Litigation Release No. 25049 / March 12, 2021
Securities and Exchange Commission v. Shamoon Omer Rafiq, a/k/a Shamoon Rafiq, Omer Rafiq, and Omar Rafiq, No. 21-civ-2168 (S.D.N.Y.) filed March 12, 2021
On March 12, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Shamoon Omer Rafiq, a Dutch citizen residing in Singapore, with defrauding investors by offering to sell them approximately $9 million in fictitious securities.
According to the SEC s complaint, since July 2020, Rafiq sought to bilk several investors out of millions of dollars by offering to sell them securities purporting to represent Rafiq s ownership in a special purpose vehicle investment fund (the SPV Fund) that, Rafiq claimed, held pre-IPO shares of a well-known company. The complaint alleges that, as part of his fraudulent sales pitch, Rafiq falsely claimed that the SPV Fund was controlled by a well-known European investment firm run by a prominent family, and that Rafiq was a close associate of the firm and it
Litigation Release No. 24999 / December 30, 2020
, curities and Exchange Commission v. Joseph Taub, et al., 16 Civ. 09130 (D.N.J.) (filed December 12, 2016)
On December 28, 2020, the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey entered a final consent judgment against Joseph Taub, whom the SEC charged with orchestrating a market manipulation scheme.
The SEC s complaint, filed on December 12, 2016 and amended on April 26, 2018, alleged that Taub engaged in a fraudulent market manipulation scheme, utilizing dozens of securities accounts at several brokerage firms to create the false appearance of trading interest and activity in particular exchange-traded securities, thereby enabling him to purchase stocks at artificially low prices and then quickly sell them at artificially high prices for substantial profits. The complaint further alleged that Taub took steps to conceal the trading scheme and supervised the manipulative trading of a co-defendant. In a parallel cri