Wall Street exec charged with manipulating stock prices

U.S. authorities arrested a New York financier on Thursday for engineering Chinese "reverse mergers" and then manipulating stock prices to earn tens of millions of dollars in illegal profits.

The head of New York Global Group, Benjamin Wey was arrested yesterday morning and made a brief court appearance in Manhattan in the afternoon.

In June, the 43-year-old paid $18 million to a former employee over sexual harassment and defamation claims.

According to CNBC, Wey allegedly used a Beijing-based subsidiary to help Chinese companies raise U.S. capital by arranging reverse mergers that gave the Chinese companies control of the U.S. shell businesses.

Authorities allege Wey was able to get the companies listed on the Nasdaq by fraudulently inflating the number of shareholders and hiding his ownership interest from the exchange. Those companies were SmartHeat, Deer Consumer Products and CleanTech Innovations, according to the indictment.

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