TYB
Former SEC lawyer-turned-stock-fraudster pleads guilty in second securities scam
March 14, 2023
Phillip Offill admitted stealing $1.3 million in penny-stock fraud after serving 8 years in a pump-and-dump scam.
He certainly is an expert in securities fraud.
A former lawyer for the Securities and Exchange Commission has pleaded guilty to stock fraud for the second time, admitting ripping off investors for $1.3 million in a penny-stock scam after serving eight years in a pump-and-dump scheme.
Phillip W. Offill, Jr., who worked for the SEC in its Dallas office in the 1990s, pleaded guilty with his accomplice, Justin Herman, to misappropriating shares of a company with mining claims in Arizona and Idaho, manipulating their price and then foisting them on unsuspecting investors.
Herman, 52, of Canonsburg, Pa., had previously been a licensed stock broker.
Federal prosecutors say the 64-year-old Offill committed the scam while on probation for his previous conviction in 2010 for a different multi-million dollar pump-and-dump stock manipulation scheme.
According to court filings, Offill had taken advantage of his friendship with the controlling shareholder of Mansfield-Martin Exploration Mining Inc. and while helping him acquire a mining claim, stole 40 million shares from him. Offill then turned them over to Herman to sell to investors, with the two pocketing the profit.
Messages left with attorneys for Offill and Herman were not immediately returned.
Offill had spent 15 years working as an enforcement agent for the SEC before leaving to join a private law firm.
After his 2010 conviction, Offill had been barred from ever working in the securities industry again, but used the alias Jim Jimerson in his most recent scam, according to a separate civil charge filed against him by the SEC last year.
Offill and Herman face up to 25 years in prison when they are sentenced in June.
Sauce: https://archive.ph/M1gDA#selection-405.0-871.78
https://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2022/lr25309.htm
https://www.securitieslawyer101.com/2022/sec-charges-securities-fraud-recidivist-phillip-w-offill-jr-and-justin-w-herman-in-penny-stock-fraud-scheme/
2010 conviction: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/texas-attorney-convicted-role-pump-and-dump-stock-manipulation-schemes
2010 fallout (disbarred in OK)
https://law.justia.com/cases/oklahoma/supreme-court/2014/scbd-5674.html
How's the lovely Melissa Hodgeman these days…