SEC v. Talman Harris and Victor Alfaya (boiler rooms, 2019)

Judgment entered

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In 2019, an SEC administrative law judge barred Victor Alfaya, in default, from the securities industry as a follow-on to a court injunction and criminal conviction for working in a boiler room that cold-called investors to buy stocks manipulated in a pump-and-dump. The court judgment recited ordered $136,540 disgorgement, $16,835 interest and a $500,000 penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$500k

Disgorgement

$137k

Prejudgment interest

$16.8k

Total relief

$653k

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 this matter on June 28, 2019 as initial decision 1381, consolidating follow-on proceedings against Talman Harris and Victor Alfaya; the decision itself imposes its bar on Mr Alfaya alone, who had defaulted. Mr Alfaya was convicted of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud (21 months, restitution of $3,629,516 jointly) and enjoined by default in SEC v. Cope, which ordered $136,540 in disgorgement, $16,835 in interest and a $500,000 penalty. The decision finds he worked at a boiler room, Small Cap Resource, from 2006 to 2014, cold-calling investors to recommend stocks whose prices the conspirators manipulated in a pump-and-dump, earning commissions. The record's money fields are from that court judgment, not imposed by this decision, and the penalty was previously omitted.

This library tags the matter as boiler rooms, pump and dump, based on the conduct the document describes. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's: agencies charge statutory provisions, not technique names.

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 2 techniques 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2019-06-28 Initial decision

Primary documents

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

• Initial decision (ID-1381)
• Finality 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.