SEC v. Empire Stock Transfer, Inc. and Patrick R. Mokros (undisclosed control blocks, 2014)

Settled

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In April 2014 the SEC settled administrative proceedings against transfer agent Empire Stock Transfer and its president Patrick Mokros, finding that its registration filings never disclosed that an outside attorney, Marcus Luna, paid for the firm's shares and controlled it. The respondents jointly agreed to a $50,000 penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$50k

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$50k

Alleged gain

—

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 instituted and settled this proceeding on April 8, 2014 as release 34-71904, without admission or denial by the respondents.

The order finds that Mokros agreed in 2006 to buy all of Empire's stock but that Luna, not Mokros, supplied the $300,000 price. From 2006 to 2008 Luna helped run the business and received most of its profits, and in 2010 Empire lent $200,000 to a company he controlled. Empire's Forms TA-1 never disclosed Luna as a control person or as the financer of the purchase, and the Commission found violations of the transfer-agent registration and record-keeping provisions.

This library tags the matter as undisclosed control blocks because the order finds that a person controlling the firm was never disclosed in its regulatory filings. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

The respondents were censured, ordered to cease and desist, and jointly and severally ordered to pay a $50,000 civil penalty in four instalments. The order also set undertakings for an independent consultant.

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.

• Undisclosed control blocks — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2014-04-08 Administrative proceeding instituted (cease-and-desist)

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 order

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.

Related actions

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

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.