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by Mike Caswell

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors in California have filed fraud charges against Andrew Coldicutt, a Canadian working as a lawyer in San Diego. The government claims that Mr. Coldicutt, 42, helped set up a sham company with a puppet officer as part of a purported $5-million pump-and-dump scheme. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) Unfortunately for Mr. Coldicutt, those behind the scheme were undercover FBI agents.

The charges are contained in an indictment that prosecutors in the Southern District of California made public on Aug. 31, 2022. Authorities previously took Mr. Coldicutt into custody, and he pleaded not guilty before a judge in San Diego on Friday, Aug. 26. The judge allowed him to go free on a $25,000 bond.

The case, as set out by the government, arises from an undercover operation against Mr. Coldicutt that took place in 2017. According to prosecutors, a group of FBI agents, one posing as a fund manager, approached Mr. Coldicutt as potential clients. The agents said that they were looking to create a publicly traded shell company, but did not want the fund manager or his fund to be identified in listing documents, the indictment states.

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