The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced fraud charges against several alleged perpetrators behind a $78 million pump-and-dump scheme. This was involving the stock of Jammin’ Java, a company that operates as Marley Coffee and uses trademarks of late reggae artist Bob Marley to sell coffee products.

In the case, the SEC alleges that Jammin Java’s former CEO Shane Whittle orchestrated this pump-and-dump scheme with three others who live abroad and operate entities offshore.

Whittle accomplished this by utilizing a reverse merger to secretly gain control of millions of Jammin Java shares, and he spread the stock to the offshore entities controlled by Wayne Weaver of the United Kingdom and Canada, Michael Sun of India and René Berlinger of Switzerland. The shares were later dumped on the unsuspecting public after the stock price soared following fraudulent promotional campaigns.

To conceal his control of the stock and other aspects of the scheme, Whittle made material misstatements and misleading omissions in beneficial ownership reports filed with the SEC.

Apart from Whittle, British twin brothers Alexander Hunter and Thomas Hunter were charged with fraudulently promoting Jammin’ Java stock to investors. They were previously charged in a separate SEC case for touting multiple penny stocks using a fake stock picking robot. The others charged in the SEC’s complaint with facilitating the illegal offering through their offshore entities are U.K. citizens Stephen Wheatley and Kevin Miller and Oman resident Mohammed Al-Barwani.

David Glockner, director of the SEC’s Chicago Regional Office, commented:

As alleged in our complaint, the defendants made millions of dollars in illicit profits at the expense of the investing public and attempted to conceal their misconduct through complex offshore networks that were revealed in our investigation.

The company trades over the counter under the symbol JAMN. Shares were last seen at $0.1420, with a 52-week trading range of $0.13 to $0.31.

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