SEC v. Harmel S. Rayat, RenovaCare, Inc., Jatinder Bhogal, Jeetenderjit Singh Sidhu, and Sharon Fleming (newsletter scalping, 2022)

Settled

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The SEC's RenovaCare case alleged a pump-and-dump scheme by the company, its controlling shareholder Harmel Rayat and associates. Final judgments were entered against Sidhu and Fleming on October 17, 2023 and against Rayat, Bhogal and RenovaCare on February 27, 2024, which the SEC said concluded the litigation. The combined civil penalties were about $2.98 million, with disgorgement of about $5.09 million.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$3m

Disgorgement

$5.1m

Prejudgment interest

$669k

Total relief

$8.7m

Alleged gain

$7m

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 August 29, 2022 as litigation release 25487. The defendants named are Harmel S. Rayat, RenovaCare, Inc., Jatinder Bhogal, Jeetenderjit Singh Sidhu and Sharon Fleming, with several affiliated companies as relief defendants. The amended complaint of August 26, 2022 alleges defendants promoted RenovaCare through a paid promotional campaign while selling shares, timed company press releases to coincide with it, and traded to support the price and volume, generating over $7 million in gains.

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

Outcome. SEC releases 25883 and 25945 describe final judgments against all five defendants in S.D.N.Y. No. 1:21-cv-04777 (the release also gives 21-cv-04771). On October 17, 2023 the court entered judgments against Jeetenderjit Sidhu (disgorgement $2,300,000, prejudgment interest $190,000, penalty $160,000, jointly with relief-defendant entities for the first two) and Sharon Fleming ($380,802, $76,389 and $380,000). On February 27, 2024 it entered judgments, on consent and without admitting or denying, against Harmel Rayat ($1,270,352 disgorgement, $207,656 interest, $1,270,352 penalty), Jatinder Bhogal ($1,136,182, $194,562 and $669,687, the first two shared with a relief defendant) and RenovaCare, Inc. ($500,000 penalty). The recorded totals add these figures across defendants and may count some shared obligations once per defendant. The judgments include permanent injunctions, officer-and-director bars (10 years for Bhogal) and penny stock bars, and the SEC says they conclude the litigation. The fraud allegations were not adjudicated in the consent judgments.

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 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2022-08-29 Litigation release published
2. 2023-10-17 Final judgments entered against Sidhu and Fleming
3. 2024-02-27 Final consent judgments entered against Rayat, Bhogal and RenovaCare, concluding the litigation

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
• SEC litigation release 25883 (Sidhu, Fleming judgments)
• SEC litigation release 25945 (Rayat, Bhogal, RenovaCare judgments)

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.

Same matter

The library links these 2 records because they appear to concern one matter: the same lead defendant, an overlapping technique tag and close filing dates, or a shared court docket or a release that cites the other. Records are listed by date filed.

This grouping is the library's, made by matching names, techniques, dates and citations when the site is built. It is not the regulator's or a court's determination that the records are one case, and it errs towards missing a link rather than making a false one.

Related actions

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

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.