Two New Jersey Traders Arrested For Manipulating $10 Billion Worth Of Stocks, Making $26 Million In Profit
By Tyler Durden
The SEC continued its crackdown against market-manipulating masterminds today, when it charged two New Jersey-based traders, 37-year-old Joseph Taub, of Clifton, and 21-year-old Elazar Shmalo of Passaic, with manipulating more than 2,000 NYSE and NASDAQ-traded stocks and reaping more than $26 million in profits from their successful trades.
The duo is accused by both the SEC and the NJ Attorney’s Office of manipulating more than 23,000 trades, buying and selling $10 billion worth of securities and making more than $26 million in illegal profits, usually through “two or more trading accounts that bought and sold the same lightly traded stock on the same day during the same period of time,” U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said in a statement.
In the complaint, the DOJ charges the two traders of engaging in “a scheme to place numerous buy and sell orders for specifically targeted, lightly traded securities in a coordinated fashion that allowed them to manipulate the price to their advantage. Over a period of years, they manipulated $10 billion worth of securities in this way, pocketing $26 million in illicit profits at the expense of other investors. The charges we filed today are part of our continuing effort to hold accountable those who would try to illegally tilt the playing field in their own favor.”
“The trading manipulations usually lasted just a few minutes each, during which time the conspirators sometimes controlled at least 80 percent of the volume of a targeted stock and traded in several accounts simultaneously,” Fishman said.
The SEC alleged that Taub and Shmalo “schemed dozens of times per trading day to artificially move stock prices for their personal benefit,” Andrew Calamari, director of the agency’s New York regional office said in a statement.
Taub and Shmalo were charged with one criminal count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud which carries a maximum potential penalty of five years in prison and a fine the greater of $250,000 or twice the gain derived from the offense or twice the loss caused by the offense. The two men are scheduled to appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Steven C. Mannion in Newark federal court.
Elazar Shmalo’s Linkedin page
As Francine McKenna adds, the complaint filed against Taub and Shmalo by the U.S. Attorney says they looked for companies with low trading volumes and then entered numerous trades using “helper” accounts that signaled false information to the market, artificially inflating their prices. Later they sold the shares in “winner” accounts at the artificially inflated prices after accumulating positions at lower prices.
Taub and Shmalo, and additional unnamed conspirators, relied on pre-arranged and coordinated trading among dozens of brokerage accounts they controlled, according to the SEC and DOJ. Taub, according to the SEC and DOJ, was the ring leader, funding many of the accounts that were not in his name and using two companies he controlled , EAC Capital LLC and LNW Direct LLC, to make some of the trades. Some accounts were held in the Taub and Shmalo names while others were …read more
