The Maine Department of Professional and Financial Regulation has issued a cease and desist order to a California company to stop selling unregistered securities in Maine.

Maine Securities Administrator Judith M. Shaw called for restitution of $20,000 and civil penalties totaling $130,000 against InteliCloud Holdings Inc., its CEO Jeffrey Friederichs, Tech Financial Group and TFG employees Justin E. Ackerman, Chris Johnson and Jason Fox.

The order concludes that InteliCloud and TFG offered shares of InteliCloud for sale in Maine without the securities being properly registered, according to a news release from Shaw’s office. Additionally, TFG and its employees are not licensed to sell securities in the state.

By soliciting investors in Maine, TFG employees committed fraud by using false and misleading information to induce residents to invest in InteliCloud, said Shaw.

InteliCloud Holdings is a data technology company based in Newport Beach, California.

According to Shaw, InteliCloud Holdings, through an unlicensed broker-dealer and unlicensed agents, solicited Maine residents to invest. Making promises of guaranteed returns within 90 days, the agents assured the consumer that Apple or Dell would be bidding to buy out InteliCloud and within 90 days the share price would be at least five times its current trading price.

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Additionally, the agents encouraged a Winthrop resident to falsify information about her net worth so she could qualify as an “accredited” investor since the offer was limited to high net worth individuals. When the resident expressed concern about lying, the TFG employees assured her that no one would contact her to try to verify the information, said the release. The Winthrop resident did not invest.

“Maine investors should be skeptical about the kind of promises made by InteliCloud and its agents,” Shaw said. “Claims that a little-known or unknown business will soon be bought by a prominent company such as Apple, that share prices are going to jump more than 500 percent, and that there are no other opportunities like this one should be met with some skepticism and fully verified before money is invested.”

Another resident invested $20,000 with InteliCloud previously. The cease and desist order requires InteliCloud to repay the full $20,000 to the investor.

A copy of the cease and desist order can be found online at www.investors.maine.gov under “Enforcement Actions.”


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