Greenwashing & Corporate Fraud @ Enerkon Solar International

A Solar Company Built Entirely on Lies

Enerkon Solar International traded on OTC markets under the ticker “ENKS.” It had one employee: Benjamin Ballout, its President, CEO, and CFO simultaneously, a man who held more than 50% of the company’s outstanding shares and had every reason to make that stock worth something — even if he had to lie to do it.

Enerkon had no revenue. Enerkon had no employees other than Ballout. Enerkon’s bank account held less than $100 at all relevant times. What it did have was a motivated fraudster with sole authority over every press release, every financial disclosure, and every public statement the company ever made.

Between February 2018 and June 2021, Ballout authored a campaign of fabrications designed to give Enerkon the appearance of a legitimate, growing green-energy business. He targeted retail investors on OTC penny-stock markets — the most vulnerable corner of American finance, where small investors with limited resources bet on companies they believe in.

The Stock Was the Product. The Lies Were the Marketing.

Ballout’s stated goal was to pump Enerkon’s stock price above $4.00 per share so it could qualify for listing on the Nasdaq national exchange. He said so explicitly in multiple press releases. A May 20, 2021 press release cited Enerkon’s “UP List Plans to the NASDAQ market which maintains a minimum share entry price of $4.00 to qualify for listing on the national exchange.”

The SEC’s complaint makes clear: Ballout never worked to improve the underlying business. There was no solar project, no COVID-19 test distribution deal, no power plant under construction. Every announcement Enerkon made was engineered to move the stock price upward so Ballout and his associates could cash out at the expense of real people who believed them.

Ballout’s co-conspirators, Mohamed Zayed — a citizen and resident of Egypt who had previously been indicted for wire fraud and money laundering in 1997 and sued by the SEC for securities fraud in 1998 — and William Fielding, a Florida resident who served as Enerkon’s registered agent, provided the infrastructure and the fake paperwork the scheme needed to function.

Three Lies, One Playbook: How They Did It

Lie #1: The COVID-19 Test Distribution Deal That Didn’t Exist

On March 9, 2021, Ballout issued a press release claiming Enerkon had acquired a 40% stake in a UK company that owned distribution rights to a rapid COVID-19 test device. This was false. The UK company held only a sales-representative agreement — and that agreement explicitly did not grant distribution rights. A subsequent Memorandum of Understanding confirmed the same thing in writing.

The Distributor’s own executives caught Ballout immediately. On March 17, 2021 — eight days after the press release — a Distributor executive emailed Ballout directly, copying Zayed, stating the press release was “completely false” and demanding Enerkon remove all mentions of their company. Ballout received this email. Zayed received this email. Neither man disclosed it to investors. Instead, they doubled down.

Eight weeks later, Ballout issued a second press release on May 11, 2021, citing a $28 million ($28 million — roughly what it costs to build and staff 3 full elementary schools) per-month order for the same COVID-19 tests — touting an annual value of $320 million ($320 million — enough to pay the annual salary of 4,200 registered nurses). That order was completely fabricated.

Lie #2: The Fake $28 Million Order From a Fake NGO

Zayed fabricated a purchase order by creating a website for a fictitious non-governmental organization purportedly operating in the Dominican Republic. Domain registration records show the NGO’s website listed Zayed and Fielding as contacts, with Fielding’s credit card as the payment method. Zayed then sent an email from the NGO’s email account — which he controlled — to himself, attaching the fake letter of intent and purchase order.

Zayed then forwarded the fake LOI to the actual Distributor as if it were a real order. The Distributor never accepted it. The order could never have generated a single dollar of revenue — both because it was fabricated and because the Distributor rejected it. Ballout published the $28 million figure in a press release anyway.

Lie #3: The Solar Power Plant on Residential Land

On May 3, 2021, Ballout published a press release announcing Enerkon had signed an agreement to purchase 122 acres in Pennsylvania to build a 20 megawatt solar and hydrogen power plant. The land was zoned residential, not commercial. The township’s zoning officer confirmed it received zero correspondence, re-zoning applications, or planning documents from Enerkon. The landowner confirmed Enerkon never paid a single dollar.

The press release included a dramatic photo of an industrial facility captioned to suggest it was Enerkon’s future plant. The image was actually a photograph of one of the world’s largest hydrogen-producing facilities — located in Japan. Ballout presented a picture of a Japanese megafacility to American retail investors as evidence of his company’s growth plans. He never disclosed the deception.

The Backdated Loan: Forging a Paper Trail to Steal $407,000

Simultaneously with the press release campaign, the three defendants executed a separate scheme to convert a fake loan document into real Enerkon shares and then sell those shares to an unsuspecting third-party investor at prices inflated by Ballout’s lies.

The scheme centered on a promissory note purportedly signed on November 30, 2017, claiming Enerkon owed Fielding $180,000 ($180,000 — roughly 3.5 years of rent payments for an average American family) for a loan. The note gave Fielding the right to convert that debt into Enerkon stock if the company failed to repay by November 30, 2018.

Every element of that note was false. Fielding never loaned Enerkon $180,000 at any point. Ballout signed the note as “Chairman” of Enerkon on a date when he had no affiliation with the company whatsoever — he didn’t acquire a controlling interest until February 2018, more than two months after the note’s purported signing date. The SEC’s complaint notes the note appears to have actually been created in May 2019, when Fielding received an email attaching the “FINAL SIGNED” document.

Forged Bank Statements and a Fictional $180,000 Payment History

To convert the note into shares, Fielding sent Enerkon’s transfer agent a package of documents in March 2021. Included in that package was a bank statement purporting to show three payments to Enerkon in October 2017 totaling $180,000. The SEC’s complaint states Fielding’s actual bank statement from that period contains no such payments. The statement submitted to the transfer agent was fabricated.

Fielding also signed a Debt Conversion Notice and a Seller’s Representation Letter, both of which falsely stated the note was entered into in November 2017 and that his shares were acquired through a genuine loan. Ballout separately emailed the transfer agent attaching a corporate resolution falsely representing the same timeline. The transfer agent, relying on these forged documents, issued Fielding at least 9 million unrestricted shares of Enerkon stock.

Zayed coordinated the entire conversion process behind the scenes. Fielding testified in the SEC investigation that he believed Zayed prepared at least some of the documents submitted to the transfer agent. Emails between Zayed and Fielding confirm Zayed prepared or directed lawyers to prepare legal opinions, affidavits, letters, and agreements used throughout the scheme.

Timing the Dump to Maximize Damage

The trio timed the stock sale carefully. On March 5, 2021 — just four days before the fake COVID distribution rights press release — Zayed emailed a third-party investor and told them Fielding wanted to wait for “better market conditions.” Four days later, Ballout published the false March 9, 2021 press release, pushing the stock price up 6.9% in a single day. The false May 11 press release followed. Between May 19 and May 27, 2021, Fielding sold his shares to the third-party investor for a total of $407,000 ($407,000 — enough to fully fund the college education of 10 students at a public university).

Fielding then paid Zayed $96,000 ($96,000 — roughly two years of a median American worker’s income) as his cut of the proceeds. Zayed, who had been federally indicted for wire fraud in 1997 and previously sued by the SEC for securities fraud in 1998, collected this money from Egypt, beyond the immediate reach of U.S. authorities.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Can’t Repay

There is a third-party investor referenced throughout the SEC complaint who bought 9 million shares of Enerkon stock at prices inflated by deliberate lies. The complaint does not name them. They appear in the legal record as a function of the scheme rather than a human being who made a financial decision based on information they had every reason to trust. Someone read a press release that said a company was building a solar power plant in Pennsylvania, that it had secured a $28 million monthly COVID-19 test contract, that it had acquired a British company with international distribution rights. Someone looked at those announcements and made a rational decision to invest. That person was robbed.

Penny-stock markets attract a specific kind of retail investor: people who do not have enough capital to buy into the big-name equities that wall street institutions trade among themselves. These are everyday people — retirees, side-hustlers, working adults trying to build a cushion against the cost of living — who see a small company’s press release about clean energy or pandemic response and think they have spotted an opportunity early. Ballout, Zayed, and Fielding built an entire fake identity for Enerkon Solar International specifically to exploit that hope. They chose the OTC penny-stock market as their hunting ground because the disclosure requirements are weaker and the targets are more vulnerable.

The complaint documents that Fielding let Ballout and Zayed use his personal credit cards to pay for Enerkon’s operational costs — domain hosting, publishing press releases, OTC administrative fees — charges that ran $2,000 to $3,000 per month. None of those expenses were properly accounted for in Enerkon’s books or disclosed to investors. The people reading Enerkon’s financial statements and OTC disclosures were making investment decisions based on records that concealed the company’s actual cost structure. They were being lied to in the footnotes as well as the headlines.

Mohamed Zayed’s history makes the human cost of this scheme even more enraging. The SEC’s complaint notes Zayed was indicted by a federal grand jury in 1997 for wire fraud, scheme to defraud, and money laundering, and that a warrant was issued for his arrest. In 1998, the SEC sued him separately for using fraudulent financial statements and press releases to deceive investors in a prior scheme. The SEC was unable to serve Zayed with that 1998 lawsuit and dismissed its claims. Zayed remained in Egypt, kept his international business network alive, partnered with Fielding in a defense-sector company, and eventually helped execute another securities fraud nearly a quarter century later. The system’s failure to hold him accountable the first time created the conditions for the harm documented here.

The $65 million ($65 million — more than most American families would collectively earn across 1,300 working lifetimes) in “Cash” that Ballout reported on Enerkon’s balance sheet is perhaps the clearest window into the contempt these men had for the people they were targeting. Ballout’s own testimony acknowledged the figure represented “deferred or unearned revenue” — but Enerkon’s financial statements never disclosed that. An investor reading the balance sheet would see $65 million in cash and reasonably conclude the company had $65 million in cash. The company had less than $100 in its bank account. The gap between those two numbers is not an accounting technicality. It is the distance between what these men wanted investors to believe and what was actually true.

There is also the matter of what was sold as a green-energy future. Enerkon presented itself as a solar and hydrogen power company — a company building a clean-energy plant in Pennsylvania, positioning itself for the future. Clean energy is one of the few spaces where retail investors can feel like their money is doing something meaningful alongside generating returns. Ballout chose that framing deliberately. He put a photograph of a real hydrogen plant in Japan in an Enerkon press release and let investors believe it was their company’s project. He did not just steal money. He stole the feeling that someone’s investment was building something worth building.

Legal Receipts: Their Own Words, Under Oath

“Unfortunately, the information you are sending out in the public to raise funds and awareness is completely false. We have entertained discussions with [Agent] to eventually become a sub-distributor of [Distributor] for the sale and distribution of various products and services for which we hold the rights through proper and legal contracts with the patent holder [Manufacturer]. To date no firm contract has been finalized or even less signed. Your website is advertising false and misleading information. [Agent] does not own the distribution rights to the [Covid-19] insta-test and does not have any formal rights whatsoever at this time. Because of this I insist you remove all mention of [Distributor] and reference covid testing referring to our companies.” — Email from a Distributor executive to Ballout, copying Zayed, March 17, 2021. Ballout never disclosed this email to investors. Source: SEC Complaint, paragraph 24.

“Once they finished their current set of transactions, then ‘we will get MORE free shares from BEN [Ballout] then after that and DO IT AGAIN….'” — Mohamed Zayed, in a January 10, 2021 email to William Fielding, describing the plan to repeat the fraud after their first round of transactions. Source: SEC Complaint, paragraph 51.

“Today, [Enerkon] is pleased to announce the Signed Agreement to Purchase of 122 Acres of Commercial Land in Pennsylvania Turnpike area for the establishment of our planned 20 MW Solar and Hydrogen Plant facility.” — Benjamin Ballout, in Enerkon’s May 3, 2021 press release. The land was zoned residential. Enerkon never paid the landowner. The company’s bank account held less than $100. Source: SEC Complaint, paragraphs 33–35.

“The order was placed by an NGO operating in the Dominican Republic from a Major Medical Foundation [and was valued at] $28,000,000 per month [or] $320 Million annually.” — Benjamin Ballout, quoted in Enerkon’s May 11, 2021 press release. The NGO was fictitious. Its website was registered and controlled by Zayed and Fielding. The Distributor never accepted the order. Source: SEC Complaint, paragraphs 27–31.

“Enerkon’s balance sheet included in its June 30, 2018 OTC Disclosure reported more than $65 million in ‘Cash.’ At the time of these statements and disclosures, Enerkon never had more than $100 cash in its bank account.” — SEC Complaint, paragraphs 37–38. Ballout testified the figure represented “deferred or unearned revenue” — a fact never disclosed in any of Enerkon’s public filings.

Societal Impact: Who Pays When Fraud Wins

Economic Inequality: Penny Stocks Are a Poverty Trap for Retail Investors

Pump-and-dump schemes targeting OTC penny-stock markets are not random. They are structurally targeted at investors with smaller portfolios — people who cannot afford shares in blue-chip companies and instead look to smaller, speculative equities. The OTC market operates with fewer disclosure requirements than major exchanges, which means less protection for the people who need protection most. Ballout chose this market deliberately. He knew the disclosure floor was lower and the targets were more exposed.

The economic damage from schemes like this extends beyond the individual investor who bought Enerkon shares. When retail investors get burned by fraud in speculative markets, they exit those markets entirely — and frequently with lasting damage to their savings, retirement accounts, or emergency funds. The SEC’s complaint confirms that investors “suffered pecuniary harm” as a direct result of the false and misleading statements. The third-party investor who purchased Fielding’s shares — 9 million of them, at prices artificially inflated by fabricated news — paid $407,000 ($407,000 — roughly 8 years of median rent payments for an average American renter) for stock built on nothing.

The mechanics of the scheme also reveal how fraudsters use legitimate infrastructure against ordinary people. Enerkon’s transfer agent acted in good faith on forged bank statements and backdated documents. The OTC Markets Group platform published Enerkon’s disclosures because Enerkon submitted them. The press release distribution services published Ballout’s lies because he paid the fees, often on Fielding’s credit card. Every piece of infrastructure designed to facilitate legitimate business was weaponized against the retail investor at the end of the chain.

Public Health: Weaponizing a Pandemic for Profit

The choice to center Enerkon’s fraud around COVID-19 testing is not incidental. In early 2021, rapid COVID-19 tests were among the most urgently needed public health tools in the world. Governments, hospitals, and NGOs were desperately seeking distribution networks for reliable testing equipment. Ballout and Zayed exploited that desperation — and the information asymmetry it created — to give Enerkon the appearance of being a critical player in pandemic response.

The fictional $28 million per month purchase order from a fabricated Dominican Republic NGO was not just a financial lie. It was constructed on the wreckage of legitimate pandemic infrastructure. Real organizations were trying to source COVID tests through real distribution channels during this period. Enerkon’s fraud — complete with fake purchase orders forwarded to an actual Canadian distributor — inserted noise and confusion into those channels. The Distributor received a fake LOI and had to spend time and resources investigating and rejecting it.

The March 9, 2021 press release told investors that Enerkon had acquired a stake in a company with distribution rights to a “rapid (15 seconds) Test Device” for COVID-19. Investors who believed that — and some clearly did, given the 6.9% stock price increase the day it was published — were not just making a financial decision. They were responding to what appeared to be meaningful participation in a public health solution. Ballout targeted their goodwill alongside their wallets.