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by Mike Caswell

Vancouver's Steve Bajic has avoided any jail time in the United States for his part in pump-and-dump schemes that generated $35-million in gains. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) Prosecutors claimed that Mr. Bajic and others helped with the illegal sale of shares in several companies. The group provided insiders with a "layer of disguise," allowing them to secretly sell shares on the market.

Mr. Bajic, who previously pleaded guilty, received his sentence in an appearance before a judge in Boston on Tuesday, Sept. 16. The judge ordered him to serve one day in jail and deemed the time to be already served. The judge also ordered Mr. Bajic to forfeit the $837,734 that he received from the scheme. (There is no word on how the government will collect the money, but the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission previously won orders freezing accounts at three Canadian banks and at a Vancouver brokerage.)

The sentence is a loss for prosecutors, who had asked the judge for one year of incarceration. Ahead of sentencing, they said that Mr. Bajic "made a series of conscious, fraudulent choices" over a period of five years as he helped numerous pump-and-dumps. In running the scheme, Mr. Bajic used offshore entities to receive tradable shares, distributing the shares in a manner that hid the fact that a single insider was behind the holdings, according to prosecutors. Those shares were later sold as promotional campaigns and boiler room operations boosted the underlying companies, prosecutors said.

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