MY buddy Andy the scum bag - he really should be in jail for the LATAM scam bought 3 companies and 3 weeks later flipped them as an insider to APHA for 100 million profit. I really do not have the energy to track all his scams lately. I would be surprised if he is not got his hands in the Ontario Premier Doug Ford land scam .
SEC permanently bans DeFrancesco associates Diaz, Rezk
U S Securities and Exchange Commission (U:*SEC)
Friday November 24 2023 - Street Wire
by Mike Caswell
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has permanently banned Marlio Diaz and Carlos Rezk, two Florida men charged alongside Toronto's Andy DeFrancesco for an $8-million pump-and-dump on the OTC Markets. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) The SEC said that the men helped mislead investors in a company that supposedly had a "$900 Million Opportunity from Apple." Among other things, the men claimed that the company's stores were outdoing major retailers in their ability to make sales.
The bans for Mr. Diaz and Mr. Rezk are contained in judgments entered on Nov. 21, 2023, in federal court in New York. The judgments ban each man from serving as an officer or director. In addition, each must pay a $223,229 fine within 30 days. The judgments represent a negotiated settlement, in which Mr. Diaz and Mr. Rezk did not admit any wrongdoing.
The penalties come about five months after the SEC settled with Mr. DeFrancesco for the scheme, with a judge ordering him to pay $3-million. The judge also banned Mr. DeFrancesco from serving as an officer or director. As with the others, the penalties for Mr. DeFrancesco came as part of a negotiated settlement, in which he did not admit any wrongdoing.
Details of the scheme, and the roles of Mr. Diaz and Mr. Rezk, are set out in a civil complaint that the SEC filed on Jan. 6, 2023, in the Southern District of New York. The SEC claimed that the men helped Mr. DeFrancesco with the pump-and-dump of Cool Holdings Inc., an OTC Markets listing that touted itself as a seller of Apple products. The complaint identified Mr. Diaz, 48, as a director and chief executive officer of Cool Holdings until June 5, 2019, while Mr. Rezk, 49, was a director and the chief sales officer until June 5, 2019. Toronto's Mr. DeFrancesco, 52, was the company's chairman.
The events at issue, as set out by the SEC, went back to 2018, when Cool Holdings was the owner and operator of consumer electronics stores in the United States, Latin America and Canada. It described itself as a vendor of "Apple and Apple-approved products and accessories." The company claimed to have a "strong partnership" in which it would expand to become "the largest authorized reseller of Apple products and services in the Americas." Among other things, it touted plans to open 200 locations.
As the SEC saw things, those projections were more than optimistic. The company did have an agreement to distribute Apple products, but throughout the scheme the relationship with Apple was strained, the SEC said. The main source of that trouble, as set out in the complaint, arose from the failure by Cool Holdings to promptly pay for Apple products. The company fell so far behind on the payments that Apple refused to send more product.
Amidst these problems, Mr. DeFrancesco hired a penny stock promoter, paying him $350,000 along with 150,000 shares of Cool Holdings, the SEC claimed. The resulting promotional materials, as set out by the SEC, were false and misleading. Among other things, the materials read: "Small NASDAQ Company Just Got a Huge $900 Million Opportunity from Apple" and "Why is Apple Giving This Tiny Stock a $900 Million Opportunity." The articles further touted the company as being such a success that its stores were "even closing in on Apple-owned stores."
The promotional material failed to disclose that Mr. DeFrancesco had paid for the campaign and that he intended to sell his shares, the SEC said. During the scheme, the stock quickly rose, hitting $18.25 on Sept. 21, 2018. Mr. DeFrancesco, meanwhile, unloaded 1.6 million shares, generating $8-million in gains, the SEC claimed. (The company is now defunct, and last traded at 17 cents.)
The SEC said that Mr. Diaz and Mr. Rezk assisted with the pump-and-dump, helping take Cool Holdings public and signing false and misleading regulatory filings. They also sold shares as the company was misleading investors, realizing $922,000 and $838,000, the SEC claimed. The men were aware of the company's problems with Apple, as they were part of e-mail conversations about the issue, according to the complaint.
Both men initially denied any wrongdoing, at least in a legalistic sense. In separate answers to the complaint, they said that they "lack knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief to the truth or falsity" of the accusations against them. They also said that the SEC had "failed to plead a material misrepresentation or omission" on their part.
AI
