By MARK SHERMAN<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Supreme Court<\/a> on Thursday upheld a broad reading of the authority of the Securities and Exchange Commission<\/a> to recoup ill-gotten gains from people who engage in securities fraud.<\/p>\n The justices ruled unanimously against Ongkaruck Sripetch, who was sentenced to 21 months in prison after pleading guilty to selling unregistered securities as part of a scheme involving high-risk penny stocks. The Los Angeles resident had challenged a court order of disgorgement, to repay more than $3 million, including interest.<\/p>\n The issue in the case was whether the SEC had to prove that individual investors lost money as a result of buying the stocks. The Supreme Court ruled it did not.<\/p>\n It was enough to show that Sriptech turned a profit from illegal transactions and that \u201can investor may qualify as a victim of an offender\u2019s wrongdoing entitled to compensation,\u201d Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court.<\/p>\n Sripetch took part in fraudulent schemes involving at least 20 penny stock companies, Gorsuch wrote, citing court records. Some of those were \u201cpump and dump\u201d operations, in which Sripetch and others bought stocks, promoted them so that their share price rose and then promptly sold them, Gorsuch wrote.<\/p>\n Under federal law and prior Supreme Court rulings, the SEC may order disgorgement limited to the amount of illegally obtained profits in fraud cases. The money ordinarily must be returned to investors, when feasible.<\/p>\n Follow the AP\u2019s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/us-supreme-court<\/a> and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission at https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/us-securities-and-exchange-commission<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By MARK SHERMAN WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a broad reading of the authority…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75,142198,36566,2214],"class_list":["post-346774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-sec-authority","tag-securities-and-exchange-commission","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}