CompaniesBIO

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Peter L. Coker Sr., Peter L. Coker Jr., and James T. Patten for their roles in orchestrating fraudulent manipulative securities trading schemes. These schemes included artificially inflating the share price of Hometown International, which operated a New Jersey deli producing less than $40,000 in annual revenue, from approximately $1 per share in October 2019 to nearly $14 per share by April 2021, leading to a grossly inflated market capitalization of $100 million. According to the SEC’s complaint, Patten, Coker Sr., and Coker Jr., who was the former Chairman of the Board of Hometown International, took control of the outstanding shares of Hometown International and a separate shell company, E-Waste Corp., artificially inflated the price of both issuers’ stock through manipulative trading, and used the entities to acquire privately-held companies in reverse mergers, with the intent to thereafter dump their shares at grossly i...

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Granite Construction, Incorporated and its former Senior Vice President, Dale Swanberg, with fraud for inflating the financial performance of the major subdivision Swanberg managed. In 2021, Granite restated its financial statements from 2017 through 2019 to correct revenue and profit margin errors allegedly caused by Swanberg’s misconduct. The company agreed to pay $12 million to settle the SEC’s charges. In separate administrative proceedings, the company’s former CEO, James H. Roberts, and former CFOs, Laurel Krzeminski and Jigisha Desai, while not charged with misconduct, agreed to return more than $1.4 million, $327,000, and $176,000, respectively, in bonuses and compensation to Granite. These clawbacks were made pursuant to Section 304 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), which requires executives to reimburse certain compensation when an issuer is required to restate its financials as a result of misconduct. “We are committed ...