SEC Charges Felon And Six Others In Oil-And-Gas Offering Fraud Date
14/04/2021
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged seven individuals, including criminal recidivist Richard Dale Sterritt, Jr., with defrauding investors through a multimillion dollar oil-and-gas offering fraud and related market manipulation scheme.
The SEC s complaint alleges that, between March 2018 and at least November 2020, Sterritt – who used the pseudonym Richard Richman – Michael Greer, Deanna Looney, Robert Magness, Jr., Katie Mathews, James Christopher Pittman, and Mark Ross raised more than $16 million from more than 300 investors through an unregistered private placement of the common stock of Zona Energy Inc., a Dallas-based company that claimed to be focused on the oil and gas industry. According to the complaint, the defendants made various false and misleading statements verbally and in offering materials to solicit investors, including that their funds would be used t