Ex-SEC lawyer gets 8 years for pump-and-dump fraud
Headline Legal News
A former enforcement attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission was sentenced Friday to eight years in prison for his role in a a series of multimillion dollar pump-and-dump stock fraud schemes.
Dallas-based attorney Phillip Offill Jr., 51, was convicted by a jury earlier this year on 10 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy. He testified that he was acting within the law, but the jury rejected his defense, and so too did U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady.
"Your testimony ... was an affront to justice," O'Grady told Offill at Friday's sentencing hearing. "It was one of the biggest pack of lies I've ever heard."
Offill, who worked at the SEC for 15 years before taking a job at the Godwin Gruber law firm in Dallas, aided schemes that by conservative estimates cheated more than 1,500 investors out of at least $2.4 million. The fraudsters would pump up the value of dubious penny stocks and then sell the shares at inflated prices to unwitting buyers.
Eight other coconspirators have already been convicted and sentenced in a case that has been under investigation for more than three years. Most of the illegal transactions took place in 2004.
The eight-year term imposed on Offill was one of the most severe. Prosecutor Ed Power said the tougher sentence was deserved because Offill lied on the witness stand and because his status as a respected attorney helped provide cover for the fraud.
Related listings
-
NY immigration agent pleads guilty to sex coercion
Headline Legal News 04/16/2010A federal immigration officer who was recorded demanding sex from a woman in exchange for a green card has pleaded guilty.Isaac Baichu pleaded guilty to all the charges against him Wednesday in Queens. The 48-year-old is expected to receive a prison ...
-
Supreme Court scrutinizes state, local gun control
Headline Legal News 02/27/2010Gun control advocates are hoping they can win by losing when the Supreme Court rules on state and local regulation of firearms.The justices will be deciding whether the right to possess guns guaranteed by the Second Amendment — like much of the rest ...
-
Obama nominates Berkeley prof to appeals court
Headline Legal News 02/25/2010Goodwin Liu, 39, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, learned English in kindergarten and later became an honors graduate at Stanford and a Rhodes Scholar. He has taught at Berkeley since 2003 and was named associate dean of the law school in 2008.He als...
USCIS Will Begin Accepting CW-1 Petitions for Fiscal Year 2019
On April 2, 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin accepting petitions under the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI)-Only Transitional Worker (CW-1) program subject to the fiscal year (FY) 2019 cap. Employers in the CNMI use the CW-1 program to employ foreign workers who are ineligible for other nonimmigrant worker categories. The cap for CW-1 visas for FY 2019 is 4,999.
For the FY 2019 cap, USCIS encourages employers to file a petition for a CW-1 nonimmigrant worker up to six months in advance of the proposed start date of employment and as early as possible within that timeframe. USCIS will reject a petition if it is filed more than six months in advance. An extension petition may request a start date of Oct. 1, 2018, even if that worker’s current status will not expire by that date.
Since USCIS expects to receive more petitions than the number of CW-1 visas available for FY 2019, USCIS may conduct a lottery to randomly select petitions and associated beneficiaries so that the cap is not exceeded. The lottery would give employers the fairest opportunity to request workers, particularly with the possibility of mail delays from the CNMI.
USCIS will count the total number of beneficiaries in the petitions received after 10 business days to determine if a lottery is needed. If the cap is met after those initial 10 days, a lottery may still need to be conducted with only the petitions received on the last day before the cap was met. USCIS will announce when the cap is met and whether a lottery has been conducted.