A Chapel Hill man was among three who were charged with orchestrating a large-scale market manipulation scheme.

Peter L. Coker Sr., age 80, as well as his son Peter Jr., 53, and James Patten, 63, of Winston-Salem are each facing 12 charges in an indictment from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Coker Sr. and Patten were both arrested Monday, while Coker Jr. is still at large.

“From 2014 through September 2022, Patten, Coker Sr., and Coker Jr. conspired to enrich themselves through a scheme to manipulate securities prices via a pattern of coordinated trading,” a release from the Justice Department said, “which injected inaccurate information into the marketplace, creating false impressions of supply and demand for these securities.”

The trio’s scheme involved taking control of Hometown International, a company whose operations consisted of a single deli in southern New Jersey, and E-Waste Corp., a shell company with “no substantive operations,” according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The complaint from the SEC charges the trio with conducting phony trades of stock to inflate the value of the two companies.

The Justice Department’s release also states the men transferred shares to family members, friends and associates as part of the scheme, then executed a number of trades using log-in information acquired from that group of associates. The scheme’s ultimate impact, according to the Justice Department, raised Hometown International’s stock by approximately 939 percent and E-Waste’s by approximately 19,900 percent.

Coker Sr.’s charge of securities fraud carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $5 million fine. To read more about the case, click here.

Coker Sr., an alumnus of NC State, has had previous run-ins with the law. In 1992 in his hometown of Allentown, PA, Coker allegedly exposed himself to three young girls and was charged with prostitution, corruption of minors and open lewdness. He has been a registered voter in Chatham County since 2000.

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