United States v. Michael Simon Krome

Closed Criminal Division Cases

United States v. Michael Simon Krome
Court Docket Number: 1:11-cr-20131-JEM-7

This case is assigned to the Honorable Richard W. Goldberg, a visiting judge who will be sitting in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Wilkie D. Ferguson, Jr. United States Courthouse, 400 North Miami Avenue, Miami, Florida.

On March 1, 2013, Judge Goldberg entered a final restitution order as part of the Judgment in this case directing defendants Curshen, Montgomery, Krome, Barham, Weidenbaum and Reynolds to pay, jointly and severally, a total amount of approximately $808,372.32 in restitution. Payments will be made to the victims in the amounts and to the payees identified in the Motion and the list provided by the Office of Probation. However, no disbursements will be made until the defendants’ properties are forfeited and the funds are available for restitution.

No predictions can be made as to when this will happen or when the monies will be distributed. Although the restitution process is often quite time consuming, the government will do everything it can to handle it as quickly as possible.

New York securities attorney Michael Simon Krome was sentenced on May 10, 2012 to 34 months in prison, followed by 3 years of supervised release, on his January 13, 2012 guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, wire fraud and mail fraud (Count 1: 18 U.S.C. § 371) charged in a superseding indictment stemming from a securities fraud "pump and dump" manipulation scheme. In addition, Krome was ordered to forfeit $17,490.

According to his plea, Krome admitted that he participated in the scheme by evading federal securities registration requirements to facilitate the issuance of millions of unregistered and “free trading” shares of CO2 Tech that were used to execute the stock manipulation. Krome employed a method to evade federal securities registration requirements in order to provide co-conspirators with millions of unregistered and “free-trading” shares of CO2 Tech that the co-conspirators could not have otherwise legally obtained. The stock manipulation scheme generated approximately $7 million in illegal proceeds.

In a related case, on January 31, 2012, Jonathan Randall Curshen, the principal of Red Sea/SGS, and Nathan Bradley Montgomery, a Las Vegas stock promoter, were each convicted by a jury on one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, wire fraud and mail fraud charged in an April 2011 superseding indictment. Curshen also was convicted on two counts of mail fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Robert Weidenbaum, in December 2011, Timothy Barham, and Ryan Reynolds, in January 2012, and David Ricci, in February 2012, also pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit securities fraud, wire fraud and mail fraud charged in the same superseding indictment. Weidenbaum and Reynolds, along with Barham, were stock promoters, Ricci was a head stock trader, and Krome was a securities attorney from New York who participated in the conspiracy and evaded federal securities registration requirements in order to provide co-conspirators with millions of unregistered and “free trading” shares of CO2 Tech that were used to execute the stock manipulation.

With the exception of Reynolds, whose sentencing date has been tentatively set for the latter part of October, all of the defendants have been sentenced. For detailed information as to those sentences, go to the entry for U.S. v. Jonathan Randall Curshen et al.

If you have any questions, please call Pam Washington (888) 549-3945 or email her at victimassistance.fraud@usdoj.gov.