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by Mike Caswell

A federal judge in Los Angeles has imposed a six-month jail term on Christian Fernandez, one of those charged for the promotion of Emerald Health Pharmaceuticals Inc., a company associated with Vancouver's Avtar Dhillon. Prosecutors claimed that Mr. Fernandez, a Mexican citizen living in Miami, was part of a group that boosted the company through secretly paid analyst reports. The efforts of the group led to a report that touted Emerald Health as "Curing Incurable Diseases and Giving Us Over 4,900% Potential Gains."

Mr. Fernandez's sentence is contained in a judgment entered on Friday, Dec. 19, in federal court in California. In addition to the six months in prison, Mr. Fernandez must serve one year of supervised release. The judge gave Mr. Fernandez until May 1, 2026, to report to the Bureau of Prisons, and recommended that he serve his sentence at a jail in Miami.

The sentencing is part of a larger case arising from the promotion of Emerald Health in early 2020. According to the government, Mr. Fernandez and others routed $4.2-million in undisclosed payments from insiders to analysts to boost Emerald Health and other companies. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) Mr. Fernandez previously pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to tout securities for undisclosed compensation.

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