SEC v. Tomahawk Exploration LLC and David Thompson Laurance (2018)

Settled

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.

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In August 2018 the SEC settled with oil explorer Tomahawk Exploration and founder David Laurance over a 2017 initial coin offering of unregistered "Tomahawkcoin" tokens and false statements about its oil prospects and his background. Laurance agreed to a $30,000 penalty and bars. The case is not a reverse-merger scheme.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	SEC
Release number	3-18641
Date filed	2018-08-14
Date resolved	2018-08-14
Status	settled
Asset class	crypto
Criminal parallel	No
Bars imposed	officer-and-director bar, penny stock bar
Defendants	Tomahawk Exploration LLC (entity) ; David Thompson Laurance (individual)
Cited as charged or alleged	Exchange Act s.10(b) and Rule 10b-5 ; Securities Act s.5 (statutes and rules cited in the document; not a finding that they were violated)
Techniques

What was ordered

Civil penalty: $30k
Disgorgement: —
Prejudgment interest: —
Total relief: $30k
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 instituted and settled this proceeding on August 14, 2018 (Securities Act release 10530), without admission or denial by the respondents.

The order finds that from July to September 2017 Tomahawk sought to raise $5 million through an online token offering to fund oil drilling in Kern County, California, raised nothing, but issued about 80,000 tokens under a bounty program for promotional services. It finds the tokens were securities offered without registration, violating Sections 5(a) and 5(c), and that the respondents falsely stated the company's prospects using unadjusted reserve projections, claimed leases it did not hold, and said Laurance had a flawless background despite a prior securities-related conviction.

The record carried a reverse-merger tag that nothing in the order supports, so it has none. Both respondents were ordered to cease and desist; Laurance was barred from serving as an officer or director of a public reporting company and from penny-stock offerings, and, on his sworn finances, ordered to pay a $30,000 penalty in instalments. The record's defendant field had joined the two 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.

Timeline

2018-08-14 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.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.