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by Mike Caswell

Federal prosecutors in California have asked a judge to uphold a jury's conviction of Andrew Left, the activist short-seller charged for a two-year scheme to manipulate several Canadian and U.S. listings. Mr. Left has been asking the judge to overturn his conviction, but prosecutors say that there is no reason to do so. The evidence "overwhelmingly supports the jury's verdict that defendant committed securities fraud," they contend.

The statements from prosecutors come about five months after a jury convicted Mr. Left. The government claimed that he used his investment publication, Citron Research, to generate $20-million in trading profits in what amounted to a "garden-variety pump-and-dump scheme." (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) The stocks that he targeted included TSX Venture Exchange listings Cronos Group Inc. and Namaste Technologies Inc.

Mr. Left has since asked the judge to overturn the verdict, saying that the evidence at trial showed that he did nothing wrong. As he sees it, the evidence showed that he made accurate statements about securities to the public, expressed his sincerely held opinions and profited from his own ideas. None of this amounts to a crime, he contends.

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