The Securities and Exchange Commission is going after alleged securities fraudsters that victimized Canadian investors, along with those in the United States and the British West Indies.

The SEC announced today that it filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas for securities fraud and registration violations of federal securities laws against The Balancer Company Inc., as well as TBC’s founders and principal officers, Mark Miclette and Toni Bonar Miclette.

According to the complaint, TBC ostensibly developed and marketed a single product known as the Spin Cycle Balancer, a washing machine device that purportedly would automatically balance a laundry load during the spin cycle.

From February 2000 through April 2001, defendants raised at least $750,000 from approximately 90 investors located across the U.S., Canada and the B.W.I. Investment funds were solicited through various means, including the company’s internet website, www.spincyclebalancer.com.

In the course of offering and selling the unregistered common stock of TBC, the complaint alleges, defendants engaged in numerous material misrepresentations and omissions concerning, among other matters, the expected rate of return on the investment, the status of the Balancer’s development, TBC’s business operations, and the use of investor funds. TBC never developed a finished prototype of its product, nor did it achieve any sales or agreements to sell its product in the future.

Instead, the Miclettes diverted a large portion of the investor funds for unauthorized personal and business expenditures. Specifically, the complaint contends that defendants misappropriated as much as $400,000 to pay for personal expenses, such as mortgage and car payments and tuition for the Miclette children’s private school, and for wire transfers to persons unrelated to TBC or persons affiliated with TBC who were owed no compensation by the company.

The commission requests that the court permanently enjoin defendants from violating the securities registration and antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws, impose a civil money penalty against them, and order them to account for and disgorge all monies derived from their fraud, plus pay prejudgment interest on that amount.