SEC v. Richard Weed et al. (reverse merger schemes, 2018)

Judgment entered

Checked against the primary document on October 3, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, with sampled and disputed records read a second time. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

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In June 2018 a Massachusetts federal court entered final judgment against attorney Richard Weed in the SEC's CitySide Tickets case, with a $150,000 penalty and officer-director and penny-stock bars, after his criminal conviction and four-year prison sentence.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	SEC
Release number	LR-24175
Date filed	2018-06-26
Status	judgment
Asset class	equities
Criminal parallel	Yes: sentenced (Richard Weed (convicted May 2016))
Sentence	4 years
Bars imposed	officer-and-director bar, penny stock bar
Defendants	Richard Weed (individual)
Cited as charged or alleged	Exchange Act s.10(b) and Rule 10b-5 ; Securities Act s.17(a) ; Securities Act s.5 (statutes and rules cited in the document; not a finding that they were violated)
Techniques	Reverse merger schemes

What was ordered

Civil penalty: $150k
Disgorgement: —
Prejudgment interest: —
Total relief: $150k
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 announced on June 26, 2018 (litigation release 24175) that on June 22, 2018 the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts entered final judgment against Weed, formerly a partner in a Newport Beach law practice.

The SEC's November 2014 complaint alleged that Weed helped structure CitySide Tickets into a public company through reverse mergers, created backdated promissory notes and wrote false legal opinion letters that let two co-conspirators obtain millions of purportedly unrestricted shares, which they sold to investors after false promotion for about $3 million in proceeds. The court granted summary judgment on the Section 17(a) and Section 10(b) claims on May 10, 2018, barring him from relitigating the issues behind his criminal conviction, and the remaining Section 5 claim was then dismissed on the SEC's motion to conclude the case. He was convicted in May 2016, sentenced to four years in prison, and had his conviction upheld on appeal.

The judgment permanently enjoins future antifraud violations, imposes a $150,000 penalty and permanent officer-director and penny-stock bars. The record had shown the status as dismissed, which describes only the leftover Section 5 claim.

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.

Reverse merger schemes — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

2018-06-26 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.

Date filed	Agency	Record	Status
2016-08-23	SEC	SEC v. Richard Weed, Coleman Flaherty III and Thomas Brazil (pump and dump, 2016)	Judgment entered
2016-10-04	SEC	SEC v. Richard Weed, Coleman Flaherty III and Thomas Brazil (pump and dump, 2016)	Judgment entered
2018-06-26	SEC	SEC v. Richard Weed et al. (reverse merger schemes, 2018)(this record)	Judgment entered

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.

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

Action	Agency	Filed	Technique	Penalty	Status
SEC v. Brian Quinn and David Skriloff (Environmental Packaging, 2024)	SEC	2024-10-18	Reverse Merger Schemes , Undisclosed Control Blocks	$461k	judgment
SEC v. Meta Materials, Inc. ( and others (engineered short squeeze, 2024)	SEC	2024-06-25	Engineered Short Squeeze , Reverse Merger Schemes	$1m	settled
SEC v. Darren Ofsink and Michael T. Morris (CodeSmart, 2023)	SEC	2023-04-03	Reverse Merger Schemes , Undisclosed Control Blocks +1	—	judgment
SEC v. James T. Patten, Peter L. Coker Sr. and Peter L. Coker Jr. (reverse merger schemes, 2022)	SEC	2022-09-27	Reverse Merger Schemes , Price Manipulation	—	filed
SEC v. Charles Parkinson Lloyd (reverse merger schemes, 2021)	SEC	2021-09-15	Reverse Merger Schemes , Unregistered Distributions	$40k	settled
SEC v. Simon Piers Thurlow, Roger Fidler and others (reverse merger schemes, 2021)	SEC	2021-09-15	Reverse Merger Schemes	—	filed

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.