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by Mike Caswell

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and New York prosecutors have filed broker bribery charges against Malcolm Stockdale, a 66-year-old resident of Prince Edward Island, and Giuseppe Pino Baldassarre, a 53-year-old Canadian living in Florida. Prosecutors claim that the men offered to pay a 30-per-cent kickback to have brokers buy up to $4-million worth of stock in Dolphin Digital Media Inc., a Miami-based OTC Bulletin Board listing. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.)

According to the SEC, Mr. Stockdale and Mr. Baldassarre made the arrangement with somebody only identified as "Individual A," who said he represented a group of brokers with control over discretionary accounts. (In other similar cases, Individual A turned out to be an undercover FBI agent.) They carried out a test transaction in April, 2010, in which they sold 105,000 shares, after which Mr. Baldassarre paid an $11,440 bribe, the SEC claims.

Mr. Stockdale and Mr. Baldassarre are among six Canadians to face broker bribery charges in the U.S. in recent years. The most recent was Vancouver's John Zanic, who pleaded guilty and is serving one year in a low-security jail in Minnesota after he and another man paid a $122,000 bribe to an undercover FBI agent. Others include Vancouver's Gary Burnie, who received six months of home detention in 2007.

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