SEC v. Milan V. Patel (false rumors, 2025)

Judgment entered

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In April 2025 the SEC reported a final judgment, entered April 11, 2025, against Milan Vinod Patel for spreading more than 100 false rumours about public companies from December 2017 to January 2020 to sell into the temporary price rises, for illicit profits of over $1 million. The judgment enjoins him and orders $1,125,263 in disgorgement and $395,309 in interest. He pleaded guilty in a parallel criminal case and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

$1.1m

Prejudgment interest

$395k

Total relief

$1.5m

Alleged gain

$1m

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 judgment on April 11, 2025 as litigation release LR-26283, in SEC v. Patel, civil action 23-CV-0026 in the Northern District of Georgia, filed February 16, 2023. The defendant is Milan Vinod Patel (1 individual, 0 entities). A 2023 record in this library covers the filing of the complaint.

The complaint alleged that Patel received fabricated rumours, which he knew to be false, about events such as mergers and acquisitions from Barton Ross, Anthony Salandra or Charles Parrino, and passed them to contacts at financial news services and chat rooms and to Mark Melnick, who shared them with his webcast subscribers. The release says the circulation of more than 100 rumours caused temporary price rises that let Patel sell holdings for more than $1 million in illicit profit.

The final judgment permanently enjoins Patel from violating the antifraud provisions and orders disgorgement of $1,125,263 plus prejudgment interest of $395,309; no civil penalty is stated. In the parallel criminal case he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eighteen months in prison.

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.

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

Timeline

1. 2025-04-11 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.

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.