A former stockbroker was sentenced to 10 years in prison for participating in a conspiracy to manipulate the price of shares in publicly traded companies.
Jeffrey Chartier, 59, of Sunny Isles, Fla., was ordered by U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert to pay $1,022,398.89 in forfeiture and $6,083,603.45 in restitution, according to a Dec. 1 U.S. Department of Justice news release. He was sentenced for conspiracy to commit securities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering, as well as for securities fraud and money laundering.
"Jeffrey Chartier and his confederates lined their pockets with the lifetime savings of hard-working citizens they victimized all around the country," U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in the release. "Today's sentences should serve as a reminder to so-called white-collar criminals that this office will hold them accountable for their selfish actions and the devastation they inflict upon the lives and families of others."
Chartier and his co-defendant Lawrence Isen, 69, of San Diego, Calif., were convicted by a federal jury in March 2020 after a six-week trial, according to the release. Chartier was also convicted of attempting to obstruct an official proceeding by lying to FBI agents. Isen is awaiting sentencing.
The defendants are alleged to have operated the scheme between 2014 and 2016, according to the release. The scheme involved manipulating share prices in publicly traded companies and using a New York-based "boiler room" with staff who used high pressure tactics to sell the stock on unsuspecting victims and pocketing the resulting profits.
The victims "were often elderly and vulnerable," the release said.
Chartier paid the boiler room to prop up the stock price of National Waste Management Holdings Inc. (NWMH) and CES Synergies (CESX) and also dumped his own shares in those companies "on innocent investors through illegal matched trades," the release reported. Both companies were previously profitable private companies run by people planning to retire.
"Chartier persuaded them to pay him in large blocks of stock to take their companies public on promises that doing so would sustain the companies for the future," the release said. "Instead, Chartier hired the boiler room, which fraudulently inflated these companies' share prices using high-pressure sales tactics, and then dumped his own shares through matched trades, which caused the companies' stock prices to plummet."
Part of Chartier's sentence include court-ordered repatriation of his remaining shares in NWMH and CESX, according to the release.
