SEC Files Fraud Charges Against Stock Promoter

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil fraud charges against a stock promoter alleging the firm spread bad information about a series of phony energy companies.

The charges were filed against Wall Street Capital Funding LLC, its owners Philip Cardwell and Roy Campbell, and an associate, Aaron Hume, according to a statement released by the SEC.

The complaint alleges that the defendants created and distributed various forms of promotional material for a purported oil-exploration-and-development company known as PrimeGen Energy Corp.

PrimeGen claimed to be headquartered in New Jersey and to have active operations in Russia, according to the SEC.

PrimeGen allegedly said in its press releases that it had brought at least 12 oil wells into production in 2009 and generated many millions of dollars in revenues.

The SEC says the company was phony, however. Specifically, according to the complaint, PrimeGen’s corporate headquarters “were a rented mailbox in a UPS Store opened with a do-not-forward instruction; its phone line was unattended; and its web page was generated by copying the source code from another company’s web site.”

It could not immediately be determined whether any of the men named in the complaint had lawyers.