Greenwich investor Eberwein fined $90K by SEC

A group of investors including Greenwich-based Jeffrey E. Eberwein has agreed to pay the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission a total of $420,000 in fines for failing to properly disclose ownership information during a series of five campaigns to influence or exert control over microcap companies.

Without admitting or denying the SEC”™s findings, Eberwein agreed to pay $90,000, while his Lone Star Value Management firm, based in Old Greenwich, will pay another $120,000. Tulsa-based Charles M. Gillman will also pay a fine of $30,000.

The SEC maintains that Eberwein and Gillman collaborated with Milwaukee-based mutual fund adviser Heartland Advisors in campaigns where they collectively owned more than 5 percent and sometimes even more than 10 percent of the microcap companies”™ outstanding common stock.  The required ownership filings to disclose that information to the investing public were either incomplete, untimely or altogether absent. Heartland Advisors was fined $180,000 for its part in the scheme.

“Investors in these companies were deprived of key facts needed to make informed investment decisions,” said Gerald Hodgkins, associate director of the SEC Division of Enforcement. “Full, fair, and accurate disclosures from all parties in a battle for corporate influence or control are critically important to investors, particularly when they are called upon to make decisions about their investments.”