DD Support Board and Research Team

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OmniView Capital CEO Charged in Stock Manipulation Case

By Christie Smythe July 17, 2014
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-07-17/omniview-capital-ceo-charged-in-stock-manipulation-case

July 17 (Bloomberg) --The chief executive officer of an investment firm was accused by the U.S. of running a scheme to manipulate stock of companies, including a startup advised by former New York Governor David A. Paterson.

Abraxas J. Discala, CEO of OmniView Capital Advisors, and six other individuals were charged in an indictment unsealed today in Brooklyn, New York, federal court.

The defendants are accused of participating in a scheme to profit by artificially inflating the stock of four companies including medical coding education firm CodeSmart Holdings Inc. (ITEN:US), which OmniView advised. The scam took place from October 2012 to this month, according to the government.

Now trading over the counter at less than 1 cent a share, CodeSmart stock rose as high as $6.94 a year ago.

The defendants reaped profits by buying shares and selling the investments while they were at their peak, according to the government.

Discala was at one time married to Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who played Meadow on the HBO series “The Sopranos.” New York-based CodeSmart had retained OmniView in 2013 to assist with capital and transaction strategy. The coding educational firm announced in March that Paterson had joined its advisory board.

The seven defendants manipulated the stock through false and misleading press releases, false and misleading filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, concealment of their ownership interests, engineering price movements and trading volume and “unauthorized purchases of stock in accounts of unwitting investors,” according to the indictment.

To contact the reporter on this story: Christie Smythe in Brooklyn at [e-mail]

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at [e-mail] Joe Schneider, Andrew Dunn

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-07-17/omniview-capital-ceo-charged-in-stock-manipulation-case