Ex-NFL star Gault to pay fine, ending SEC fraud case
15/04/2016 14:44
By Jonathan Stempel
April 15 (Reuters) - Willie Gault, the former National
Football League wide receiver and Olympic sprinter, agreed to
pay $206,571 to settle a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
lawsuit over his role in a scheme to inflate the stock price of
a heart-monitoring device maker.
Gault, who was co-chief executive officer of Heart Tronics
Inc HRTT.PK , will pay a $78,000 civil fine and give up
$101,000 in ill-gotten gains plus $27,571 in interest. He also
agreed to a ban from being an officer or director of public
companies.
The terms were outlined in a final judgment filed on
Thursday with the federal court in Santa Ana, California.
George Newhouse, Gault's lawyer, was not immediately
available for comment on Friday.
A federal jury in March 2015 cleared Gault of trying to
fraudulently inflate Heart Tronics' stock price, but found him
liable for filing false certifications with the SEC and
circumventing the company's internal controls. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL2N0WK2J6
The SEC had sued Gault and others affiliated with Heart
Tronics in December 2011.
Among the defendants was Mitchell Stein, a lawyer who the
SEC said controlled much of Heart Tronics' business, hired
promoters to tout its stock online, and installed Gault as
co-CEO to drum up publicity.
Stein was convicted in 2013 of fraud in a related criminal
case, and is serving a 17-year prison term.
Gault played 11 seasons in the NFL with the Chicago Bears
and Los Angeles Raiders, winning Super Bowl XX with the Bears in
1986. He was also on the U.S. Olympic team that boycotted the
1980 Summer Games in Moscow.
The case is SEC v Gault, U.S. District Court, Central
District of California, No. 11-01962.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Jeffrey
Benkoe)
((jon.stempel@thomsonreuters.com; +1 646 223 6317; Reuters
Messaging: jon.stempel.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
Keywords: PEOPLE GAULT/SEC