SEC v. Mitchell Brown (pump and dump, 2016)

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 June 2016 the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that Mitchell H. Brown had been sentenced to 42 months in prison, three years of supervised release, a $1 million fine and $420,643 restitution in two criminal cases over pump-and-dump schemes, including an FBI-sting manipulation of shell company Amogear Inc. In March 2016 the court had entered consent judgments in the SEC case against Brown and four co-defendants, with injunctions and penny stock bars.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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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 June 21, 2016 as release LR-23576. The respondents named are Mitchell Brown (1 individual, 0 entities).

The release describes five defendants who knew Amogear was a shell and schemed to boost its price and sell their shares, not knowing the FBI controlled it; the SEC suspended trading in February 2014. The March 2016 consent judgments enjoin each under Securities Act Section 17(a) and Exchange Act Section 10(b) and bar penny stock offerings. This library tags the matter as pump and dump.

The conduct is recorded against equities.

The release references parallel criminal cases in which Brown was sentenced to 42 months in prison; a co-defendant, Michael Affa, received 33 months. Criminal and civil outcomes are tracked separately throughout this site.

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.

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

Timeline

1. 2016-06-21 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.