On January 5, 2021, Judge Leigh Martin May of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia granted the SEC's motion for summary judgment against Peter Baker of Lawrenceville, Georgia.

According to the SEC's complaint, filed on June 4, 2019, Baker and codefendant Elizabeth Oharriz engaged in a scheme to sell fictitious prime bank instruments to investors, misrepresenting the instruments as legitimate and claiming that investors would earn substantial profits. As alleged in the complaint, Baker and Oharriz defrauded five groups of investors out of over $2 million and attempted to prevent investors from uncovering the fraud by providing them with fabricated bank documents.

The SEC's complaint charged Baker, Oharriz, Baker's company Prestige Global Trading, LLC, and Oharriz's companies, Diversified Consulting & Logistics, Inc. and Sienna Business Group, Inc., with violating the antifraud provisions 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. The complaint also charged Baker and Oharriz with violating the registration provisions of Section 15(a) of the Exchange Act. The court found that Baker violated the charged provisions and reserved the determination of penalties or other relief for a later date. Oharriz and her companies previously entered into a bifurcated settlement, agreeing to be permanently enjoined from violations of the charged provisions with monetary relief to be determined by the court at a later date.

The SEC is represented by Melissa Armstrong and M. Graham Loomis.

For more information regarding the dangers of prime bank schemes and tips on how to avoid them, see the "Investor Alert: 'Prime Bank' Investments Are Scams."