SEC v. Peter H. Pocklington, The Eye Machine LLC and others (boiler rooms, 2018)

Settled

Checked against the primary document on October 4, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, with sampled and disputed records read a second time. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

Report an error in this record (sec-amc-holdings-llc-boiler-rooms-2018) by email

In April 2018 the SEC sued Peter H. Pocklington, his medical device company and others, alleging fraud and unregistered offerings that raised over $14 million from more than 260 investors, with two sales agents allegedly running Florida boiler rooms. We found consent judgments for four of the eight individual defendants (Velazquez in January 2019; Pocklington, Walton and Vanetten in May 2022), with $2.39 million in penalties.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	SEC
Release number	LR-24098
Date filed	2018-04-05
Date resolved	2022-05-09
Court	U.S. District Court, Central District of California
Status	settled
Criminal parallel	No
Defendants	Peter H. Pocklington (individual) ; Lantson E. Eldred (individual) ; Terrence J. Walton (individual) ; Yolanda C. Velazquez (individual) ; Vanessa Puleo (individual) ; Robert A. Vanetten (individual) ; Nova Oculus Partners, LLC (entity) ; AMC Holdings, LLC (entity)
Cited as charged or alleged	Exchange Act s.10(b) and Rule 10b-5 ; Exchange Act s.15(a) ; Exchange Act s.20(a) ; Securities Act s.17(a) ; Securities Act s.5 (statutes and rules cited in the document; not a finding that they were violated)
Techniques	Boiler rooms , Unregistered distributions

What was ordered

Civil penalty: $2.4m
Disgorgement: $5.2m
Prejudgment interest: $879k
Total relief: $8.5m
Alleged gain: —

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The SEC announced this matter on April 5, 2018 as litigation release 24098. The respondents named are Peter H. Pocklington, Lantson E. Eldred, Terrence J. Walton, Yolanda C. Velazquez, Vanessa Puleo, Robert A. Vanetten, Nova Oculus Partners, LLC (formerly The Eye Machine, LLC) and AMC Holdings, LLC, in a complaint filed in the Central District of California. As alleged, The Eye Machine raised over $14 million from more than 260 investors in unregistered offerings between 2014 and 2017 while concealing that Pocklington, a convicted felon, controlled it, and Pocklington is alleged to have misappropriated over $600,000. The complaint says the company paid millions in undisclosed commissions to Velazquez, Puleo and Vanetten as unregistered brokers, and that Velazquez and Puleo used "boiler room" operations in Florida to cold-call investors.

Outcome: the SEC's posted final judgments show consent. Velazquez (January 9, 2019) is jointly liable with Puleo for $4,733,025 in disgorgement, $808,770.57 in interest and a $1,250,000 penalty. On May 9, 2022 the court entered judgments against Pocklington ($339,449 disgorgement, shared with four relief defendants, $51,033.07 interest and a $1,086,426 penalty), Walton ($27,162 penalty) and Vanetten ($114,200 disgorgement, $18,825 interest and a $27,162 penalty). The money fields sum these four defendants, counting the Velazquez and Puleo disgorgement once. We did not find or check the outcomes for Eldred, Puleo, Nova Oculus Partners or AMC Holdings, so the case may not be fully resolved.

This library tags the matter as boiler rooms and unregistered distributions, based on the conduct the regulator describes. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with 2 techniques in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

Boiler rooms — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
Unregistered distributions — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

2018-04-05 Litigation release published
2019-01-09 Consent final judgment entered against Yolanda Velazquez
2022-05-09 Consent final judgments entered against Pocklington, Walton and Vanetten

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Action	Agency	Filed	Technique	Penalty	Status
SEC v. Bio Defense Corporation, et al. (boiler rooms, 2019)	SEC	2019-09-13	Boiler Rooms , Unregistered Distributions	—	judgment
SEC v. Carol J. Wayland, et al. (boiler rooms, 2019)	SEC	2019-07-19	Boiler Rooms , Unregistered Distributions	$465k	judgment
SEC v. Andrew Stitt (boiler rooms, 2019)	SEC	2019-02-06	Boiler Rooms , Unregistered Distributions	—	judgment
SEC v. Steve G. Blasko (boiler rooms, 2017)	SEC	2017-07-07	Boiler Rooms , Unregistered Distributions	$945k	judgment
SEC v. Commodore Financial Corp., et al. (boiler rooms, 2015)	SEC	2015-10-01	Boiler Rooms , Unregistered Distributions	—	settled
SEC v. Joseph Hilton a/k/a Joseph Yurkin (boiler rooms, 2013)	SEC	2013-08-09	Boiler Rooms , Unregistered Distributions	—	judgment

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.