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| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE NOVEMBER 12, 2008 |
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STOCK PROMOTER PLEADS GUILTY TO BRIBERY SCHEME
MICHAEL J. GARCIA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that JASON JADIDIAN, a New York-based stock promoter, pleaded guilty this afternoon before United States District Judge ROBERT P. PATTERSON to conspiring to commit commercial bribery. According to the Complaint and Information which were filed and JADIDIAN’s guilty plea proceeding in Manhattan federal court:
JADIDIAN, who was arrested on September 18, 2008, agreed to pay a secret, cash bribe to stockbrokers and an FBI agent acting in an undercover capacity (the “UC”) in order to convince them to buy, on behalf of retail customers, Tecton Corp. (“Tecton”) common stock that JADIDIAN was promoting. The UC posed as another promoter who, in exchange for the bribe, would recruit stockbrokers who held accounts on behalf of their retail customers, and with whom the UC would share the bribe. In July 2008, after the UC purported to have induced retail customer clients to buy approximately 80,000 shares of Tecton common stock that JADIDIAN had provided, JADIDIAN transferred from an account in British Columbia, Canada, a secret cash bribe of $5,000 to an undercover FBI account in New York City. The amount of the bribe represented approximately 27 percent of the value of the Tecton stock sold.
JADIDIAN, 24, of Forest Hills, New York and New City, New York, faces a maximum of 5 years in prison and a fine of the greater of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss caused by his crime.
Mr. GARCIA, a member of the President’s Corporate Fraud Task Force, praised the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Vancouver Integrated Market Enforcement Team of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and thanked the United States Securities and Exchange Commission for its assistance in the investigation of this case.
Assistant United States Attorney VIRGINIA CHAVEZ ROMANO is in charge of the prosecution.
08-287
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