The Securities and Exchange Commission obtained a judgment against an Irvine, California man who posted false statements over Twitter and another social media site while purchasing and selling securities.

According to the SEC's complaint, filed March 2, 2021, Andrew L. Fassari used the Twitter pseudonym @OCMillionaire to tweet false statements about a defunct Nevada company to inflate the value of the company's stock. Specifically, the complaint alleges that, on December 9, 2020, Fassari began purchasing over 41 million shares of Arcis Resources Corporation (ARCS) stock shortly before tweeting false information about ARCS to his thousands of Twitter followers, including falsely claiming that ARCS was reviving its operations and expanding its business. The complaint further alleges that, over the next several days, ARCS's share price skyrocketed, ultimately increasing over 4,000 percent. As alleged, Fassari also made false statements about his own trading in ARCS.

Without admitting or denying the allegations of the complaint, Fassari consented to entry of the judgment. The judgment, entered on August 25, 2021 by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, enjoins Fassari from violating the antifraud provisions of Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder, and Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933; and orders him to pay disgorgement of $457,110 with prejudgment interest of $8,007, as well as a civil penalty in the amount of $195,047. Fassari also agreed to entry of a penny stock bar with the terms to be determined by the court at a later date.

The SEC's investigation was conducted by John A. Dwyer, Jeb Wildschut, and Kerry Matticks, with the assistance of Stephen Glascoe and Jessica Regan in the Office of Investigative and Market Analytics, and was supervised by Danielle R. Voorhees, Jason J. Burt, and Kurt L. Gottschall. The SEC's litigation was led by Leslie J. Hughes and Zachary T. Carlyle, under the supervision of Gregory A. Kasper.