SAExploration Accused of Accounting Fraud
The Securities and Exchange Fee has filed civil rates towards SAExploration Holdings, a publicly traded seismic details acquisition enterprise primarily based in Houston, over an alleged multi-year accounting fraud that falsely inflated the company’s profits and hid the theft of thousands and thousands of pounds.
In a grievance filed in the Southern District of New York, the SEC claimed senior executives engaged in an “elaborate, 4-year-extensive fraud.” It names previous main executive officer and chairman Jeffrey Hastings, previous main financial officer and normal counsel Brent Whiteley, previous CEO and main working officer Brian Beatty, and previous vice president of functions Michael Scott as defendants. It also names the spouses of Hastings and Whiteley, Lori Hastings and Thomas O’Neill, as relief defendants.
The executives allegedly entered into a series of seismic details acquisition contracts totaling about $a hundred and forty million with a purportedly unrelated Alaska-primarily based enterprise that was in fact managed by Hastings and Whiteley. The defendants allegedly misappropriated nearly $6 million from SAE and made use of the money for a series of spherical-excursion transactions then stole about $6 million for on their own. Whiteley allegedly misappropriated an additional $four million by a different fictitious bill scheme.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office environment for the Southern District of New York introduced prison rates towards Hastings in a parallel motion.
Hastings was arrested very last month in Anchorage, Alaska. A spokesperson for the enterprise claimed he was set on administrative go away a lot more than a year back and then resigned.
“As alleged in our grievance, SAE’s executives created a multi-faceted fraud that enriched executives at the expense of buyers,” Jennifer Leete, an affiliate director in the division of enforcement, claimed in a statement. “We will vigorously go after wrongdoing by men and women and businesses who interact in fraud and mislead buyers.”
The SEC is trying to get a permanent injunction towards SAE and executives, civil penalties, disgorgement and workplace-and-director bars towards the executives.