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by Mike Caswell

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has won a penny stock ban for Andrew Hackett, the Toronto man jailed in the United States for the pump-and-dump of Arias Intel Corp. in 2017. The government claimed that Mr. Hackett ran a scheme to boost Arias Intel as a supposed social media listing though phone rooms and manipulative trades. Unfortunately for Mr. Hackett, one of those included in the scheme was co-operating with the FBI.

The ban for Mr. Hackett is contained in an order handed down on Monday, Nov. 18, by a federal judge in San Diego. In addition to barring Mr. Hackett from penny stocks, the judge has entered a permanent injunction against any future violations. The order was handed down summarily (or without a trial), Mr. Hackett having previously been convicted on related criminal charges.

Monday's order is a footnote to a case in which Mr. Hackett received four years in prison for the Arias Intel scheme. The evidence at Mr. Hackett's trial included testimony of a boiler room operator as well as text messages in which he and others agreed on a target price for Arias Intel. A California jury convicted him on Aug. 2, 2021, following a five-day trial, and the judge handed down the four-year jail term.

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