The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently filed fraud charges against a second defendant in connection with a scheme to manipulate the price of Fitbit Inc. (NYSE: FIT) securities through false regulatory filings.
According to the SEC, Mark E. Burns purchased Fitbit call options just minutes before he and his co-conspirator, Robert W. Murray, filed a fake tender offer on the SEC’s EDGAR system purporting to acquire Fitbit’s shares at a substantial premium.
The SEC charged Murray last year and he recently was sentenced to prison in a parallel criminal case. The false tender offer was made in the name of ABM Capital, a nonexistent company for which the defendants created an EDGAR account. Fitbit’s stock price temporarily spiked when the tender offer became publicly available on November 10, 2016, and Burns sold all of his options for a 350% profit of approximately $13,000.
Robert A. Cohen, chief of the Cyber Unit, commented:
We allege that Burns and Murray tried to camouflage their identities and their affiliation with an EDGAR account by using disguised IP and e-mail addresses. Despite their sophisticated efforts to avoid detection, we stopped their alleged abuse of our filing system and charged them with being responsible for this manipulation.
The SEC’s complaint charges Burns with violating antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws. Murray has agreed to settle the SEC’s charges against him. The settlement is subject to court approval.
Shares of Fitbit were last seen down about 2.5% at $6.76, with a consensus analyst price target of $6.10 and a 52-week trading range of $4.51 to $7.79.
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