Less than two years after being charged by the SEC with an alleged fraud, Jeffrey Friedland has settled, agreeing to pay over $4 million to the agency and to not participate in the offering of penny stocks for ten years. The judgment details the settlement payments, which include $2.18 million for disgorgement of profits and a $2.0 million civil penalty.

The SEC had charged Friedland, an advisor to an Israel-based cannabis company, OWC Pharmaceuticals (OTC: OWCP), with profiting nearly $6.5 million from the sale of its shares without disclosing compensation to tout its stock. Friedland had received 5.1 million shares from the company, but neither Friedland nor the company  ever detailed the nature of the services, investor relations, to be provided to the company.

The lawsuit alleged that Friedland had sold all 5.1 million shares in March of 2017 at an average price of $1.27 per share after touting the stock earlier in that year. When the lawsuit was filed in March 2018, OWC Pharmaceutical shares  had already fallen to $0.26 and have subsequently declined since then over 97% to $.0063.

Published by Alan Brochstein, CFA

Based in Houston, Alan leverages his experience as founder of online community 420 Investor, the first and still largest due diligence platform focused on the publicly-traded stocks in the cannabis industry. With his extensive network in the cannabis community, Alan continues to find new ways to connect the industry and facilitate its sustainable growth. At New Cannabis Ventures, he is responsible for content development and strategic alliances. Before shifting his focus to the cannabis industry in early 2013, Alan, who began his career on Wall Street in 1986, worked as an independent research analyst following over two decades in research and portfolio management. A prolific writer, with over 650 articles published since 2007 at Seeking Alpha, where he has 70,000 followers, Alan is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and a frequent source to the media, including the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, and Bloomberg TV. Contact Alan: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Email