An Ontario man has pleaded guilty to one criminal count of securities fraud connected to a massive Vancouver-orchestrated international scheme through U.S. penny stock firms, between 2011 and 2019.

Julius Csurgo pleaded guilty on May 27 in a federal court of the Southern District of New York and agreed to forfeit more than US$9.6 million for his role in a pump-and-dump scheme alleged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in April 2022.

Csurgo was arrested in November 2025 and awaits sentencing this September.

Investigators had stated Csurgo utilized the services of West Vancouver resident Fred Sharp, a former lawyer turned offshore facilitator with Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

According to the indictment, Csurgo used his company Antevorta Capital Partners Ltd. to purchase shares of penny stock companies via Swiss trading platforms utilized by Sharp and his associates the commission dubbed the “Sharp Group.”

Via the Sharp Group, Csurgo and his associates used Sharp’s encrypted communications network and signed stock purchase agreements for nominees who Sharp allegedly used to conceal the true ownership of those shares. Csurgo then used Antevorta to pay for promotions of the companies to generate interest and thus raise trading value of the stock, before selling the shares to retail investors on the over-the-counter market (not formal exchanges but via brokerages).

“To facilitate his acquisition of Zenosense stock, Csurgo signed a series of fabricated stock purchase agreements purporting to show that Antevorta had obtained its shares in bona fide, arm’s-length transactions.

“In reality, he had obtained them from other members of the group …as part of their fraudulent scheme to defraud investors by promoting and then selling” the shares, the commission and U.S. Attorney General stated in its indictment.

The case against Csurgo is one of several the commission and U.S. Attorney General launched in 2021 and 2022 via both civil and criminal complaints against more than a dozen Canadians, mostly from British Columbia. Combined, the commission flagged more than $1 billion worth of illicit shares traded through multiple pump-and-dump schemes. The charge against Csurgo involved a $35-million pump-and-dump scheme.

After U.S. officials flagged some of these questionable transactions — including those linked to Antevorta — to Canadian regulators, a brokerage co-headquartered in Vancouver and Toronto was penalized in 2025.

The Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) announced July 2, 2025 it reached an administrative settlement agreement with Toronto-based Echelon Wealth Partners Inc. The company now operates as Ventum Financial Corp. following a 2024 merger between Echelon and Vancouver-based PI Financial Corp.

The settlement found Echelon, prior to its merger with PI Financial, failed its gatekeeper duties, including to follow anti-money laundering procedures when, upon facilitating nearly $106 million in trades of over-the-counter (OTC) U.S. securities on behalf of four foreign broker-dealers, between 2018 and 2022.

Among the shares sold by Echelon were those belonging to Antevorta Capital Partners Ltd. on behalf of Valor Capital Ltd.

After earning $4.9 million in commissions on all the trades, Ventum agreed to disgorge $1.7 million of those profits, pay a $500,000 fine and pay $100,000 in costs to CIRO, Canada’s securities and investment services regulator.

Sharp has been found liable for civil fraud in the U.S. via a default judgment and owes the SEC US$52.9 million for being the alleged “mastermind” of offshore transactions for multiple groups of alleged fraudsters. Criminal fraud charges against Sharp remain unproven in court.

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