Gerson Maciel

Bermuda-based businessman Donald Lines has been awarded damages of $3 million against a Massachusetts process serving company that falsely claimed to have served him with three securities fraud-related subpoenas on behalf of the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission. At the Superior Court of Massachusetts on June 6, 2008, Judge Robert Cosgrove entered final judgment in favor of Lines and against Boston-based Stokes & Levin, Inc. on one count each of Unfair Or Deceptive Acts Or Practices, Negligence), Fraud, Intentional Or Negligent Infliction Of Emotional Distress, and Interference With Advantageous Business Relations.

Prominent offshore businessman Donald Lines has been branded a liar by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Lines, the 73-year-old Chairman and President of Bermuda-based investment firm Lines Overseas Management Limited, is adamant that he was not served with a securities-fraud related subpoena while he was in the U. S. in November, 2005 for emergency heart surgery. After the SEC first made the allegation in a filing at the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia in late December, LOM denied it in a court filing of its own and Donald Lines, a former CEO of the Bank of Bermuda, even went so far as to take out a full-page advertisement in the Bermuda Sun newspaper in which he claimed: “I have never been served a subpoena by the SEC”, adding that: “There has been no contact from the SEC to even notify me that they ever intended to serve any subpoenas or that they, however incorrectly, believed they had served me.”