Court Enters Final Judgments Against JBI, Inc. and
Post# of 43064
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced today that a Massachusetts federal court entered final judgments by consent on June 26, 2013 and March 20, 2013, respectively, against John W. Bordynuik (“Bordynuik”) and JBI, Inc. (“JBI”), two defendants in a fraud action filed by the Commission in 2012. The Commission alleged in its complaint that JBI, its then CEO, John W Bordynuik, and its former CFO, Ronald Baldwin, Jr. (“Baldwin”), engaged in a scheme to commit securities and accounting fraud in 2009. In the consent judgments, the Court ordered JBI to pay $150,000 and John W Bordynuik to pay $110,000 in civil monetary penalties.
The Commission filed its action on January 4, 2012, alleging that during two reporting periods in 2009 and in contravention of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (“GAAP”), JBI stated materially false and inaccurate financial information on its financial statements. The Complaint alleged that the defendants misrepresented and overstated the actual value of certain assets, known as media credits, by almost 1,000%, in an effort to bolster its balance sheet. JBI then used the overvalued financial statements in two private capital raising efforts (Private Investment in Public Equity or PIPES) that raised over $8.4 million from unwitting investors in these PIPES just before the company issued a public statement indicating its financial statements could no longer be relied upon, in part, due to the erroneous valuation of the media credits and other assets on the balance sheet. According to the complaint,John W Bordynuik was aware of, or was reckless in not being aware of, GAAP concerns surrounding the reported value of the media credits in advance of the company’s periodic reports that included the financial statements filed with the Commission, yet falsely certified that the company’s financial statements for those reporting periods were filed in conformity with GAAP.
https://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2013/lr22735.htm