The Securities and Exchange Commission announced today that an enforcement action filed in June 2022 against six defendants has concluded with a judgment entered on February 6, 2025, in favour of the remaining two defendants, Roger Bendelac and Thomas Capellini of New York, after a four-day bench trial conducted in October 2024 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
The SEC’s claims against the other four defendants, Trends Investments Inc., Clinton Greyling, Leslie Greyling, and Brandon Rossetti, have been resolved.
The SEC’s action alleged that Trends Investments, an unregistered entity in the business of selling stock to investors, and its personnel, Clinton Greyling, Leslie Greyling, and Brandon Rossetti, engaged in a scheme to defraud investors in private offerings and sales of shares of two publicly traded companies.
The Commission alleged that Bendelac participated in the scheme by placing manipulative trades to create the false appearance of active trading in the stock of one of the public companies and that his brother-in-law, Cappelini, provided assistance to the scheme and to Bendelac by giving Bendelac access to his brokerage account and funding it.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts previously entered a judgment by consent against defendant Clinton Greyling on September 23, 2022, and final judgments by default against defendants Trends Investments, Leslie Greyling, and Rosetti on April 25, 2023.
Following a bench trial against Bendelac and Capellini conducted October 15 through 18, 2024, the Honorable Richard G. Stearns, United States District Judge, issued findings of fact and rulings of law in favour of Bendelac and Capellini on January 24, 2025, and entered a judgment in their favour on February 6, 2025.
