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SAExploration Holdings Charged With Perpetrating Alleged Accounting Fraud

Alleged Accounting Fraud
October 23, 2020

The Securities and Exchange Commission recently charged Houston-based seismic data company, SAExploration Holdings Inc. (SAE), and several former executives with perpetrating an alleged accounting fraud. Morgan & Morgan’s Business Trial Group and its securities attorneys are investigating this alleged accounting fraud involving SAE.

According to the SEC, SAE and its execs perpetrated a multi-year accounting fraud starting in 2015 that inflated SAE’s revenue by about $100 million. The SEC also alleges that the executives stole millions of dollars.

The SEC’s complaint asserts that four SAE executives – former CEO and Chairman Jeffrey Hastings, former CFO and General Counsel Brent Whiteley, former CEO and COO Brian Beatty, and former VP of Operations Michael Scott – caused SAE to enter into several seismic-data acquisition contracts totaling about $140 million with a purportedly unrelated Alaska company. Hastings and Whiteley actually controlled the Alaska company, the SEC says.

The SEC claims that the executives made it appear that the Alaskan company was paying SAE for seismic data: however, no bona fide payments were actually made. According to the SEC, about $100 million of the $140 million contract was improperly recorded as revenue. The SEC further alleges that the executives stole about $6 million, and one of the executives misappropriated an additional $4 million through a fraudulent invoice scheme.

SAE issued restated financial statements earlier this year and then declared bankruptcy in August.

The SEC’s complaint charges SAE and the four executives with violating various provisions of the Securities Act of 1933, as well as the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder. The SEC seeks a permanent injunction against SAE and permanent injunctions, civil penalties, disgorgement, and officer-and-director bars against the four executives.

If you have suffered losses relating to SAE’s alleged accounting fraud, the securities attorneys with Morgan & Morgan’s Business Trial Group may be able to help you. Please contact us at 888.744.0142 for a free, no-obligation consultation.

Our experienced securities attorneys help investors recover their losses on a contingency basis, which means that we are only paid if we successfully recover money for you. We have helped investors recover tens of millions of dollars of investment losses.

The Business Trial Group is part of the largest contingency law firm in the nation, with over 700 lawyers ready to fight for you.