LV man sentenced in penny stock scheme

Dan Kulin

Monday, Jan. 19, 2004 | 10:46 a.m.

One Las Vegas man was sent to prison and another received six months' home detention plus probation after pleading guilty to securities fraud and aiding and abetting for their roles in a "pump and dump" penny stock scheme that netted at least $70,000, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday.

The two men used press releases, cable TV infomercials and the Internet to distribute false information about the publicly traded company Greater Northwest Research & Development in February 2002, the department said. The company, which was licensed in Florida and conducted business in Nevada, was legally dissolved by Florida in August 1996 because it failed to file mandatory reports, the department said.

The false information led investors to purchase the stock, increasing its price from 23 to 25 cents per share during the days before the first press release was issued to 35 cents per share the day after the first press release, the department said. By Oct. 31, 2002, the company stock was trading at one-tenth of a cent per share.

Homer T. Langrill, 50, who controlled the company but whose name was not disclosed on corporate documents, was sentenced to 13 months in prison.

Thomas Becker, 52, the chief financial officer of company and a member of its board of directors, was sentenced to six months home detention with electronic monitoring.

In April the court ordered both men to pay fines to the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with this case.

Becker was ordered to pay $93,000 and Langrill was fined $50,000.

In addition to these legal troubles, Langrill has several prior convictions, the department said.

He has two convictions for wire fraud, for which he was sentenced to more than four years in prison; a conviction for passing fictitious checks, for which he was sentenced to 30 months in prison; and grand theft and fraud convictions in Guatemala, for which he served a year in a Guatemalan prison, the department said.