SEC v. Micheal A. Skerry (newsletter scalping, 2017)

Judgment entered

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In 2017, the SEC filed a scalping complaint against Micheal Skerry over Success Holding stock and announced a settled order against the issuer. After Skerry failed to respond, the court entered a default judgment on December 26, 2019 ordering $957,712.41 in disgorgement, $212,710.62 in interest and a $957,712.41 penalty plus a penny stock bar.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$1.1m

Disgorgement

$994k

Prejudgment interest

$216k

Total relief

$2.3m

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 September 29, 2017 as release LR-23950. The release announced a scalping complaint against Skerry in the Northern District of Indiana, charging Section 5, 17(a) and 10(b), and a settled order against the issuer, Success Holding Group International, which agreed to $36,000 in disgorgement, $3,737 in interest and a $100,000 penalty. No Section 17(b) charge is made, so the paid-promotion tag has been removed.

Outcome: the court's December 26, 2019 judgment records that Skerry moved to dismiss in 2017, then stopped responding to the court, and the court entered default on August 6, 2019 and granted the SEC's remedies motion. It orders Skerry to pay $957,712.41 in disgorgement, $212,710.62 in prejudgment interest and a third-tier penalty of $957,712.41, and permanently bars him from penny stock offerings. The money fields add the issuer's settled amounts to Skerry's. The findings rest on a default, not a trial, and the document does not show collections.

This library tags the matter as newsletter scalping 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. The conduct is recorded against equities.

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.

• Newsletter scalping — 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

1. 2017-09-29 Litigation release published
2. 2019-12-26 Default judgment entered against Skerry with disgorgement, interest, penalty and penny stock bar

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
• Judgment as to Micheal A. Skerry (N.D. Ind., December 26, 2019)

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.