SKN diplomat arrested on securities fraud charges
By L.K. Hewlett
Editor – SKNVibes.com
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Jonathan Curshen
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BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - HONORARY Consul for St. Kitts & Nevis in Costa Rica, Jonathan Randall Curshen was recently arrested in New York on charges that he and an associate conspired to commit securities fraud in the states of Florida and New York.
Curshen, 43, was appointed as Honorary Consul to the Federation in 2004 despite an injunction filed against him and three other individuals by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in April 2003, charging them with securities fraud. The men were reportedly involved in a ‘pump and dump’ scheme involving Freedom Golf Corporation's common stock and Curshen was charged as a promoter of the scheme.
In his capacity as promoter of the stock, Curshen was paid to ‘hype’ Freedom Golf stock via the dissemination of millions of unsolicited spam mail over the Internet, telephone and mail in February of 2000.
The complaint further alleges that “Freedom Golf's stock price and trading volume was pumped up to artificially inflated levels as a result of the false and misleading e-mails and baseless price projections”.
Curshen and the other individuals named in the Commission’s complaint were accused of violating the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws and the Commission sought permanent injunctions, civil money penalties and penny stock bars against each of the four defendants.
With this latest run-in with the SEC, Curshen and Bruce Grossman are named as defendants jointly charged for “engaging in a fraudulent scheme to manipulate the market for the common stock of Industrial Biotechnology, Corp. (IBOT), by bribing registered representatives (RRs) to purchase IBOT common stock in customer accounts over which the RRs had trading discretion”.
The court documents, signed by Todd D. Brody, Senior Trial Counsel Attorney for the SEC and filed in US District Court of the Southern District of New York allege that in June 2008 Curshen and Grossman entered into an agreement with an individual whom they believed represented a group of RRs with trading discretion over the accounts of wealthy customers. They agreed to pay a 25% kickback to the individual and the group he represented in exchange for the RRs' buying of up to $3 million in IBOT stock through their customers' accounts. ~~Adz:Right~~
Curshen and his associates were unaware that the individual was actually an FBI agent posing as a stock promoter.
“By virtue of their conduct, the Defendants violated Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 (Securities Act), 15 U.S.C. 5 77q(a), Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Exchange Act), 15 U.S.C. 5 78j(b), and Rule lob-5, 17 C.F.R. 5 240.10b-5. The Commission is seeking permanently to enjoin the Defendants from engaging in the acts, practices and courses of business alleged in this Complaint. The Commission also seeks a finaljudgment ordering the Defendants to disgorge their ill-gotten gains, if any, with prejudgment interest thereon. The Commission seeks a judgment ordering the Defendants to pay civil money penalties pursuant to Section 20(d) of the Securities Act, 15 U.S.C. 8 77t(d), and Section 21(d)(3) of the Exchange Act, 15 U.S.C.”, the legal writ read.
Several other orders were also listed in the Complaint against the British-born Curshen et al for stock manipulation that resulted in “unlawful benefit”.
Yesterday (Oct. 8), SKNVibes contacted the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Astona Browne who said she could not issue a comment at that time as “we would have to await official notification from Costa Rica as there is standard protocol that has to be followed in such matters”.
