SAExploration Accused of Accounting Fraud
The Securities and Exchange Fee has submitted civil rates in opposition to SAExploration Holdings, a publicly traded seismic details acquisition organization based in Houston, over an alleged multi-year accounting fraud that falsely inflated the company’s earnings and concealed the theft of tens of millions of dollars.
In a grievance submitted in the Southern District of New York, the SEC reported senior executives engaged in an “elaborate, four-year-lengthy fraud.” It names former chief govt officer and chairman Jeffrey Hastings, former chief fiscal officer and standard counsel Brent Whiteley, former CEO and chief working officer Brian Beatty, and former vice president of operations Michael Scott as defendants. It also names the spouses of Hastings and Whiteley, Lori Hastings and Thomas O’Neill, as reduction defendants.
The executives allegedly entered into a series of seismic details acquisition contracts totaling close to $140 million with a purportedly unrelated Alaska-based organization that was in reality managed by Hastings and Whiteley. The defendants allegedly misappropriated nearly $6 million from SAE and utilized the resources for a series of spherical-journey transactions then stole close to $6 million for by themselves. Whiteley allegedly misappropriated an added $4 million through a separate fictitious invoice plan.
The U.S. Attorney’s Workplace for the Southern District of New York introduced criminal rates in opposition to Hastings in a parallel action.
Hastings was arrested very last month in Anchorage, Alaska. A spokesperson for the organization reported he was set on administrative go away more than a year back and then resigned.
“As alleged in our grievance, SAE’s executives designed a multi-faceted fraud that enriched executives at the price of traders,” Jennifer Leete, an affiliate director in the division of enforcement, reported in a statement. “We will vigorously pursue wrongdoing by people today and corporations who interact in fraud and mislead traders.”
The SEC is trying to get a everlasting injunction in opposition to SAE and executives, civil penalties, disgorgement and business-and-director bars in opposition to the executives.
