(HedgeCo.Net) The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama has issued an amended final judgment against Florida resident Brian Robert Sodi and two of his now-defunct companies, Capital Financial Media LLC (CFM) and List Data Solutions LLC (LDS), for securities fraud and other violations in connection with promoting penny stocks in scalping and pump-and-dump schemes in 2013.

The Commission’s complaint, filed February 26, 2018, alleged that Sodi, a CPA, secretly acquired shares of two companies and then sold those shares while using CFM and LDS to disseminate statements urging investors to buy those stocks, and without disclosing his holdings, sales, or plans to sell. Sodi, CFM, and LDS agreed to settle the charges in September 2019, agreeing to injunctive relief and to pay, jointly and severally, a total of $1,268,000 in disgorgement and prejudgment interest, with this obligation to be offset by the total amount of restitution and/or forfeiture ultimately ordered in the parallel criminal proceeding against Sodi. The court entered final judgment on April 16, 2020, requiring any funds paid by the defendants to be remitted to the United States Treasury.

In a parallel criminal action filed in the Northern District of Alabama, Sodi pleaded guilty on May 19, 2019 to one count of securities fraud. Sodi was later ordered to pay $338,056 in forfeiture.

On January 31, 2023, the court issued an amended final judgment that orders disgorgement and prejudgment interest of $929,995 to be paid to the Commission, so that it may be distributed to harmed investors.

Sodi has also been suspended from appearing or practicing before the Commission under Rule 102(e)(3) of the Commission’s Rules of Practice.