UPDATE 3.29.19: BioZone executive Brian Keller has also settled with the SEC. Judge Ramos approved the settlement today which bars Keller from participating in penny stock offerings and from being a director or officer of a penny stock company. Keller has a PHD and was the Chief Scientific Officer of Biozone.
Original Text
A member of the Team Honig securities fraud case has settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Elliot Maza, the former CEO for BioZone, agreed to be barred from participating in penny stocks. If a judge approves the settlement he will also be barred from being a director or officer of penny stocks. The judgement was signed on March 21st and the SEC didn’t list the amount of disgorgement or fines yet.
Elliot was put into the top job at Biozone as Honig’s puppet CEO after Honig, Michael Brauser, and Philip Frost invested in the company as a group. In typical fashion they loaded the company with heavy debt interest and never made capital improvements as promised and then took over management.The SEC says Team Honig ended up controlling 45% of the stock in Biozone without disclosing it.
According to the SEC, after a successful pump and dump in early 2013 Honig and Brauser hatched a plan to sell the only valuable patent asset of Biozone to another issuer they controlled. It’s called Company M in the amended complaint and is believed to be MuscelPharm ($MSLP). Honig had a lucrative consulting contract with company M and got it to make a $2 million investment into Biozone via a convertible note with 10% interest for a one year term. The deal also had warrants in it to purchase 10 million shares of Biozone for $.40 on a cashless basis (estimated value would be $2.5 million). After the investment BioZone then sold their assets to company M for only 1.2 million shares of Company M. The deal was very lucrative for Company M who got Biozone assets for pennies on the dollars and depleted any value for original shareholders and gave Team Honig millions of shares in Biozone for very little money. Then Honig and Brauser engineered a reverse merger of Biozone to CoCrystal (a private company) and used all the cheap shares they got in the company M deal to start a new pump and dump.
I first reported on the fraud in BioZone led by this team in 2016.It was the first time the investing public was alerted to the fact that the government was investing Honig and others for a ring of micrcocap fraud. Honig was furious about it and plotted revenge. Biozone was founded by Daniel Fisher, who after taking Honig’s investment and realizing the fraud scheme went to the FBI and the SEC to report the fraud. Additionally Fisher sued Team Honig for civil fraud in California after they pushed him out of his company. In that lawsuit he talks about being a government whistleblower. Biozone’s patent lawyer, Lee Pederson also blew the whistle with government officials on team Honig’s actions and has tried to hold them accountable in the courts with his own lawsuits. The SEC knew about the Team Honig scheme in Biozone for at least 4 years before they brought a case.
Honig’s deal lawyer, Harvey Kesner, who was pushed out of his law firm as a named partner last year, sued Daniel Fisher on behalf of Team Honig, with accusation of speaking to journalists after Fisher had settled his case with the bad actors for $2 million. Fisher had signed a ‘don’t disparage us’ agreement but Team Honig never delivered on the settlement payout. Kesner used his suit against Fisher to try and force a judge to make Fisher turn over any emails to journalist. I originally reported on this move of intimidation by Team Honig in 2016 and the SEC confirmed this happen in the new amended complaint field this month. A California judge ended up fining Fisher $1,000 for speaking out on what happen and ordered Fisher not to talk to the public because of his settlement agreement.
After the judge’s decision attorney Harvey Kesner deemed this should mean I should stop reporting on the alleged fraud at Biozone also but I never agreed with that line of thinking. Kesner wrote me saying Fisher was forced to withdraw his SEC whistleblower claim. But I knew Fisher had testified for the SEC and that testimony could be used to build a case. So I refused to report Honig wasn’t under SEC investigation but agreed to mention the California judges decision to protect other sources Team Honig was trying to get the court to force me to name. And when the SEC brought their case against Team Honig this September I was proven right.
Biozone turned into CoCrystal Pharma and the company eventually admitted in SEC filings it was under SEC investigation.
Maza was represented by a New York attorney named Nelson Barker. The SEC settlement says Maza doesn’t have to admit guilt but then adds in paragraph 11, which says he can’t deny any of the accusation in the SEC amended complaint. Maza is a small player in this gang of bad actors so unless the SEC gets him to turn evidence against Honig this isn’t much of a significant win for the regulator.
Elliot Maza SEC Judgment 3…. by on Scribd
So John Lemak a frequent co investor of “to tall” Barry is suing him for losses from an investment in a company named Mabvax. It’s the pot suing the kettle. Fraudsters suing each other.