Frank M. Cerisano Jr., a resident of Las Vegas, Nevada, conducted a manipulative stock trading scheme known as spoofing over a four-year period, generating approximately $1,115,672 in ill-gotten gains. Spoofing is a form of market manipulation in which a trader places orders they do not intend to execute in order to create a false impression of supply or demand, moving the stock price in a direction that benefits the trader’s real positions. Cerisano ran exactly this play, repeatedly and across multiple brokerage accounts. On August 10, 2026, the SEC filed settled charges against him in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, alleging manipulative trading that continued even after a broker-dealer warned him to stop and closed his account. The same order-book manipulation drove the SEC case against Mingran Wang of Greenroots, who spoofed 150 ADRs and kept written notes on how to hide it.
Without admitting the allegations, Cerisano consented to a final judgment, subject to court approval, permanently enjoining him from violating the antifraud provisions of Sections 17(a)(1) and (3) of the Securities Act and Sections 9(a)(2) and 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5. The judgment orders him to pay disgorgement of $1,115,672 plus prejudgment interest of $26,472.82 and a civil penalty of $334,701.60. For a period of five years, the judgment also prohibits Cerisano from opening, maintaining, or trading in any brokerage account in his own name, the names of immediate family members, the name of any company he controls, or the name of any third party, without first providing the relevant broker-dealer a copy of the complaint and final judgment.
Fake Orders in One Account, Real Trades on the Opposite Side in Another
The mechanics of Cerisano’s scheme followed the classic two-account spoofing structure. According to the complaint, Cerisano rapidly placed a series of non-bona fide spoof orders, orders he did not intend to execute, on one side of the market for a particular stock in one broker-dealer account. These orders artificially moved the stock price in a direction of his choosing by creating the appearance of genuine buying or selling interest that did not actually exist. Then, in a separate broker-dealer account, Cerisano placed and executed real orders on the opposite side of the market, taking advantage of the artificial price movement he had manufactured. Once his genuine orders were filled at the favorable prices his spoofing had created, he quickly canceled the spoof orders before they could be executed. The separation of the fake orders and the real trades into different accounts was designed to make the manipulation harder for any single broker to detect.
The pattern repeated over four years, generating more than $1.1 million in profits. Spoofing works only if the market treats the spoof orders as real expressions of supply or demand, which means the manipulator is exploiting the trust that other market participants place in the visible order book. Every trader who saw Cerisano’s fake orders and adjusted their own behavior in response was reacting to information that was deliberately false. The profits Cerisano extracted came at the expense of those market participants who traded against the artificial prices his spoof orders created.
A Broker Warned Him and Closed His Account, So He Moved to Other Brokers
The detail that elevates Cerisano’s conduct from a trading violation to a deliberate, knowing scheme is what happened after he was caught the first time. According to the complaint, a broker-dealer warned Cerisano to halt his apparently manipulative trading and ultimately closed his account because of it. That warning gave Cerisano explicit notice that his trading pattern had been identified as manipulative by a firm positioned to see it. Rather than stopping, Cerisano used multiple accounts at other broker-dealers to continue his spoofing scheme. The decision to move the manipulation to new brokers after being warned and shut down at one firm is the behavioral equivalent of the written notes in other recent spoofing cases: it demonstrates that Cerisano understood his conduct was improper and chose to continue it through concealment and account-hopping. The FINRA assistance the SEC acknowledged reflects the role of cross-market surveillance in eventually detecting the pattern across the multiple firms Cerisano used.
A Five-Year Account Restriction and a Penalty on Top of Full Disgorgement
The settlement terms reflect the seriousness of continuing after a warning. Beyond full disgorgement of the $1,115,672 in gains and prejudgment interest, Cerisano pays a civil penalty of $334,701.60, roughly 30 percent of his profits, an additional financial consequence layered on top of returning what he made. The five-year account restriction is the most operationally significant term: by requiring Cerisano to hand any broker a copy of the complaint and judgment before opening or trading in an account in his name, a family member’s name, a controlled company’s name, or a third party’s name, the judgment directly targets the exact evasion technique he used, opening accounts at other brokers to escape scrutiny. Any broker he approaches for five years will know, before the first trade, what he was found to have done. The Market Abuse Unit’s continued pursuit of spoofing cases reflects the SEC’s treatment of order-book manipulation as a core market-integrity violation.
Conclusion
Frank Cerisano spent four years placing fake orders to push stock prices where he wanted them, then trading the other side for real in a separate account, canceling the fakes once his genuine trades were filled. He made more than $1.1 million exploiting the market’s trust in the visible order book. When a broker warned him and closed his account, he did not stop. He opened accounts at other brokers and kept going. He settled by disgorging every dollar, paying a $334,701 penalty, and accepting a five-year requirement to hand any broker his fraud judgment before he can trade. The order book he manipulated was a shared source of truth for every other trader in those stocks. He turned it into a tool.
