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by Mike Caswell

U.S. authorities have arrested Brian Robert Sodi, a penny stock tout also known as "Mailman," for a $1.1-million scheme to boost two OTC Markets companies. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) The government claims that Mr. Sodi, with the help of an unidentified Canadian and others, boosted the companies with misleading mass mail campaigns. He did not disclose that he intended to sell hundreds of thousands of shares into the volume he was creating, the government claims.

The allegations against Mr. Sodi were announced by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice on Friday, March 9. Agents arrested Mr. Sodi on Thursday, charging him with securities fraud and mail fraud. He has not yet entered a plea.

Details of the charges are set out in a civil complaint that the SEC filed in the Northern District of Alabama. The complaint identifies Mr. Sodi, 46, as a resident of Boca Raton, Fla., who ran two publishing operations that specialized in penny stocks. They operated under the names Capital Financial Media LLC and List Data Solutions LLC.

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