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by Mike Caswell

Marlio Diaz and Carlos Rezk, two Florida men charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alongside Toronto's Andy DeFrancesco for an $8-million pump-and-dump, deny that they did anything wrong. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) The SEC claims that the men were part of a scheme to mislead investors in a company that supposedly sold Apple products through a chain of retail stores. Among other things, the men claimed that the company's stores were outdoing major retailers in their ability to make sales.

The denials by Mr. Diaz and Mr. Rezk are contained in answers that they filed on March 10, 2023, in federal court in New York. The SEC claimed that the men helped Mr. DeFrancesco through the scheme, serving as officers of Cool Holdings Inc., the OTC Markets company at the centre of the alleged pump-and-dump. The men were behind promotional material that the SEC described as fraudulent, with that material failing to mention that Cool Holdings had serious financial problems and that it had a precarious relationship with its main supplier, Apple.

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