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by Mike Caswell

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil charges against Bahamian brokerage Gibraltar Global Securities Inc., claiming that the firm allowed customers to anonymously sell millions of shares on the U.S. markets without being registered. Over a four-year span, Gibraltar facilitated share sales totalling $100-million, according to the SEC. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) The shares were entirely in low-priced companies, and in many instances the firm's customers were promoters or brokers, the regulator says.

The charges come one month after the SEC named Gibraltar as a conduit used by a group of Canadian promoters who operated boiler rooms in Surrey and Calgary. The firm allowed Surrey brothers John B. Kirk and Benjamin T. Kirk to open accounts in the names of fake nominee entities, the regulator claimed. The men secretly dumped millions of shares through Gibraltar as part of an $11-million pump-and-dump scheme, according to the SEC. (Neither John Kirk nor Benjamin Kirk has responded to the charges, and the SEC has not proven them in court.)

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