The Securities and Exchange Commission claims that executives of a defunct electronic game card company based in Irvine repeatedly lied to investors about the company’s operations and financial condition.
The SEC alleges that three executives of Irvine’s Electronic Game Card Inc. orchestrated a scheme that involved overstating the company’s sales, bank holdings and financial outlook.
The company purported to sell credit card-size electronic games, and for a time saw its market value rise as high as $150 million, according to an SEC complaint filed on Thursday.
Much of the company’s financial claims were phony, according to the SEC complaint.
Company officials “played a game of make-believe with a publicly-traded microcap company,” SEC officials said in a statement on Thursday.
Electronic Game Card – which moved its headquarters from Nevada to Irvine in 2009 – filed for bankruptcy in 2010; its stock is now worthless.
SEC charges were filed against Chief Executive Lee Cole and his replacement Kevin Donovan, Chief Financial Officer Linden Boyne, and the company’s outside auditor, Timothy Quintanilla.
Charges were filed in filed in federal court in Manhattan.
