THE B.C. Securities Commission has permanently banned a West Vancouver stock promoter from its markets and fined him $700,000 after concluding he lied to investors to get them to fork over $1.74 million.
Myron Sullivan II, also known as Fred Myron George Sullivan, was handed the penalty Dec. 13.
A securities commission panel said Sullivan lied to investors while promoting Global Response Group Corp., a company owned by Sullivan that he claimed possessed special oil spill clean-up and firefighting technology.
Securities commission documents said Sullivan repeatedly made false statements to investors between 2008 and 2011, telling them the company would soon go public and be traded at a specified price on the NASDAQ, Hong Kong and London stock exchanges. He also told investors the company had sold its technology to the Chinese National Petroleum Company.
But none of that was true.
In fact, "Sullivan had done nothing to prepare (Global Response Group) for a stock exchange listing and had not approached any exchange about a public listing, for good reason: (the company) was in no position to go public," according to securities commission documents. "It had no audited financial statements. It needed major funding before it could meet listing criteria. Sullivan did not have the skills necessary to take the company public and (the company) had no other management with those skills."
Sullivan simply "made up" the predicted share prices he gave to investors, the securities commission added.
None of the people who gave money to Sullivan ever saw any of it back. Of the $1.74 million he received, Sullivan took at least $58,000 for personal uses, according to securities commission documents. He also spent the money on business related activities and "had patents and technology that could have been a successful business in more capable hands."
The securities commission panel banned both Sullivan and two companies he controls from trading on the stock exchange and ordered them to pay back investors as well as the fine. Sullivan was also banned from acting in a management or consulting role in connection with the securities market.
The website for Global Response Group lists a mailbox at a UPS store in West Vancouver as the address for the company.
The website still lists details of Sullivan's supposed robotic spill clean-up technology and instructs potential investors to contact him for direction to company lawyers in Irvine, California.
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