SEC Alleges Boiler Room Operators Engaged in "Pre-IPO Fraud Schemes"

SEC Charges Three New Yorkers for Raising More Than $184 Million Through Pre-IPO Fraud Schemes

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged three individuals with fraud for selling unregistered membership interests in LLCs that purported to invest in shares of pre-IPO companies, first on behalf of StraightPath Venture Partners LLC, the subject of the Commission’s emergency action in May 2022, and, later, on behalf of Legend Venture Partners LLC, the subject of the Commission’s emergency action in June 2023. Both StraightPath and Legend are now under court-ordered receiverships.

In this new action, the SEC alleges that New York residents Mario Gogliormella, Steven Lacaj, and Karim Ibrahim directed an unregistered sales force of more than 50 callers in boiler rooms to pressure investors into making investments without telling them that the shares had been substantially marked up—between approximately 19 and 105 percent on average above the prices that StraightPath or Legend had paid for the underlying shares. As a result of these tactics, the defendants and their sales force allegedly pocketed more than $45 million in fees from unsuspecting investors from 2019 to 2022.

Former Allianz Fund Manager Pleads Guilty to Defrauding Investors

A former Allianz fund manager who ran the investment group responsible for steep losses the firm suffered during the 2020 market meltdown sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic pleaded guilty to fraud charges.

Gregoire Tournant, the former chief investment officer at Allianz Global Investors U.S., pleaded guilty Friday before Judge Laura Taylor Swain in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to two counts of investment adviser fraud. He also agreed to forfeit about $17 million as part of his plea. He faces up to 10 years in prison and will be sentenced on Oct. 16.

Tesla objects to $5.6 billion payout for lawyers who voided Musk’s pay

The legal team that voided Elon Musk’s record Tesla pay package deserves a tiny fraction of the $5.6 billion legal fee they requested because their lawsuit provided almost no benefit for the company, the electric automaker argued in court papers on Friday.

Tesla said the legal team for Richard Tornetta, the shareholder whose lawsuit led to a January ruling voiding Musk’s $56 billion pay package, should be paid as little as $13.6 million for their work, which began with a 2018 complaint.

Elon Musk’s Delaware fight will rage on even after the Tesla shareholder vote

Tesla shareholders will vote on Thursday on whether to restore the mammoth pay package for chief executive Elon Musk that was struck down by a Delaware judge this year. But that is not expected to close the book on a legal saga that has consumed the electric-car maker and the leading US business law court that dared to defy Musk and his overseers on the company’s board.

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Each side has offered divergent views on what Thursday’s vote will mean in a more practical sense. Should the referendum pass, dissident shareholders could sue again or amend their original case to attack the new pay vote. They could claim paying Musk for past performance is itself a “waste” of corporate resources and yet another breach of fiduciary duty.

His Ex Is Getting His $1 Million Retirement Account. They Broke Up in 1989

Jeffrey Rolison and Margaret Sjostedt dated in the 1980s. Now, almost 40 years after they broke up, she stands to inherit his $1 million retirement account.

The reason she might get the money is that in 1987, Rolison listed Sjostedt on a handwritten form as the sole beneficiary of his workplace retirement account. He never changed the beneficiary designation and died in 2015.

Standing in her way are Rolison’s brothers, who learned about Sjostedt’s claim to the money weeks after his death on a phone call from their estate lawyer. They don’t think he could have intended to leave the money to her.