SEC Wins Unregistered Securities Dealing Suit Against NJ Man

A New Jersey man failed to convince a federal judge that he was a trader—not a dealer—who didn’t need to register with the SEC when he sold billions of shares of more than 20 penny stocks.

Between January 2015 and November 2017, John Fierro profited more than $2.3 million from converting notes into stock and selling the newly issued shares on the public market.

He wasn’t registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission as a dealer, and his business, JDF Capital Inc., wasn’t associated with a registered dealer. But they should have been, the US District Court for the District ...