SEC Charges Three Canadian Citizens in Fraudulent Penny Stock Scheme

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced it charged three Canadian citizens with carrying out a fraudulent scheme involving penny stocks which generated tens of millions of dollars in proceeds but left investors with nearly worthless shares of various public companies. According to the SEC’s complaint, between at least 2011 and 2016, Jay Scott Kirk Lee, Geoffrey Allen Wall, and Benjamin Thompson Kirk allegedly were able to utilize a network of offshore front companies to conceal their control of shares in penny stocks, unload those shares on unsuspecting retail investors, and disburse the proceeds of their fraud to various bank accounts throughout the world.