Former SEC Attorney and Recidivist Securities Violator Phillip W. Offill Sentenced to Prison Again
On July 12, 2023, former securities attorney Phillip W. Offill was sentenced today to six years in prison and ordered to pay $1.385 million in restitution to victims for his role in a conspiracy to defraud over 1,000 investors in a penny-stock scheme.
According to court filings, from at least November 2016 through October 2018, Phillip W. Offill, 64, of Dallas, and others conspired to misappropriate millions of shares of a publicly traded company, Mansfield-Martin Exploration Mining Inc (MCPI), using aliases and fake paperwork.
The co-conspirators then fraudulently marketed MCPI shares to the public through call centers that made materially false statements to potential investors, including false claims that efforts were underway to list the stock on a national exchange.
Employees at call centers also omitted material information, including the fact that the co-conspirators were paying large commissions to the callers to peddle the stock to victim investors. Offill and his co-conspirators also pumped up demand by manipulating the market so that MCPI stock appeared to be trading more actively than it actually was, and by causing the publication of false press releases regarding millions of dollars in funding that the co-conspirators knew would never come.
As a result of the scheme, victim investors lost over $1.3 million.
Offill was previously employed as an attorney for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for over 14 years. After leaving the SEC, in 2010, he was convicted in the Eastern District of Virginia for participating in multimillion-dollar pump-and-dump stock manipulation schemes. In April 2010, Offill was sentenced to eight years in prison and three years of supervised release. See United States v. Offill, No. 1:09-CR-00134-001 (E.D. Va.)
While on supervised release for his 2010 conviction, Offill committed the current offense involving MCPI stock.
As part of a civil case that the SEC brought in 2011, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan entered a final judgment against Offill that permanently barred him from participating in penny stock offerings. As part of another SEC case, in 2012, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas entered another permanent bar against him. Notwithstanding these bans, Offill committed the current offense. See SEC v. Offill, et al., No. 3:07-CV-1643-D (N.D. Tex.) and SEC v. Fisher, et al., No. 2:07-CV-12552 (E.D. Mich.).
Offill was also charged by the SEC on January 19, 2022, for the MCPI pump and dump scheme.
To speak with a Securities Attorney about penny stock bars, please contact Brenda Hamilton at 200 E Palmetto Rd, Suite 103, Boca Raton, Florida, (561) 416-8956, or by email at [email protected]. This securities law blog post is provided as a general informational service to clients and friends of Hamilton & Associates Law Group and should not be construed as and does not constitute legal advice on any specific matter, nor does this message create an attorney-client relationship. Please note that the prior results discussed herein do not guarantee similar outcomes.
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Brenda Hamilton, Securities Attorney
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