SEC v. Bio Defense Corporation, et al. (boiler rooms, 2019)

Judgment entered

Checked against the primary document on October 2, 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.

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In 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission obtained final judgments in its 2012 case against Bio Defense Corporation and five former executives and consultants, charged with defrauding investors of $26 million through unregistered offerings; the complaint alleges two of them were hired to reach boiler room firms to sell the securities overseas for up to 75 percent of proceeds.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	SEC
Release number	LR-24592
Date filed	2019-09-13
Date resolved	2019-09-13
Status	judgment
Criminal parallel	No
Defendants	Bio Defense Corporation (entity) ; Michael Lu (individual) ; Jonathan Morrone (individual) ; Z. Paul Jurberg (individual) ; Brett Hamburger (individual) ; Anthony Orth (individual) ; May's International Corp. (entity)
Cited as charged or alleged	Exchange Act s.10(b) and Rule 10b-5 ; Exchange Act s.15(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: —
Disgorgement: —
Prejudgment interest: —
Total relief: —
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 Securities and Exchange Commission announced this matter on September 13, 2019 as litigation release 24592. The defendants are Bio Defense Corporation, Michael Lu, Jonathan Morrone, Z. Paul Jurberg, Brett Hamburger and Anthony Orth, with May's International Corp. as a relief defendant. The 2012 complaint (D. Mass.) alleges unregistered sales of securities for over six years while officers falsely said they were unpaid, and that in 2008 Hamburger and Orth were hired to access "boiler room" firms to sell Bio Defense securities overseas for as much as 75 percent of proceeds. Final judgments entered on September 6, 2019 impose injunctions and officer-and-director bars on four defendants, and order each defendant to pay combined disgorgement, interest and penalties of $37,475,717 (Bio Defense), $1,399,156, $1,398,961, $1,327,325, $1,458,734 and $954,407 (the five individuals in the order the release lists them). The release gives only combined totals; the record previously showed Bio Defense's combined $37,475,717 as a penalty and May's International's $791,143 as interest, so both fields are now blank.

The boiler room element is one allegation within a broader unregistered offering fraud.

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

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

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

2019-09-13 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.

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

Action	Agency	Filed	Technique	Penalty	Status
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. Peter H. Pocklington, The Eye Machine LLC and others (boiler rooms, 2018)	SEC	2018-04-05	Boiler Rooms , Unregistered Distributions	$2.4m	settled
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.