(February 7) – ” ‘Tokyo Joe,’ a burrito vendor turned Internet-stock guru, has raised the white flag in a high-profile fight with securities regulators, writes Aaron Elstein in today’s Wall Street Journal.

“Yun Soo Oh Park IV, known on Internet-message boards as Tokyo Joe, has agreed to return about $750,000 of his trading profits as part of a settlement of securities-fraud charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, a person familiar with the matter says. The SEC originally had been seeking as much as $2.25 million, another person familiar with the matter says.”

“Thomas Szromba, an SEC lawyer handling the case, declined to discuss the terms of the settlement, but said the pact must now be approved by the SEC’s commissioners. Mr. Park declined to comment on the case. His lawyer, Ira Lee Sorkin, former chief of the SEC’s New York office, said Mr. Park will neither admit nor deny wrongdoing as part of the settlement.”

“The SEC’s suit against Mr. Park, filed in January 2000 in a Chicago federal court, generated considerable interest because to some investors, Tokyo Joe symbolized the power of Internet-message boards during the mania for technology stocks that lasted until the bubble burst last March.”

“Mr. Park, 50 years old, had no securities-industry experience. But he became something of a folk hero, thanks to an apparent flair for picking stocks that almost invariably rose after he recommended them.”

“But the SEC asserts in its suit that Mr. Park was a stock manipulator, who defrauded investors on at least 10 occasions by failing to disclose that he had bought stocks before recommending them, and who then sold the shares as prices rose after his advice to buy.”