Company and six directors orchestrated $46-million pump-and-dump stock scheme, BCSC alleges

The B.C. Securities Commission is accusing a Vancouver company and six people connected to it of carrying out a pump-and-dump scheme that artificially inflated the value of three stocks.

Core Capital Partners Inc. brands itself as a provider of merchant banking services for emerging companies, claiming to have raised, invested and co-invested more than $540 million since 2005, said the Commission in a notice of hearing released Monday.

The Commission alleges that Core Capital and the six people associated with it concealed the fact they controlled the stocks, co-ordinated the distribution of misleading news releases and publication of misleading promotional campaigns, and sold their stocks during the promotional periods for net proceeds of about $46 million.

According to the allegations, which have not been proven in court, the scheme was carried out from 2017 to 2019 with:

• Reliq Health Technologies Inc., formerly known as Moseda Technologies Inc., a health-care technology company, whose shares trade on the TSX Venture Exchange.