The Financial Post reports in its Wednesday edition that U.S. regulators have sued a group of alleged penny stock manipulators in a $78-million (U.S.) scheme where they hijacked a small coffee company formed by Bob Marley's son to reap profits from the fame of the late reggae singer. A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post says former Jammin' Java chief executive officer Shane Whittle went into business with Mr. Marley's son, Rohan, who created the coffee company, and then orchestrated the fraud by promoting its stock to inflate the share price before dumping it, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC claims Mr. Whittle used offshore entities to promote the shares, while using a reverse merger to conceal his ownership of Jammin' stock. "The defendants made millions of dollars in illicit profits at the expense of the investing public and attempted to conceal their misconduct through complex offshore networks that were revealed in our investigation," said David Glockner at the SEC's Chicago office.The SEC announced in July, 2013, a task force to go after serial offenders and gatekeepers, such as lawyers, broker-dealers and stock promoters. The Jammin' scam started in 2005, says the SEC.