FAT CATS

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Pump and dump CEO caught after cross-country chase

A cross-country chase of a defendant in a penny-stock scam ended in Provo, Utah over the holiday weekend.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia said Rufus Paul Harris, 43, was taken into custody Sunday.

Harris fled trial in Atlanta, Georgia May 23.

He was facing multiple securities fraud charges in connection with a pump and dump scheme in 2006.

Harris was convicted of all eight counts while still on the lam. He faces 25 years in prison and fines of $250,000 on two of the counts, and lesser penalties on the others.

“The defendant, who was convicted of a multi-million stock pump-and-dump fraud scheme, will now find that his problems have gone from bad to worse,” United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said in a statement.

Harris was the founder and chief executive officer of Conversion Solutions Holdings Corporation, a penny stock whose shares surged in 2006 after Harris and other company officials issued multiple false press releases claiming the company had as much as $800 million in assets.

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2011/05/31/pump-and-dump-ceo-caught-after-cross-country-chase/

- Tom Bemis