SEC v. Zeeshawn S. Zia (boiler rooms, 2021)

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 2021, the SEC charged Elite Aerospace Group, Inc. and seven individuals, including Zeeshawn S. Zia, over two fraudulent offerings that raised $70 million, alleging Michael P. Owens ran a boiler room that raised about $67 million from investors between 2014 and 2018 with the knowledge of executives Dustin B. Tillman and Mr Zia.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	SEC
Release number	LR-25193
Date filed	2021-09-01
Court	U.S. District Court, Central District of California
Status	filed
Asset class	equities
Criminal parallel	No
Bars imposed	officer-and-director bar
Defendants	Dawson L. Davenport (individual) ; Elite Aerospace Group, Inc. (entity) ; Robert A. Gunton (individual) ; Andrea J. Lindstrom (individual) ; Michael P. Owens (individual) ; Dustin B. Tillman (individual) ; Julie A. Yale (individual) ; Zeeshawn S. Zia (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) ; Securities Act s.5 (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 September 1, 2021 as litigation release 25193. The defendants named are Dawson L. Davenport, Elite Aerospace Group, Inc., Robert A. Gunton, Andrea J. Lindstrom, Michael P. Owens, Dustin B. Tillman, Julie A. Yale and Zeeshawn S. Zia, in the Central District of California; the record previously named only Mr Zia. As alleged, Mr Owens, a recidivist, set up and controlled a boiler room that raised about $67 million for Elite, paying about 15 percent undisclosed commissions to unregistered salespeople while about 30 percent of proceeds went to offering costs, and a separate unauthorised offering by Mr Owens' company raised about $2 million. The SEC seeks injunctions, disgorgement, penalties and penny stock and officer-and-director bars.

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.

Checked on 2026-10-04: no judgment found for the lead defendant. The court entered a judgment by consent against co-defendant Zeeshawn Zia on March 10, 2022 that grants injunctions but leaves the disgorgement and civil penalty amounts to be decided on a later SEC motion (with interest running from January 1, 2014), so it is not a final resolution of money terms. The SEC's whistleblower notice for the case lists a qualifying judgment dated April 24, 2025, which does not say which defendant it concerns and which we did not read. We did not find outcomes for Davenport, Elite Aerospace, Gunton or the others, so the record stays as filed.

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.

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

Timeline

2021-09-01 Litigation release published
2022-03-10 Consent judgment entered as to co-defendant Zeeshawn Zia (amounts left open)

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.