(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Alabama attorney Donald Watkins and companies he controls with defrauding professional athletes and other investors out of millions of dollars, much of which he spent on his girlfriend and to cover personal expenses like alimony, past due taxes and credit card bills.<\/p>\n
The Commission\u2019s complaint, filed in federal district court in Atlanta, alleges that Watkins and his companies, Watkins Pencor LLC and Masada Resource Group LLC falsely told investors that their funds would be used to support waste-to-energy ventures. <\/p>\n
The complaint further alleges that the defendants falsely claimed that Waste Management Inc., a large, international waste treatment company, was seriously considering acquiring Watkins Pencor, Masada, and its affiliated companies in a multi-billion-dollar transaction. According to the complaint, Waste Management\u2019s \u201cinterest\u201d in Masada never advanced past a brief initial meeting in August 2012, more than a year after the defendants began telling investors that negotiations were progressing and that the acquisition was imminent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe allege that Watkins duped investors into believing that there was a lucrative transaction on the horizon, when in fact there was none,\u201d said Walter Jospin, Regional Director of the SEC\u2019s Atlanta Regional Office.<\/p>\n
The SEC charges the defendants with violating the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws and a related SEC antifraud rule. The SEC\u2019s complaint seeks permanent injunctions, penalties and return of allegedly ill-gotten gains with prejudgment interest. The SEC\u2019s complaint alleges that Watkins\u2019 law firm, Donald V. Watkins, P.C., received investor monies and charged the firm as a relief defendant for purposes of recovering the allegedly ill-gotten gains it received.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Alabama attorney Donald Watkins and companies he controls with defrauding professional athletes and other investors out of millions of dollars, much of which he spent on his girlfriend and to cover personal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,3,16048,16047],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hedgeco-networks-press-releases","category-hedgeco-news","category-hedgecovest-news","category-insider-trading-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54202,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54201\/revisions\/54202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}