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by Mike Caswell

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has won a permanent ban for Lee Cohen, a U.K. man charged for a $1.2-million pump-and-dump on the U.S. markets that included two Canadians. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) The SEC claimed that Mr. Cohen, 54, ran a boiler room in the Philippines that pitched ultimately worthless companies to investors. He was part of a scheme that included manipulative trading and payments to corrupt brokers.

The ban for Mr. Cohen is contained in a default judgment handed down on Sept. 4, 2024, by a federal judge in New York. The judge has permanently barred Mr. Cohen from penny stocks and ordered that he not commit any future violations. The penalty is a decision by default, Mr. Cohen having ignored the matter.

For Mr. Cohen, the ban is a relatively minor part of his penalty for the scheme. He previously pleaded guilty to related criminal charges and received 17 months in prison. Federal prosecutors in New York claimed that he built a career out of helping would-be fraudsters steal money in exchange for a portion of the proceeds from their schemes. He lived a life of crime, bragging to an undercover agent about his 50 "hard workers" who would commit fraud on his behalf.

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