SEC v. AmeraTex Energy, Inc., et al (unregistered distributions, 2018)

Settled

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In 2018 the SEC charged AmeraTex Energy, Inc., two Lewis Oil companies and their principals with an $11.7 million oil and gas offering fraud and unregistered sales of securities. On June 18, 2018 the Eastern District of Texas adopted a magistrate judge's recommendation to enter consent final judgments against AmeraTex, the two Lewis Oil companies and Thomas Lewis.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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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

On February 28, 2018 the SEC announced a complaint, filed in the Eastern District of Texas, against three Plano oil and gas companies and their principals, together with an accountant and a compliance coordinator. It alleges that AmeraTex Energy, Inc., Lewis Oil Corp., Lewis Oil Company, CEO Thomas Lewis and former AmeraTex president William Fort sold unregistered securities and misled over 150 investors in a roughly $11.7 million offering about use of proceeds, wells and commissions. It charges Section 5(a) and 5(c) violations against AmeraTex, Lewis and Fort. The record previously listed only "AmeraTex Energy, Inc., et al".

Outcome: the court's memorandum of June 18, 2018 says the SEC reached settlements with AmeraTex, Lewis Oil Corporation, Lewis Oil Company and Thomas A. Lewis (the "Settling Defendants"), each of whom signed a consent, and adopts the magistrate judge's recommendation to grant the SEC's unopposed motion to enter the proposed final judgments, which include permanent injunctions. The two-page memorandum does not state any monetary relief, so none is recorded, and we did not open the judgments themselves. It covers only the four settling defendants; the outcomes for William Fort and the other defendants named in the court's caption (Damon Fox and Brian Bull) were not checked.

This library tags the matter as 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 one technique 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2018-02-28 Litigation release published
2. 2018-06-18 Court adopts recommendation to enter consent final judgments against four settling defendants

Primary documents

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

• SEC litigation release
• Memorandum adopting report and recommendation (E.D. Tex., June 18, 2018)

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.

Related actions

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

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.