SEC v. Andrew J. Kandalepas (marking the close, 2019)

Judgment entered

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In June 2019 the SEC reported that Andrew J. Kandalepas, former CEO of Wellness Center USA, had pleaded guilty to securities fraud for trading company shares, many of them near the close, to inflate the price, netting at least $136,176. He had consented in September 2018 to an SEC judgment with officer-director and penny stock bars, with disgorgement and penalties to be set by the court.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

$136k

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 Securities and Exchange Commission announced this development on June 21, 2019 as litigation release LR-24509, in SEC v. Kandalepas, civil action 18-cv-02637 in the Northern District of Illinois. The defendant is Andrew J. Kandalepas, former CEO, president and chairman of Wellness Center USA, Inc. (1 individual, 0 entities). The release's caption spells the surname "Kandelapas"; its text and the criminal case, No. 19-cr-0027, use Kandalepas, which this record now follows.

The SEC charged him on April 12, 2018 with manipulating WCUI stock and making false statements in SEC filings and press releases. The plea agreement states that between December 2012 and June 2015 he bought and sold WCUI shares to inflate the price, with many trades at or near the close, a practice called marking the close, and that he netted at least $136,176 in trading profits. He pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud on June 11, 2019.

On September 25, 2018 the court entered a consent judgment, without admission, enjoining him under Section 17(a), Section 10(b), Rule 10b-5 and Exchange Act Section 15(a), barring him from serving as an officer or director of a public company and from penny stock offerings, and leaving disgorgement, interest and penalties to the court. No civil monetary figure is recorded.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above.

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.

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

Timeline

1. 2019-06-21 Litigation release published

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

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.