SEC v. James E. Cohen and Joseph A. Corazzi (Natural Blue Resources) (undisclosed control blocks, 2018)

Judgment entered

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 3, 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.

Report an error in this record (sec-natural-blue-resources-inc-cohen-undisclosed-control-blocks-2018) by email

In December 2018 the SEC settled with James Cohen and Joseph Corazzi, consultants to Natural Blue Resources, finding they used consultancy agreements to act as de facto officers and hide their disciplinary and criminal histories from investors. They are barred as officers or directors and from penny stocks; no money was ordered.

The record

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 issued this corrected order making findings on December 21, 2018, in a proceeding begun on July 16, 2014, on the respondents' offers of settlement and without admission or denial.

The order finds that from August 2009 to late 2011 Cohen and Corazzi pressured Natural Blue's officers to approve consultancy agreements that let them serve as de facto officers, directing the board and management, recruiting its officers and investors and reviewing its filings, while concealing from investors that Cohen had been barred from the securities industry after a criminal conviction and Corazzi had been enjoined and barred in an earlier SEC case. Cohen also orchestrated the 2009 reverse merger by which the company went public. They violated Section 17(a) of the Securities Act.

They were ordered to cease and desist, barred from serving as officers or directors of public reporting companies, and barred from penny-stock offerings with a right to reapply after five years. The order imposes no money. The $75,000 on the record is a penalty from Corazzi's 2002 case, mentioned in the order only as his history, and is cleared. The record named the company and a half-name of Cohen as defendants; the company is not a respondent.

This library tags the matter as undisclosed control blocks; the reverse-merger tag is removed. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's.

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.

• Undisclosed control blocks — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2018-12-21 Administrative proceeding instituted (cease-and-desist)

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 order

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.