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by Mike Caswell

Benjamin Ballout and Mohamed Zayed, the two men banned and fined for the Enerkon Solar International Inc. pump-and-dump, have filed an appeal. The SEC said that the men ran a scheme in which Enerkon touted $320-million in non-existent sales from a Canadian-made test for COVID-19. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) The device could supposedly test for the virus within 15 seconds.

The appeal is contained in a brief notice filed on July 8, 2025, with the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Mr. Ballout and Mr. Zayed are appealing judgments that the SEC won on June 8, 2025. Those judgments imposed permanent penny stock bans as well as related monetary sanctions, which included a $460,928 fine for each man.

Mr. Ballout and Mr. Zayed's notice says little about the reasons for the appeal, simply stating that the judgments were "based on flawed transcripts, flawed statements, and acts of fraud on the court, thereby violating the Defendants' right to a fair trial guaranteed under the Sixth Amendment." While Mr. Ballout and Mr. Zayed had little to say, the judge who heard the case noted that their defence amounted to claims that unspecified records would vindicate them. "Moreover, they lob numerous conspiratorial claims," the judge noted, with those claims including one that "all allegations from the SEC are the product of 'powerful spying and media tools' resulting in a 'False News article.'" (Mr. Ballout and Mr. Zayed are not represented by a lawyer.)

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