The SEC settled its lawsuit against Britain’s Hunter twins with perhaps the single worst settlement in the history of the agency. For $175,000 the Hunter Twins settled all the charges. Considering how blatant their fraud was (see my blog post about it from April 20th, 2012) I find it nothing short of stupefying how little the SEC settled for. Janice Shell reminded me that there is a parallel criminal case against the twins; I will update this post when I find out what has been going on with that.
The brothers settled for less than 10% of the total alleged profits from their fraudulent scheme — $1.2 million which was paid to them for their stock newsletter / software (Daytradingrobot.com and Doublingstocks.com) and $1.865 million in payments from various parties to promote stocks. And the amounts of money mentioned in the SEC’s lawsuit only include a couple of the pump and dumps that the Hunter twins ran.
Under today’s announced settlement, the Hunter brothers, without admitting or denying the allegations in the Commission’s complaint, consented to the entry of a judgment requiring Alex Hunter to pay a $100,000 penalty, requiring Tom Hunter to pay a $75,000 penalty, and enjoining both brothers individually from future violations of Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder.
Disclaimer: I have no position in any stock mentioned above. This blog has a terms of use that is incorporated by reference into this post; you can find all my disclaimers and disclosures there as well.