on the research, production, and distribution of psilocybin mushrooms.” Psilocybin is the principal psychoactive component in “magic mushrooms,” a plant-based hallucinogen.