This Dad and Son Duo Trick Wall Street Out of $100 Million with Stock Scam---SEC Enters The Chat...

In what might be the most New Jersey thing to ever happen, a father-son duo—Peter Coker Sr. and Peter Coker Jr.—just pleaded guilty to engineering a chef’s kiss of a stock manipulation scheme that sent a sleepy deli in Paulsboro, NJ, to a market cap of $100 million. Translation: That’s six zeros for a business that pulled in less annual revenue than your friggin’ local Girl Scout troop’s cookie sales.

(Source: Giphy) 

In short, the deli’s parent company, Hometown International, and another shell company, E-Waste Corp., became the unlikely stars of this Wall Street fever dream. The scheme? Straight out of the Wolf of Wall Street playbook. The Cokers and their co-conspirator, James Patten—who, fun fact, has a rap sheet that includes mail fraud (some people collect stamps; this guy collects felonies)—used classic pump-and-dump tactics to *checks notes* get-rich-quick. Think wash trading, nominee accounts, and the ol’ “fake it till you make it” approach to demand. 

(Source: CNBC) 

Hometown’s stock skyrocketed 939%, while E-Waste’s shares went full moonshot—up nearly 20,000%. For context, that’s like turning a Blockbuster stock into Apple overnight. The goal for this ungodly father/son duo was to position these companies as a “reverse-merger” bait for private firms. Which just means they wanted to sell the empty husks for big bucks while leaving everyone else holding the bag LOL. 

But, but, but… like every great sitcom dad, the Cokers' plan unraveled. By 2022, federal prosecutors and the SEC were all over them like seagulls on a boardwalk French fry. Charges included securities fraud, wire fraud, market manipulation, and conspiracy. Ooof. 

(Source: Investment Executive) 

Fast forward to last week: the Cokers entered guilty pleas. Dad (82 years young) is looking at up to 2 years in prison (all while Mrs. Coker is definitely still firing off passive-aggressive texts like “Let me guess, working late again?”), meanwhile Junior (56), who was extradited from Thailand after an international game of hide-and-seek, faces 30 to 50 months. Sentencing is set for Spring 2025—just enough time for Junior to finish drafting his memoir, From Thai Prison to E-Waste Visionary.

The real WTF moment is that this story all went down during the height of the meme stock craze, which makes the $100M deli feel like a deleted subplot from The Big Short. And regardless of the felony, or what you may think about these scumbags—I can’t help but respect the friggin’ audacity, if not the execution. It takes some big kahuna’s to play stupid games with the SEC, when in fact, you know it’s only for a stupid prize. 

(Source: Giphy) 

So in the end, what’s the lesson here? Well like I just said: When you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. It’s that simple. No amount of “get rich quick” is worth prison time—or you know, ruining your whole legacy over. Meaning, even though the market’s took a massive “L” this week… hold your head high and don’t be looking to cut corners. 

In the meantime, while this is definitely an entertaining/mind numbing story, take this as a lesson to not be stupid LOL. As always, stay safe, stay frosty, and have one helluva Saturday, friends! Until next time…

P.S. At the end of the day, we all know what drives the markets right? Greed and fear. That’s it. When big money starts piling into a certain place, stocks go up. When big money starts bleeding out of a certain place, stocks go down. It’s that simple. Which is why, with the Stocks.News insider tool, we are able to see this exact phenomenon play time and time again. So with that said, why not see how your portfolio is holding up with insiders BEFORE the next big move takes place (up or down)? Click here to snag a borderline outrageously cheap membership to Stocks.News premium and start leveraging our proprietary Insider Tool today! 

Stocks.News holds positions in Apple as mentioned in the article.