The\u00a0U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)\u00a0has filed a lawsuit against\u00a0Patrick Orlando, the former CEO of\u00a0Digital World Acquisition Corp, the company that facilitated the public listing of\u00a0Donald Trump\u2018s social media venture. The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, alleges Orlando of committing securities fraud.<\/p>\n
The SEC has accused Orlando of violating securities regulations by issuing misleading and false statements during his tenure at the special purpose acquisition company, reported Reuters on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit claims that Orlando deceived investors by not disclosing the company\u2019s plans to acquire\u00a0Trump Media & Technology Group Corp before DWAC\u2019s initial public offering.<\/p>\n
Orlando\u2019s company, Digital World, completed its merger with Trump Media & Technology Group in March. This company owns\u00a0Truth Social<\/strong>,<\/strong> a social media platform endorsed by Trump.<\/p>\n The SEC had previously charged DWAC with making \u201cmaterial misrepresentations\u201d to investors in July last year. The company agreed to a cease-and-desist order and an $18 million penalty if the merger was finalized.<\/p>\n This lawsuit against Orlando comes amid a series of events surrounding Trump\u2019s social media venture. In April, a board member of Trump Media was implicated in a hacking lawsuit, alleging a corporate coup aimed at removing Orlando, the original architect of the deal to take the social media company public.<\/p>\n Trump Media\u2019s public debut was largely due to emergency loans received in 2022, preventing a potential failure to merge with Digital World Acquisition Corporation. A securities investigation into the merger in 2021 led to the rapid depletion of Trump Media\u2019s cash reserves while awaiting its stock market debut.<\/p>\n Amid these legal and financial challenges, Trump\u2019s net worth surged, pushing him into the list of the world’s 500 wealthiest individual following the successful listing of Trump Media & Technology Group in March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The\u00a0U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)\u00a0has filed a lawsuit against\u00a0Patrick Orlando, the former CEO of\u00a0Digital World Acquisition Corp, the company that facilitated the public listing of\u00a0Donald Trump\u2018s social media venture. The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, alleges Orlando of committing securities fraud. The SEC has accused Orlando of violating securities regulations by issuing misleading and false […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":39442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173,249],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39443,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39437\/revisions\/39443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}