Joseph Geromini, 56, of Somers Point, New Jersey, the former Chief Operating Officer of Group K Diagnostics, a Philadelphia-based early-stage medical diagnostics company now known as HueDx, has received a final judgment from the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey closing a five-year SEC civil enforcement action against him. Between August 2018 and May 2019, Geromini stole more than $200,000 from Group K investors while simultaneously serving as the executive responsible for managing the company’s finances and soliciting new investment. He siphoned the money through unauthorized wire transfers to a bank account he controlled, ATM cash withdrawals, company checks made out to cash, and personal charges to the company’s debit and credit cards.
He also ran a consulting company called Xanitos Marketing, based at his personal residence, through which he funneled at least $150,000 more in unauthorized payments. The final judgment, entered May 8, 2026, orders disgorgement of $98,083, deemed satisfied by the criminal restitution order from his parallel criminal case, in which he pleaded guilty to wire fraud and was sentenced on June 10, 2025 to six months in prison, six months of home confinement, and three years of supervised release.
Geromini Controlled Group K’s Bank Accounts While Raising $2.25M from Investors and Stealing from Both
Group K Diagnostics was developing point-of-care diagnostic testing devices for various diseases and had raised approximately $2.25 million from investors between July and October 2018. Geromini began his relationship with the company as a consultant in mid-2018 through Xanitos Marketing, his personally-controlled consulting entity. He was paid $15,960 for that initial consulting work before Group K converted him to full-time employment as COO with a $200,000 base salary. His COO role gave him control over the company’s bank and debit card accounts and responsibility for both managing investor funds and raising new capital from investors. He exploited both functions simultaneously.
According to the SEC’s complaint, Geromini disseminated false and misleading offering documents and financial models to investors that failed to account for his ongoing theft of investor proceeds. He also made materially false and misleading statements to investors about the company’s cash burn rate and use of proceeds. In some instances, he told the company’s CEO that wire transfers he had authorized to his own accounts were legitimate bonus payments he was entitled to under his employment agreement, claiming he had secured contracts with third parties on behalf of the company that had triggered bonus provisions. No such contracts existed. Group K discovered the fraud through an internal investigation in 2019 and filed a civil suit against Geromini that year, predating the SEC and DOJ actions by two years.
Geromini Pleaded Guilty to Wire Fraud in December 2023 After Being Indicted on 12 Counts in 2021
The DOJ unsealed a federal grand jury indictment against Geromini on June 23, 2021, the same day the SEC filed its civil complaint. The criminal indictment charged him with 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of securities fraud, each potentially carrying years in federal prison. The case proceeded slowly. In December 2023, Geromini reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors that dropped the majority of the charges. He pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud, with a maximum sentence of 20 years. On June 10, 2025, U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III sentenced Geromini to six months in prison, six months of home confinement, and three years of supervised release, and ordered him to pay $98,083 in restitution. The FBI Atlantic City Resident Agency conducted the criminal investigation.
The SEC’s civil proceedings ran in parallel. In July 2021, Geromini consented to an injunction permanently prohibiting him from future violations of the antifraud provisions of the Securities Act and Exchange Act, and barring him from serving as an officer or director of any publicly traded company. The May 8, 2026 final judgment resolves the remaining financial components of the civil case, ordering the $98,083 disgorgement figure deemed satisfied by the criminal restitution order. No separate civil penalty was imposed. The final judgment closes the civil enforcement action that the SEC’s Philadelphia Regional Office initiated nearly five years ago.
Conclusion
Joseph Geromini was hired to help build Group K Diagnostics into a viable diagnostics company and given control of its finances to do it. He used that control to steal from the investors whose money he was supposed to deploy. The fraud ran for less than a year — August 2018 to May 2019 — but the legal consequences stretched across seven years of civil suits, federal indictments, plea negotiations, and sentencing. He served six months in prison. Group K Diagnostics, which rebranded as HueDx and continued operating after the fraud was discovered, pursued its own civil claims against him beginning in 2019. The SEC’s final judgment in May 2026 formally closes the regulatory chapter of a case that began when the company’s own internal investigation uncovered the theft.
