Barry Honig, charged by SEC for $27M stock scheme, was 2013-2014 investor in Spherix – now named Dominari Holdings, part owned by Don Jr. and Eric Trump, and involved in several Trump family deals
In March I published a story about Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. and their work with Dominari Holdings and the large number of people connected to Barry Honig who was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission for his role leading a group of fraudsters in a $27 million pump-and-dump scheme that ran from 2013 to 2018.
Dominari Holdings is a small financial firm that I reported rents space in Trump Tower for approximately $750,000 per year. This story reported that in addition to Eric and Donald Trump Jr. advising and investing in Dominari, three other Trump Organization executives – Alan Garten, Lawrence Glick, and Ronald Liberman – also invested in Dominari Holdings and the five combined had over 21% of the common stock in an April 2025 filing.
I have researched and published multiple stories on the Trump sons and Dominari because the unusual number of links to several people tied to the Honig fraud schemes seemed significant and puzzling to me – and other than a few articles has not been widely covered by the mainstream media.
I recently made a major finding in this area – that was also a complete duh! moment – in my research I had missed a whole group of SEC filings related to Dominari Holdings because I had only been searching on the past 10 years.
When I expanded the search back beyond 10 years I found that Barry Honig, John Stetson and Alpha Capital Anstalt – all named in the SEC 2018 fraud charges – were all owners of Spherix, Inc. from 2013 to 2014. Spherix is now Dominari Holdings.
In addition, a few others who were not charged, were also owners including Barry’s father Alan Honig, lawyer Harvey Kesner who worked on many deals with Barry and was a board director of Spherix, and Barry’s brother Jonathan.
While the period when Barry Honig and his network directly owned Spherix Inc. was over a decade ago – this helps explain why so many people in his network are connected to the company that was renamed AIkido Pharma, Inc. in 2020 and then renamed Dominari Holdings in 2022.
Barry Honig was charged by the SEC in 2018 for leading a $27 million stock fraud scheme
Barry Honig was charged by the SEC in 2018 with nine other individuals and ten associated entities that participated from 2013 to 2018 in “fraudulent schemes that generated over $27 million from unlawful stock sales and caused significant harm to retail investors who were left holding virtually worthless stock.”
“As alleged, Honig and his associates engaged in brazen market manipulation that advanced their financial interests while fleecing innocent investors and undermining the integrity of our securities markets”
The time frame that the charges covered from 2013 to 2018 overlaps with the period in which Barry Honig and a few others charged were investors in Spherix, Inc. (aka Dominari). However, that investment was not reported to be related to the charges.
The SEC complaint against Barry Honig also charged Miami biotech billionaire Phillip Frost, as well as John Stetson, Michael Brauser, Mark Groussman, John R. O’Rourke III, Robert Ladd, Elliot Maza, Brian Keller, and John H. Ford. One of the entities charged was Alpha Capital Anstalt, a company linked to Austrian billionaire Martin Schlaff (I was researching Alpha Capital Anstalt and Schlaff when I found the Spherix information, so there’s more to come on this part of the story).
The 2018 SEC charges related to manipulating the share price of three companies. While the names of the companies were not disclosed, the Wall Street Journal reported that they were BioZone Pharmaceuticals Inc., MGT Capital Investments Inc. and MabVax Therapeutics Holdings Inc.
While Spherix Inc. was not in the SEC charges, journalist Teri Buhl reported in 2018 about Honig’s work with broker dealer Laidlaw and has a section on some interesting Spherix activities. She noted “When Laidlaw couldn’t sell clients to keep investing in Spherix the company would just change its biz model and move into a new line of business.”
In 2019 Barry Honig settled with the SEC without admitting or denying the allegations, and several others also settled their charges.
Some repercussions from the 2018 charges are still happening. Last year the former CEO of MGT Capital Investments was fined $1.1 million for his involvement in the alleged pump-and-dump scheme. And as I reported recently the SEC announced a judgement last month for Elliot Maza that was related to the Honig case. I desribed briefly in my piece how Maza links to a network that has ties to Trump.
Note that there is no indication of any criminal or illegal activity or any wrongdoing related to Dominari Holdings (or the previously named Spherix Inc.) or to any of the investors covered here. The information is notable because Dominari is doing numerous deals with the Trump family and is partly owned by the eldest Trump sons. And several years ago the company was partly owned by several members of the Honig network during the same period they were involved in a multi million dollar fraud scheme.
From 2013 to 2014 Barry Honig and some associates were key investors in Spherix Inc which is now named Dominari Holdings
This 2014 SEC filing for Spherix Inc. shows the principal stockholders and the ownership of the executive officers and directors.
Barry Honig owned 9.99% of the common stock. John Stetson managed HS Contrarian Investments LLC, which owned 8.8% and Alpha Capital Anstalt owned 6.5%. Barry Honig, John Stetson, and Alpha Capital Anstalt were all later charged by the SEC for stock fraud. The three combined owned over 25% of the common stock.
In addition Barry’s father Alan Honig owned 9.99%.
Harvey Kesner, a director of the company, owned 6.2%. He was not charged by the SEC, but was involved in many deals with Barry Honig and others who were charged. The filing notes that Harvey Kesner was interim CEO of Spherix from February to September 2013 and listed his 2013 compensation (which included salary, options and other items) at almost $9 million.
The filing also listed the selling stockholders of 2,302,615 of common stock – and this group showed Barry Honig with 9.99%, and his company GRQ Consultants with 9.99%, his brother Jonathan Honig had 1.6% prior to the offering.
At the time of this 2014 filing the CEO of Spherix Inc was Anthony Hayes, who is now the current CEO of Dominari Holdings.
As the Trump family frenetically finds new grifts to profit off Trump’s presidency – Dominari Holdings is a key hub of multiple Trump deals
Not only are Don Jr. and Eric Trump and several Trump Organization executives investors in Dominari Holdings, Donald Trump Jr. is also an investor in a company closely linked to Dominari called Unusual Machines which manufactures drones and which I reported on here.
A March 2025 filing shows the ‘American Bitcoin Launch Presentation’ on the joint venture between Hut 8 and American Data Centers – which was formed with Dominari Holdings – to create American BTC. Eric Trump is listed as the Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of the new company. As I reported here Hut 8 has multiple links to the Honig network. And just to make everything super confusing – Eric and Don Jr. and Dominari created American Data Centers… which joined with Hut 8 to create American BTC (Bitcoin)… which is merging with Gryphon Digital – where a current director and the former Board Chair is Brittany Kaiser, a former executive of Cambridge Analytica.
In recent news, Dominari Holdings is brokering a deal to take Justin Sun‘s crypto business Tron public through a reverse merger with SRM Entertainment. In 2023 the SEC charged Justin Sun and his companies, including Tron Foundation, for fraud and other securities law violations. After Sun invested $75 million in Trump-sponsored World Liberty Financial the charges were paused. And now Sun is re-entering the U.S. crypto world with the help of Dominari Holdings – which is part owned by Eric, Don Jr., and several Trump Org executives. I did a thread here on how Dominari executive Soo Yu, who is also the wife of their president Kyle Wool, signed an advisory agreement related to the Tron deal and her company previously invested $5 million in SRM.
It’s all very convoluted – I’m sure not at all intentionally. But I will continue to dig through it. I actually wrote this story on the Honig network investment in Spherix aka Dominari while researching several other threads of the Honig network story, so there’s more to come.
If you have any tips related to this story contact me here. If you value this research please become a paid subscriber to support this work.
Your posts as well as others subscribed to don't show up in my notes/feed, although liking recent posts. Substack's chat gives nonsensical answers.