The Alberta Securities Commission has charged two people in connection with a pump and dump scheme that developed over several years.
The ASC laid 16 charges in connection with a suspected 2010 market manipulation of Calgary-based Coastal Pacific Mining Corporation securities.
Coastal Pacific Mining trades on Over-The-Counter quotation systems in the United States.
Coastal Pacific Mining's President and CEO Joseph Gaetano Bucci and the principal of Calgary-based International Securities Group Inc., Caroline Meyers are charged with trading without registration or a prospectus and making prohibited transactions.
Meyers is also known as Caroline Winsor and Caroline Danforth.
It is alleged that both Bucci and Meyers collaborated in setting up Coastal Pacific Mining Corporation as a "pump and dump" shell company over a number of years and then implemented the market manipulation that occurred in late 2010.
Here’s how a pump and dump scheme typically works:
- Promoters try to boost or pump the purchase of a specific stock with false, misleading or exaggerated statements about the company to drive up the price.
- Once the price has been pumped up, the individuals dump their shares into the market at the inflated price, usually for a huge profit
- The individual then stops promoting the stock, the price typically falls and investors lose their money.
- The schemes usually involve micro and small-cap stocks as they are easiest to manipulate.
Bucci and Meyers will make their first court appearance at 8:00 a.m. on March 8, 2013 at the Calgary Courts Centre.
