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by Mike Caswell

Benjamin Kirk, one of the men charged for a boiler room scheme run from Surrey and Calgary, has agreed to pay $6.23-million to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) He will pay the money to settle a case in which the SEC claimed that he was the architect of an $11-million pump-and-dump. He and others boosted a pair of pink sheets listings with bogus claims about infomercials and solar power, the SEC said.

Mr. Kirk's settlement is contained in a proposed judgment filed in New York on Tuesday, July 19. The penalty includes disgorgement of $5.49-million in gains plus interest of $731,495. Mr. Kirk has also agreed to a permanent ban from penny stocks and from serving as an officer or director of a public company. He did not admit any wrongdoing in accepting the sanctions.

The settlement comes over three years after the SEC charged Mr. Kirk and several others for the scheme. The SEC said that he and the others promoted two pink sheets companies, Pacific Blue Energy Corp. and Tradeshow Marketing Ltd., with spam and misleading news releases. Both companies went to well over $1 before falling under a penny, while the men sold millions of shares, the regulator claimed.

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