SEC v. Robert Lenard Booth, Michael D'Urso, Daniel T. Wellcome Jr., Alyssa D'Urso, Antonella Chiaramonte, and Jay Garnock) (boiler rooms, 2022)

Alleged — pending

These are allegations. SEC has filed an action; nothing in it has been proven, and the respondents have not been found liable. Everything described on this page is what the regulator alleges, not what a court has found. See our editorial policy.

Checked against the primary document on October 4, 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 2022, the SEC charged six U.S. nationals in the Southern District of New York over overseas boiler rooms that allegedly sold fake investments to more than 140 victims, taking more than $8 million, with five of them accused of laundering the money through fake-company bank accounts in New York. A parallel criminal case was filed.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	SEC
Release number	LR-25326
Date filed	2022-02-09
Court	U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York
Status	filed
Criminal parallel	Yes: sentenced (Robert Lenard Booth), U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, 2022-08-17
Sentence	10 years
Defendants	Robert Lenard Booth (individual) ; Michael D'Urso (individual) ; Daniel T. Wellcome Jr. (individual) ; Alyssa D'Urso (individual) ; Antonella Chiaramonte (individual) ; Jay Garnock (individual)
Cited as charged or alleged	Exchange Act s.10(b) and Rule 10b-5 ; Exchange Act s.15(a) ; Securities Act s.17(a) (statutes and rules cited in the document; not a finding that they were violated)
Techniques	Boiler rooms

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 announced this matter on February 9, 2022 as litigation release 25326. The defendants named are Robert Lenard Booth, Michael D'Urso, Daniel T. Wellcome Jr., Alyssa D'Urso, Antonella Chiaramonte and Jay Garnock. As alleged, several overseas boiler rooms in 2019 and 2020 sold fake investments said to trade on U.S. exchanges, mostly to foreign retirees; Mr Booth ran one from Thailand that took at least $700,000 from 10 investors, and the other five moved the victims' money through accounts of fake companies Mr D'Urso created. The record previously carried a stray closing parenthesis in the last defendant's name.

Only one defendant is alleged to have run a boiler room, and the product was a fictitious investment rather than an operator-held security, so the tag is a loose fit.

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

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.

Partial outcome: the Commission's September 15, 2022 order (File No. 3-21084) states that on August 17, 2022 a criminal judgment was entered against Robert Booth in the Southern District of New York, sentencing him to 120 months and restitution of $2,003,883. It does not report a civil judgment, and no civil outcome for Booth or the other five defendants was found. Checked on 2026-10-04: no final outcome for the matter as a whole was found on the SEC litigation release or administrative proceeding pages, so the status stays filed.

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.

Boiler rooms — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

2022-02-09 Litigation release published
2022-08-17 Criminal judgment against Booth: 120 months (Commission order of Sept. 15, 2022)

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

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.

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

Action	Agency	Filed	Technique	Penalty	Status
SEC v. Andrew Spaventa and others (boiler rooms, 2026)	SEC	2026-08-17	Boiler Rooms	—	filed
SEC v. Timothy Page, Trevor Page and others (boiler rooms, 2024)	SEC	2024-11-20	Boiler Rooms , Undisclosed Control Blocks	$7.7m	judgment
SEC v. Mario Gogliormella, Steven Lacaj, and Karim Ibrahim a/k/a/ Chris Hayes (boiler rooms, 2024)	SEC	2024-06-12	Boiler Rooms	—	filed
SEC v. Legend Venture Partners LLC (boiler rooms, 2023)	SEC	2023-07-11	Boiler Rooms	—	filed
SEC v. Vuuzle Media Corp., Vuuzle Media Corp. Limited, Ronald Shane Flynn, and Richard Marchitto (boiler rooms, 2023)	SEC	2023-06-27	Boiler Rooms	$25.8m	judgment
SEC v. Matthew Nicosia, William Reininger, Fabrizio Di Carlo, and Ronald Touchard (boiler rooms, 2023)	SEC	2023-04-10	Boiler Rooms	$223k	judgment

Record added September 10, 2026. If this matter has since resolved, been withdrawn or been dismissed, we want to know: submit a correction.