The former CEO of Englewood-based Genie Lens Technologies has been barred from the Colorado securities industry and ordered to pay more than $13 million to the Colorado Division of Securities.
A Denver District Court judge signed the order banning SethWeiss on Wednesday, after a ruling that Weiss had violated the .
“What we saw here was a deliberate betrayal of the trust placed in Mr. Weiss by the investors in his company,” said Colorado Securities Commissioner Gerald Rome in a statement.
Weiss, of Cherry Hills Village, co-founded Genie Lens in 2006. The company was formed to research, develop and manufacture optical lens technologies, according to Bloomberg Business.
notes promising a 10 percent interest rate. In 2010, he offered an extended two-year note and asked his investors to recruit new investors for a three-year note offering, according to the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies.
The court’s judgment said Weiss raised about $12 million for the two-year note offer, and $1.15 million for the three-year offer. Neither the two nor the three-year offerings were registered with the state.
Weiss also misrepresented the company’s finances to investors for more than three years beginning in 2009, according to DORA.
One quarterly report to investors in 2012 said the company had more than $1 million in its checking account. A few weeks later, a bank statement indicated there was $749.85 in the company account.
Two weeks after that, Weiss said in a webinar to investors that Genie Lens had “about $2 million … cash on hand.”
“Not only did Weiss flat out misrepresent to his investors a situation that would have greatly influenced their investment decisions, but furthermore used them to recruit other unknowing victims,” Rome said.
