Brian Keasberry, of Nevada, was one of three defendants in a fraudulent microcap scheme that the SEC first charged in January 2024, centered on the accumulation, manipulation, and sale of the stock of County Line Energy Inc. (CYLC), a small California-based public company, to retail investors. His two co-defendants were Jonathan Farber of New York and Aarif Jamani of British Columbia, Canada. Farber and Jamani gained control of County Line and most of its publicly available stock, placed handpicked figureheads in the company’s management, and created the appearance of active trading, while Keasberry operated companies used to fund the promotional campaign. According to the SEC, from September 2017 to at least October 2021, Keasberry helped his two co-defendants gain control of the company and of a large portion of the company’s stock that was available for trading in public markets. Keasberry operated companies, including Blue Diamond Equities Inc. and Black Ridge Holdings Inc., that were used to pay for an online promotional campaign touting the stock’s great potential, while concealing from the investors who saw those promotions the three facts that would have mattered most: that the defendants had paid for the campaign, that they controlled the company, and that they were actively selling the majority of the freely tradable stock into the very demand the promotions were designed to create. The three defendants shared approximately $5 million in profits from the scheme. On August 20, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered a final consent judgment against Keasberry.
Keasberry consented to a final judgment, subject to court approval, that enjoins him from violating Sections 5(a), 5(c), and 17(a) of the Securities Act and Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5, orders him to pay disgorgement of $37,500, prejudgment interest of $12,864, and a civil penalty of $37,500, and imposes both a penny stock bar and an officer-and-director bar against him. The case, SEC v. Jonathan Farber et al., continues as to Farber and Jamani. The SEC’s litigation is being handled by its Boston Regional Office.
Control of the Company and the Float, Hidden From the Investors Being Sold To
The scheme followed the structure of a classic pump-and-dump, the form of microcap fraud that depends on concealment of control. The first step was accumulation: Keasberry helped his co-defendants gain control both of the company itself and of a large amount of the company’s freely tradable stock, the portion of shares available for buying and selling in the public market, often called the float. Controlling the float is what makes a pump-and-dump possible, because it lets the operators hold the supply of shares while they manufacture demand. The second step was the pump: an online promotional campaign that touted the stock’s great potential to retail investors. The campaign was paid for by companies Keasberry operated, but the promotions concealed that the defendants had funded them, controlled the issuer, and were preparing to sell.
The concealment is the fraud. A retail investor who receives a promotion touting a stock’s potential makes a very different decision if they know that the people behind the promotion secretly control the company and are about to dump their own shares. That disclosure would reveal the promotion as a setup rather than a genuine tip. By hiding their control and their paid sponsorship, the defendants presented manufactured demand as organic market interest, inducing retail investors to buy at inflated prices while the defendants sold the majority of the freely tradable stock into that demand. The third step, the dump, is where the operators convert the retail buying they created into cash for themselves.
A Settled Judgment, a Penny Stock Bar, and Ongoing Litigation Against the Others
Keasberry’s settlement resolves the SEC’s claims against him individually while the case continues against his co-defendants Jonathan Farber and Aarif Jamani. The financial terms are modest in absolute size, with disgorgement of $37,500, matching prejudgment interest and penalty amounts, reflecting Keasberry’s particular share of the scheme’s proceeds rather than the full scope of the fraud. The more consequential sanctions are the bars: the penny stock bar prohibits Keasberry from participating in future penny stock offerings, and the officer-and-director bar prevents him from serving in leadership of a public company. Together they target the specific conduct at issue, the manipulation of a small public company’s stock, and remove Keasberry from the positions that would allow him to repeat it. The microcap fraud pattern that Keasberry participated in, hidden control paired with paid promotion and coordinated selling, is among the most common forms of market manipulation the SEC pursues, precisely because retail investors have no way to see the concealed control behind a promotional campaign.
Conclusion
Brian Keasberry helped two co-defendants take control of a small public company and most of its tradable stock, then paid for online promotions hyping the stock’s potential while hiding that he was behind them, that he controlled the company, and that he was selling his shares into the demand the promotions created. Retail investors bought what looked like organic enthusiasm. It was a coordinated setup. Keasberry settled in August 2026 with disgorgement, interest, a penalty, and bars from penny stocks and from serving as a public company officer or director. The case against his co-defendants continues. The investors who bought on the strength of the promotion were buying from the people who wrote it.
