An OSC panel has permanently banned Empire Consulting—along with president and founder, Desmond Chambers—from trading in securities.
It says they raised approximately $1.5 million from sales of its debt elimination strategy program to about 26 investors. It adds they were encouraged to remortgage their homes in order to invest in the program.
In today’s decision, the panel observed both the company and Chambers exploited the weaknesses of individuals who relied upon false representations to their detriment. In addition, it finds they were found to have perpetrated a fraud on the Empire investors that caused irreversible financial harm.
Accordingly, the OSC panel ordered that both partiers jointly pay an administrative penalty of $300,000. They were also ordered to jointly and severally pay $859,555 in disgorgement and $235,502.15 in costs.
The OSC says, “Chambers was using investor funds for personal expenses while Empire was consistently losing on its investments.”
The OSC panel also finds Empire and Chambers “continuously misrepresented to investors that their investments were growing at incredible rates at a time when the only returns achieved by Empire were negative returns.”
Read the Reasons and Decision document.