SEC v. Andrew Farmer, et al. (pump and dump, 2015)

Judgment entered

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In October 2015 the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that the Southern District of Texas had granted it summary judgment on all claims against Andrew Farmer over a pump-and-dump of Chimera Energy Corp. stock promoted with fictitious fracking technology. The court found he pocketed more than $4.1 million and left remedies for later.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

the Securities and Exchange Commission announced this matter on October 9, 2015 as release LR-23386. The respondent named is Andrew Farmer (1 individual, 0 entities). The action was brought in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas.

The release reports the court found that in 2011 and 2012 Farmer gained control of millions of Chimera shares at nominal cost and ran a public-relations campaign to pump the price although the company had only nominal assets and its technology was fictitious. He was held liable under Securities Act Sections 5 and 17(a) and Exchange Act Section 10(b). The remedies were to be set later. This library tags the matter as pump and dump.

The conduct is recorded against equities.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Pump and dump — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2015-10-09 Litigation release published

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• SEC litigation release

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Same matter

The library links these 3 records because they appear to concern one matter: the same lead defendant, an overlapping technique tag and close filing dates, or a shared court docket or a release that cites the other. Records are listed by date filed.

This grouping is the library's, made by matching names, techniques, dates and citations when the site is built. It is not the regulator's or a court's determination that the records are one case, and it errs towards missing a link rather than making a false one.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.