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by Mike Caswell

Vancouver's Brent Pierce has lost his attempt to overturn his penalty for the Lexington Resources Inc. scheme. On Monday, April 25, the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear the case. As is customary, the court did not provide any reasons.

The ruling upholds a $7.24-million sanction that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission imposed on Mr. Pierce in 2011. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) The SEC said that he sold shares of Lexington in 2004 through a bank in Liechtenstein while paying for a spam campaign. The stock went to $7.50 from $3 during the scheme.

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Brent Pierce

The decision represents a substantial setback for Mr. Pierce, who has been fighting the fine for five years. He claimed that the SEC unfairly penalized him twice for Lexington. The regulator first imposed $2.04-million in penalties against him in 2009 over shares that he sold through personal accounts. It then fined him a second time in 2011, finding that he had fraudulently concealed his ownership of $7.24-million worth of stock that two private entities sold. Mr. Pierce complained that the double fines violated a legal principle called res judicata (which means that a matter may only be litigated once).

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