On May 11, 2012 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced charges against a former executive at a Bakersfield, Calif.-based oil and gas production company for insider trading in his company’s stock using confidential information received while he was the CEO and chairman of the board. The Commission alleges that Frank Lynn Blystone received e-mail updates prior to his March 5, 2010, retirement from Tri-Valley Corporation that contained confidential information about the company’s ongoing efforts to raise capital and problems it had encountered in a securities offering.

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On May 11, 2012 U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced that the filing of an enforcement action in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, charging Michael J. Leighton of Torrance, Calif., with solicitation fraud and issuing false statements in connection with the operation of a commodity trading pool. According to the CFTC complaint, filed on May 8, 2012, Leighton defrauded and deceived at least 42 pool participants who invested at least $1.6 million in a commodity pool he operated from at least July 2008 and continuing through the present. The complaint alleges that Leighton told prospective pool participants that he was a successful trader and that his pool was profitable.

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On May 11, 2012 Financial Services Authority (FSA) published that it has fined Donald McKee Morgan, a partner in the firm of Donald Morgan Insurance Services (DMIS), £335,204 for committing insurance fraud. Morgan, who was based in Ayrshire, Scotland, has also been banned from carrying out any regulated financial services activity in the future. Donald Morgan’s wife, Janet Morgan, who was the only other partner at DMIS, has also been publicly censured and banned from carrying out regulated financial services. Janet Morgan took no active part in the affairs of the firm, and failed to notice her partner’s fraudulent activity.

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On May 10, 2012 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published that the commission charged a Manhattan resident on May 9, 2012, with carrying out a complex market manipulation scheme in biopharmaceutical stocks after he was kicked out of the brokerage industry for fraud. The SEC alleges that David Blech established more than 50 brokerage accounts in the names of family members, friends, and even a private religious institution. He used those accounts to buy and sell significant amounts of stock in two biopharmaceutical companies in order to create the artificial appearance of activity in their securities so he could maintain their market price and use it to his own financial advantage.

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On May 10, 2012 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published that the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia entered a consent order requiring, among other things, that Defendant Dr. Bobby V. Khan, a Georgia-based doctor, pay more than double the amount of his trading profits obtained through alleged insider trading. The Commission filed charges against Dr. Bobby V. Khan in September 2010, alleging that he traded illegally in the stock of Georgia-based pharmaceutical company Sciele Pharma, Inc. on the basis of nonpublic information he received just days before the public announcement of a tender offer by a Japanese company to purchase all of that company’s shares.

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On May 10, 2012 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published that the commission deems it appropriate and in the public interest that public administrative proceedings be, and hereby are, instituted pursuant to Section 15(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 against Robert C. Pribilski (“Pribilski”). After an investigation, the Division of Enforcement alleges that: From at least 2005 through March 2010, Pribilski was the president of USA Retirement Management Services. For a portion of the time in which he engaged in the conduct underlying the complaint described below, Pribilski acted as an unregistered broker-dealer by soliciting investors in promissory notes offered by USARMS without being registered as a broker or dealer. Pribilski, 53 years old, is a resident of Lisle, Illinois.

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On May 09, 2012 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published that the commission charged former Detroit mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick, former city treasurer Jeffrey W. Beasley, and the investment adviser to the city’s public pension funds involved in a secret exchange of lavish gifts to peddle influence over the funds’ investment process. The Commission’s complaint alleges that Kilpatrick and Beasley, who were trustees to the pension funds, solicited and received $125,000 worth of private jet travel and other perks paid for by MayfieldGentry Realty Advisors LLC, an investment adviser whose CEO Chauncey Mayfield was recommending to the trustees that the pension funds invest approximately $117 million in a real estate investment trust (REIT) controlled by the firm.

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On May 08, 2012 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published that the commission issued a Notice of Proposed Plan of Distribution and Opportunity for Comment pursuant to Rule 1103 on September 23, 2010, of the Commission’s Rules on Fair Funds and Disgorgement Plans, 17 C.F.R. § 201.1103. The Notice was modified on February 1, 2011 (Exchange Act Rel. No. 63813). The Modified Notice advised parties they could obtain a copy of the modified proposed Distribution Plan at www.sec.gov. The Modified Notice also advised that all persons desiring to comment on the Modified Distribution Plan could submit their comments, in writing, no later than 30 days from the date of the Notice. No comments were received by the Commission in response to the Modified Notice. On March 14, 2011, the Commission issued an Order Approving Distribution Plan of a Fair Fund and Appointing a Fund Administrator (Exchange Act Rel. No. 64081).

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On May 09, 2012 U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced that the filing of a civil enforcement action in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York charging Madison Dean, Inc., of Wantagh, N.Y., and its principals, George Athanasatos, also of Wantagh, and Laurence Dodge of Fresh Meadows, N.Y., with fraudulently soliciting approximately 19 persons to invest approximately $415,000 in managed trading accounts to trade off-exchange foreign currency contracts on a leverage or margined basis. None of the defendants has ever been registered with the CFTC.

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On April 23, 2012 Alabama Securities Commission (ASC) published that Thomas M. Smith, District Attorney for the 6th Judicial Circuit, Tuscaloosa County, Alabama; Bill Adair, District Attorney for the 14th Judicial Circuit, Walker County and, Joseph Borg, Director of the Alabama Securities Commission announced that Michael Kevin Mullen, 58, an Aiken, South Carolina resident was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in a penitentiary of the State of Alabama, and given 400 days of jail credit for previous time served. Mullen’s application for probation was granted by the court and he will serve on supervised probation for five years with special conditions that he will pay all court ordered monies and will not sell securities in the State of Alabama. Mullen was ordered to pay $323,885.65 in restitution to victims of his investment scheme.

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On April 04, 2012 Alabama Securities Commission (ASC) published that Robert T. Treese, III, District Attorney for the 37th Judicial Circuit, Lee County, Alabama; and, Joseph P. Borg, Director of the Alabama Securities Commission, announced today the arrest of Thomas Washington Campbell, III, a Salem, Alabama resident, for alleged violations of the Alabama Securities Act. Campbell turned himself in to the Lee County Sheriff’s Department, Mar. 23, 2012, and was arrested based on a Jan., 2012 Lee County Grand Jury indictment alleging 12 total counts, including three counts each of Sale of Unregistered Securities and Sale of Securities by an Unregistered Agent as well as six counts of Fraud in Connection with the Sale of Securities. He was subsequently released on a $60,000 bond.

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On May 08, 2012 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published that the Honorable Jed S. Rakoff, United States District Judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, on May 7, 2012, entered a Final Judgment on consent as to James Fleishman in the SEC’s insider trading case, entitled SEC v. Mark Anthony Longoria, et al., 11-CV-0753 (SDNY) (JSR). This case alleges insider trading by ten individuals and one investment adviser entity, all of whom are consultants, employees, or clients of the so-called “expert network” firm, Primary Global Research LLC (“PGR”). The SEC filed its Complaint on February 3, 2011, charging two PGR employees and four consultants with insider trading for illegally tipping hedge funds and other investors.

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On May 08, 2012 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published that a Massachusetts federal court entered final judgments by consent against James Tambone and Robert Hussey, defendants in a case filed by the Commission on May 19, 2006. The Commission alleged in its complaint that from 1998 through 2003, Tambone and Hussey, two senior executives at Columbia Funds Distributor, Inc., the underwriter for the Columbia complex of mutual funds, allowed certain preferred customers to engage in frequent short-term trading in certain Columbia mutual funds in contravention of the prospectuses that represented that the funds did not permit, or were otherwise hostile to, market timing or other short-term or excessive trading.

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On May 08, 2012 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published that the commission charged a Hollywood movie producer along with his brother, cousin, and three others in his circle of friends and business partners with insider trading in the stock of a company for which he served on the board of directors. The SEC alleges that Mohammed Mark Amin, prior to a company board meeting, learned confidential information about expanding business opportunities for DuPont Fabros Technology Inc., which develops and manages highly-specialized and secure facilities that maintain large computer servers for technology companies through long-term leases with them.

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On May 08, 2012 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published that the commission filed a civil injunctive action in Atlanta, Georgia, alleging that Gerald D. Kegley and the company he operates, Prism Financial Services, LLC, participated in a fraudulent “Prime Bank” scheme that violated the antifraud and securities and broker dealer registration provisions of the federal securities laws. The Commission’s complaint alleges that from at least April 8, 2010 through at least August 20, 2010, the defendants were directly responsible for introducing six individuals, who invested $1.95 million, to the fraudulent scheme.

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