The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has revoked the corporate registration of Eco Hatchery and Trading Corp., a company which the corporate regulator tagged as a Ponzi investment scammer.
The SEC Enforcement and Investor Protection Department (EIPD) issued the order on April 23, after finding that Eco Hatchery has been offering and soliciting investments without the necessary secondary license from the SEC. In a statement, the SEC said Eco Hatchery’s activities likewise constituted “serious misrepresentation” to the detriment of the public. This was cited as a ground for the revocation of the certificate of registration.
According to the EIPD, Eco Hatchery’s main strategy was to earn from the recruitment of new members or investors, presented in the guise of running a prawn, shrimp, crab and fish farm.
“Necessarily, this scheme is unsustainable, as it must rely on a continuous inflow of new investors in order to make payouts to earlier investors,” the SEC order said.
The order noted that this scheme was “in the nature of Ponzi scheme” where the profits are taken from incoming investors or additional pay-ins of existing members-investors considering that it does not have any underlying legitimate business from where it could source its promised return on investments to its investors. The SEC had warned the public against investing in Eco Hatchery as early as Feb. 3, 2020, through an advisory.
Eco Hatchery entices the public to invest with the promise of earning 15 percent every 15 days in a span of four months.