SEC Charges Boiler Rooms Operator with Defrauding Retail Investors

The SEC today charged New York resident Mark Alan Lisser with fraud for operating at least two boiler rooms, on Long Island, New York and in Boca Raton, Florida, through which he raised approximately $2.1 million from at least 71 retail investors and misappropriated more than $900,000 of their funds. According to the SEC’s complaint, from approximately October 2018 to March 2019, Lisser, and salespeople that he directed in the boiler rooms, solicited investors for Knightsbridge Capital Partners, an unregistered fund manager he operated, by misrepresenting that the Knightsbridge-managed funds had purchased “pre-IPO” shares in three well-known companies directly from employees of the companies. As the complaint alleges, Knightsbridge did not own any shares at the time it solicited investors and subsequently purchased shares or interests in shares of the companies from third parties, not employees.