SAExploration Accused of Accounting Fraud

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil costs against SAExploration Holdings, a publicly traded seismic data acquisition corporation centered in Houston, about an alleged multi-yr accounting fraud that falsely inflated the company’s income and concealed the theft of tens of millions of dollars.

In a complaint filed in the Southern District of New York, the SEC explained senior executives engaged in an “elaborate, 4-yr-prolonged fraud.” It names former main executive officer and chairman Jeffrey Hastings, former main fiscal officer and standard counsel Brent Whiteley, former CEO and main working officer Brian Beatty, and former vice president of operations Michael Scott as defendants. It also names the spouses of Hastings and Whiteley, Lori Hastings and Thomas O’Neill, as relief defendants.

The executives allegedly entered into a sequence of seismic data acquisition contracts totaling somewhere around $a hundred and forty million with a purportedly unrelated Alaska-centered corporation that was in simple fact managed by Hastings and Whiteley. The defendants allegedly misappropriated just about $6 million from SAE and utilised the funds for a sequence of spherical-trip transactions then stole somewhere around $6 million for them selves. Whiteley allegedly misappropriated an more $4 million through a different fictitious bill plan.

The U.S. Attorney’s Business office for the Southern District of New York announced prison costs against Hastings in a parallel motion.

Hastings was arrested previous thirty day period in Anchorage, Alaska. A spokesperson for the corporation explained he was put on administrative leave much more than a yr back and then resigned.

“As alleged in our complaint, SAE’s executives made a multi-faceted fraud that enriched executives at the price of buyers,” Jennifer Leete, an associate director in the division of enforcement, explained in a assertion. “We will vigorously pursue wrongdoing by people and corporations who interact in fraud and mislead buyers.”

The SEC is trying to find a lasting injunction against SAE and executives, civil penalties, disgorgement and place of work-and-director bars against the executives.

accounting fraudSAExploration Holdings, The Securities and Exchange Commission