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by Mike Caswell

Andy DeFrancesco, the Toronto-area cannabis investor charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an $8-million pump-and-dump on the OTC Markets, has asked that the judge dismiss the case. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) The SEC says that Mr. DeFrancesco, 52, was behind a scheme to mislead investors in a company that supposedly sold Apple products through a chain of retail stores. He unloaded shares as paid tout sheets said that the company had a "$900 Million Opportunity from Apple," the SEC claims.

The request from Mr. DeFrancesco is contained in a motion to dismiss that his lawyer filed on Wednesday, April 5, in federal court in New York. The motion represents Mr. DeFrancesco's first response to the charges, with the case still far from going to trial. In it, he denies that he did anything wrong, saying that the SEC has improperly connected him to misleading statements that boosted the stock at issue, Cool Holdings Inc. (for which he served as chairman).

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