SEC v. Tennstar Energy, Inc., et al. (boiler rooms, 2017)

Judgment entered

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In 2017, the SEC charged two Tennessee men and a Florida accomplice over a $15 million oil drilling investment scheme sold through a network of salesmen, including a Florida boiler room of telemarketers overseen by Richard P. Underwood, with false promises of 15 to 50 percent annual returns. In January 2020 a Georgia federal court entered default judgments against David Greenlee and David Stewart Jr., after a stay for the criminal cases.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

$15.4m

Prejudgment interest

$2.7m

Total relief

$18.1m

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 August 30, 2017 as litigation release 23924. The defendants named include Tennstar Energy, Inc. (formerly Black Gold Resources, Inc.), David R. Greenlee, David A. Stewart Jr. and Richard P. Underwood; the scheme also ran through Southern Energy Group, Inc. As alleged, Mr Greenlee and Mr Stewart raised $15 million through salesmen who promised high returns from enhanced oil recovery, while little money went to oil production, and Mr Underwood helped draft false brochures and oversaw a boiler room sales team of telemarketers in Florida. A parallel criminal case exists.

Outcome: the civil case was stayed pending three related criminal cases. On January 15, 2020 the Southern District of Georgia entered final judgments by default against Greenlee and against Stewart, each of which deems the allegations true, enjoins the defendant and holds him liable for disgorgement of $15,387,256.63 plus prejudgment interest of $2,697,934.83, an obligation the court deemed satisfied by the criminal restitution orders ($19,555,413 for Greenlee, $29,400,820 for Stewart). The scanned penalty line in each judgment is not legible enough to read, so no penalty is recorded; the disgorgement figure is stated once per defendant and is not necessarily additive. A search result indicated a default judgment against Underwood too, but we did not open it, and the outcome for Tennstar Energy and Underwood was not checked.

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.

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

1. 2017-08-30 Litigation release published
2. 2020-01-15 Final judgments by default entered against David Greenlee and David Stewart Jr. (S.D. Ga.)

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
• Final judgment by default as to Greenlee (S.D. Ga., January 15, 2020)
• Final judgment by default as to Stewart (S.D. Ga., January 15, 2020)

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.