The Securities and Exchange Commission announced charges against Mexican resident Luis Jimenez Carrillo for engaging in deceptive schemes that generated more than $75 million from fraudulent sales of multiple microcap companies' stock. The SEC also charged Canadian resident Amar Bahadoorsingh and United Kingdom residents Justin Roger Wall and Jamie Samuel Wilson with partnering with Carrillo on at least one of these schemes.

The SEC's complaint alleges that, from at least 2013 through May 2019, Carrillo concealed the fact that he and others controlled the securities of numerous microcap companies whose stock was publicly traded in the U.S. securities markets. According to the complaint, Carrillo secretly sold millions of the companies' shares in violation of the securities laws, often after organizing promotional campaigns to encourage investors to buy the stock. Wall, Wilson, and Bahadoorsingh allegedly worked with Carrillo to gain control of at least one company's securities and fraudulently sell them. According to the complaint, Wall and Wilson used false documents to get the company's shares deposited for sale in brokerage accounts. As a result of these actions, what appeared to be ordinary trading by unaffiliated investors was actually a massive dump of shares orchestrated by Carrillo, Bahadoorsingh, Wall, and Wilson, who were seeking to profit at the expense of retail investors.

The SEC's complaint, filed in federal district court in Boston, Massachusetts, charges Carrillo and Bahadoorsingh with violating the antifraud provisions of Sections 17(a)(1) and 17(a)(3) of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rules 10b-5(a) and (c) thereunder; the registration provisions of Sections 5(a) and (c) of the Securities Act; and the ownership reporting provisions of Section 13(d) of the Exchange Act. The complaint charges Wall and Wilson with violating the antifraud provisions of Sections 17(a)(1), (2), and (3) of the Securities Act and Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Rules 10b-5(a), (b), and (c) thereunder, along with the ownership reporting provisions of Section 13(d) of the Exchange Act. The complaint also names as relief defendants an associate of Carrillo and two Carrillo family member trusts. The SEC seeks permanent injunctions, disgorgement of allegedly ill-gotten gains plus interest, and civil penalties against all the defendants; penny stock bars against Bahadoorsingh, Wall, and Wilson; and an order freezing Carrillo's assets.

On August 9, 2021, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts announced parallel criminal charges against Carrillo.

The SEC's case is being handled by Trevor Donelan, Kathleen Shields, Eric Forni, Susan C. Anderson, and Amy Gwiazda in the Boston Regional Office, with the assistance of Marlee Miller and Owen Granke of the SEC's Office of International Affairs. The SEC appreciates the assistance of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the Alberta Securities Commission, the British Columbia Securities Commission, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Argentina Comisiƒ³n Nacional de Valores, the Securities Commission of The Bahamas, the Colombia Fiscalƒ­a General de la Naciƒ³n, the Curaƒ§ao Korps Landelijke Politiediensten, the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission, the Dominican Republic Superintendencia del Mercado de Valores, the German Bundesanstalt fƒ¼r Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, the Latvia Financial and Capital Market Commission, the Liechtenstein Financial Market Authority, the Bank of Lithuania, the Malta Financial Services Authority, the Mauritius Financial Services Commission, the Mexican Comisiƒ³n Nacional Bancaria y de Valores, the New Zealand Financial Markets Authority, the Panamanian Superintendencia del Mercado de Valores, the St. Lucia Financial Intelligence Authority, the Securities Commission of Serbia, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, the United Arab Emirates Securities and Commodities Authority, the Dubai Financial Services Authority, and the United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority.