The Kentucky Sentate gavel rests on the wooden sound block in the Kentucky Senate chambers before the first day of Concurrence began at the state Capitol in Frankfort, Ky. March 13, 2025.
San Diego, California – Securities attorney Andrew Coldicutt was sentenced Thursday to 85 months in federal prison for orchestrating two fraudulent pump-and-dump stock schemes — one of which involved a fake backyard fruit harvesting company. The case, prosecuted in U.S. District Court in San Diego, highlights how Coldicutt used his legal expertise not to protect investors, but to manipulate financial markets for personal gain.
U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta handed down the sentence following Coldicutt’s conviction in March on all 17 counts, including securities fraud, false registration statements, and wire fraud. In addition to prison time, Coldicutt was ordered to pay a $100,000 fine and forfeit $42,970.
From 2017 through 2019, Coldicutt and co-conspirators worked to inflate the value of a non-existent company by filing fraudulent paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company — a supposed backyard fruit harvesting startup — existed only on paper. Its business model, corporate leadership, and financials were fiction, crafted by Coldicutt himself as part of an effort to push the company through a public offering and ultimately dump inflated shares onto unsuspecting investors.
In a twist worthy of a crime novel, Coldicutt’s collaborators were not fellow fraudsters but undercover FBI agents and confidential sources gathering evidence. Because of that, no real investors lost money. Still, the plan was designed with profit in mind. Prosecutors said the first scheme was expected to net approximately $4.85 million, with Coldicutt slated to pocket around $240,000.
A second scheme in 2019 followed a similar arc. When a corporate client needed to raise funds quickly, Coldicutt again proposed a pump-and-dump scheme. He drafted a false attorney opinion letter to facilitate the transfer of stock. This time, a broker-dealer rejected the transfer, short-circuiting the plan before it reached the market.
Pump-and-dump schemes rely on inflating the value of penny stocks through fake demand, marketing hype, or fraudulent trading activity. Once the stock price rises, the perpetrators cash out, leaving investors with worthless shares. Though no retail investors were harmed in this case, federal prosecutors emphasized the intent was clear — and the damage could have been significant.
“Securities attorneys and other professionals in the industry hold a position of extraordinary trust,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Andrew R. Haden. “When that trust is violated, it corrodes confidence in the market itself.”
Coldicutt’s conviction underscores a growing focus by federal law enforcement on white-collar crime, especially cases where professionals use legitimate credentials to facilitate fraud. FBI Special Agent in Charge Mark Dargis noted that such cases don’t just threaten investors — they undermine trust in financial systems meant to protect the public.
Coldicutt will be formally remanded to serve his sentence immediately. Despite the elaborate planning behind both schemes, the result was clear: in a courtroom, the paper trail outweighed the promise of easy money.
