Accountant Cleared in Stock Scheme

Paper: Houston Chronicle
Date: Thu 01/22/2009
Section: B
Page: 2
Edition: 3 STAR R.O.

Accountant Cleared in Stock Scheme
By Brian Rogers
Staff

A Houston accountant accused in a stock scheme that federal investigators say bilked investors of millions has been cleared of any wrongdoing, his attorney said Wednesday.

Everett Bassie won a dismissal after a two-day trial in October against the Securities Exchange Commission in U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton's court in New York, Bassie's attorney, Dwight Jefferson, said.

He said the CPA was "collateral damage" in a scheme orchestrated by a former Galveston County man still running from charges - Harris Dempsey "Butch" Ballow.

"They got a bad guy in there and a lot of innocent people were damaged," Jefferson said.

"We believed from the beginning that there wasn't any evidence that (Bassie) was any kind of principal in any kind of ‘pump and dump.'?"

Richard Primoff, an SEC attorney in New York City, said the decision didn't indicate that there wasn't any fraud, just that Bassie wasn't involved.

"We strongly disagreed," Primoff said. "But the judge concluded that (Bassie) wasn't part of fraudulent scheme."

The SEC alleged that Ballow and accomplices artificially pumped up the stock price, then profited when they dumped their own inflated shares.

The move left remaining investors holding virtually worthless shares.

The illegal activities included sending false information to promote Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based AIMSI Technologies stock sales by fax and e-mail, and issuing false news releases, SEC investigators said last year.

Now exonerated, Bassie said the accusations were "a three-year nightmare."

"It's really hurt my business," Bassie said. "And the SEC won't publish anything about it because they lost. When they win, there's something on their Web site the next day."

Bassie said he let Ballow and others talk him into joining their board of directors, but wasn't part of the faxes or any other marketing.

Ballow disappeared in December 2004, days before he was to be sentenced in a Houston federal court on one count of money laundering.

He pleaded guilty the year before to fraud in a stock scam that cost brokerages more than $10 million and resulted in uncalculated losses nationally to individual investors.