Joe.My.God. LGBT News
From the Dallas Morning News:
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday announced fraud charges against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and several others involved in promoting a north Texas tech company.
Paxton and a former member of the board of Servergy, Inc., a north Texas tech firm, were charged with allegedly convincing others to buy stock in the company without disclosing they were being paid to promote it.
Paxton was indicted on two first-degree felony charges last year for these same issues; he was also charged with a third-degree felony for acting as an investment advisor representative without being registered with the state. He is currently fighting those indictments in a Dallas appeals court.
More about the scam:
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced fraud charges against a Texas-based technology company and its founder accused of boosting stock sales with false claims about a supposedly revolutionary computer server and big-name customers purportedly placing orders to buy it. Also charged in the SEC’s complaint is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and a former member of the company’s board of directors for allegedly recruiting investors while hiding they were being compensated to promote the company’s stock.
The SEC alleges that Servergy Inc. and William E. Mapp III sold $26 million worth of company stock in private offerings while misleading investors to believe that the Cleantech CTS-1000 server (the company’s sole product) was especially energy-efficient. They said it could replace “power-hungry” servers found in top data centers and compete directly with top server makers like IBM, Dell, and Hewlett Packard.
However, neither Mapp nor Servergy informed investors that those companies were manufacturing high-performance servers with 64-bit processors while the CTS-1000 had a less powerful 32-bit processor that was being phased out of the industry and could not in reality compete against those companies.
The SEC further alleges that when Servergy was low on operating funds, Mapp enticed prospective investors by falsely claiming well-known companies were ordering the CTS-1000, and he specifically mentioned an order purportedly received from Amazon. In reality, an Amazon employee had merely contacted Servergy because he wanted to test the product in his free time for personal use.
Paxton is also facing an ethics investigation for his attempt to defy Obergefell:
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is being probed for ethics violations for telling county clerks that they could deny marriage licenses to same sex-couples, another potential setback for the state’s top lawyer, who is already facing felony charges.
The State Bar of Texas ordered its Board of Disciplinary Appeals this week top look into Paxton, his office and Houston attorney Eddie Rodriguez said on Thursday. If Paxton is found to have an ethics violation, he could be disbarred, which means he could no longer serve as attorney general.
Attorneys who asked for the probe said Paxton acted illegally in asking that state officials violate the U.S. Constitution by refusing to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples, in defiance of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that made gay marriage legal nationally.
“Attorney General Paxton has a right to disagree with a ruling of the Supreme Court. Lawyers do that every single day. What makes a difference is that you cannot encourage people to violate that ruling and that law,” said Rodriguez, who led the call for the probe.