Denver Jury Convicts Attorney of Securities Fraud

DENVER – A Denver jury returned guilty verdicts against attorney Guy M. Jean-Pierre after a 12-day trial, announced United States Attorney Jason R. Dunn, Denver FBI Special Agent in Charge Dean Phillips, United States Postal Inspection Service Inspector in Charge Bill Hedrick, and IRS CI Special Agent in Charge Steven Osborne.  Defendant Jean-Pierre was charged with securities fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy.  A Denver Jury returned guilty verdicts on all but one of twenty-nine charged counts on January 30, 2019.  

Evidence presented at trial demonstrated that beginning in late 2010, defendant Jean-Pierre’s co-conspirators endeavored to establish a business that would obtain and retrofit steel shipping containers so that they could be used to grow plants hydroponically. With defendant Jean-Pierre’s help, the co-conspirators acquired a dormant publicly traded penny stock company and changed its name to FusionPharm as part of plans to develop and capitalize the business. The main business plan was to resell these repurposed shipping containers, which FusionPharm called “pharm pods,” to hydroponic growers. The pharm pods were, at times, marketed as effective vehicles to get fresh produce, such as lettuce, quickly and efficiently to restaurants and local groceries in urban markets.  Over time, however, the pharm pods were marketed to marijuana or cannabis growers in Colorado and other states.

An object of the conspiracy was to conceal the co-conspirators’ role in the management and operation of FusionPharm, due to one of the co-conspirators’ prior securities felony conviction.  Defendant Jean-Pierre prepared and transmitted documents that allowed FusionPharm to sell stock in violation of securities laws, falsely portrayed deposits of proceeds from the sale of FusionPharm common stock as convertible debt obligations, falsely portrayed other entities as non-affiliates of FusionPharm, concealed the role of other co-conspirators in the FusionPharm business, falsely represented that disclosure documents and financial statements constituted adequate current information about FusionPharm, and failed to disclose defendant Jean-Pierre’s role in drafting documents for another attorney to sign and represented as the other attorney’s own work product. 

Sentencing is scheduled for July 10, 2019, at 9:30AM before United States District Court Judge William J. Martinez.

This case was investigated by the Denver Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Postal Inspection Service, and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Denver Field Office.  Assistant United States Attorneys Jeremy Sibert and Robert Brown handled the prosecution. 

CASE NUMBER:           17-cr-0008-WJM

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