SEC v. Ryan Gilbertson, et al. (undisclosed control blocks, 2018)

Judgment entered

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In July 2018 the SEC announced that Ryan Gilbertson and Douglas Hoskins had been convicted in Minnesota of wire fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy over the Dakota Plains Holdings scheme the SEC had sued on. Gilbertson was convicted on 21 counts and Hoskins on six; sentencing was set for November 2018.

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 on July 12, 2018 (litigation release 24198) that on June 26, 2018 a federal jury in Minnesota convicted Gilbertson on 21 counts of wire fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and Hoskins on six counts, on conduct the SEC had alleged in its October 31, 2016 civil complaint. Sentencing was scheduled for November 13 and 15, 2018.

The SEC alleged that Gilbertson and a co-founder installed their fathers as figurehead executives of Dakota Plains to secretly control it, arranged for the company to borrow from them on terms paying bonuses tied to the stock price over its first 20 trading days after a reverse merger, and had friends choreograph trades that lifted the price from 30 cents to over $12, triggering $32,851,800 in bonuses. The civil claims were still pending at the date of the release.

This library tags the matter as undisclosed control blocks; the reverse merger is background to the bonus structure. The record previously carried the reverse-merger tag and an unknown status.

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. 2018-07-12 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 2 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.