A dual U.S. and Canadian citizen has pled in guilty to money laundering charges in connection with allegedly orchestrating a massive pump-and-dump scheme, the U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO), Eastern District of New York, announced on Monday.
Gregg Mulholland pled guilty to money laundering conspiracy “for fraudulently manipulating the stocks of more than 40 U.S. publicly-traded companies and then laundering more than US$250 million in profits through at least five offshore law firms,” the USAO says in a statement.
As part of his plea deal, Mulholland agreed to forfeit an airplane, a truck, two real estate properties in British Columbia, and financial assets in more than a dozen bank and brokerage accounts.
“Mulholland’s staggering fraud perpetrated on the investing public was built on an elaborate offshore shell game, which included his secret ownership of an offshore brokerage firm,” says Robert Capers, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, in a statement.
The USAO alleged that, between 2010 and 2014, Mulholland led a scheme to engage in manipulative trading, and to launder the profits from the stock manipulation schemes. To facilitate these schemes, the USAO alleged that he secretly owned Legacy Global Markets S.A., a broker-dealer and investment management company based in Panama and Belize.
“Through manipulative trading, Mulholland generated profits of more than $250 million and used a corrupt lawyer to launder the proceeds into the United States to pay his fraudulent network of stock promoters and broker-dealers,” adds Capers.
Last year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also accused Mulholland of violating U.S. securities laws.
Canadian arrested in U.S. for role in alleged schemes
In 2013, the SEC obtained a monetary judgment against him after it brought charges in connection with another alleged pump-and-dump scheme.