UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION, Plaintiff, v. Civil Action No. 21-1869 (ACR) MIKHAIL KOKORICH, Defendant. MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER Plaintiff Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) brings this action against Defendant Mikhail Kokorich under the Securities Act of 1933, 15 U.S.C. § 77a et seq. (“Securities Act”), and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U.S.C. § 78a et seq. (“Exchange Act”). It concerns an alleged fraud committed by Defendant, a Russian citizen and the co- founder and former Chief Executive Officer of a privately-owned space industry startup, Momentus, Inc. (“Momentus”). See Dkt. 1 ¶¶ 1–2. The SEC alleges in its Complaint that Defendant made misrepresentations, false statements, and material omissions regarding: (1) the success, or, rather, lack thereof, of Momentus’s single in-space test of its key technology; and (2) several adverse national security determinations against Defendant, which impaired Momentus’s ability to participate in U.S.-based rocket launches. Defendant has moved to dismiss, contending primarily that each challenged statement was true and that it was not false by omission because he had no duty to disclose additional information. See Dkt. 8-1 at 1. 1 For the reasons set forth below, the Court denies the motion to dismiss. BACKGROUND Founded in 2017, Momentus is a space infrastructure company that hopes to provide, among other things, satellite-positioning services. See Dkt. 1 ¶ 16. 2 The SEC alleges that Defendant committed fraud to secure and promote a merger agreement between Momentus and Stable Road Acquisition Corp. (“Stable Road”), 3 which, if successful, would effectively have taken Momentus public and infused it with nearly $350 million in investor funds. See id. ¶ 1. Defendant stood to benefit from Momentus’s success, even more so if Momentus merged with 1 Defendant has requested oral argument on the pending motion. Given the sufficiency of the parties’ written submissions to resolve the pending motion, the Court denies this request. See LCvR 7(f) (stating that allowance of oral hearing is “within the discretion of the Court”). 2 The reader interested in satellite technology may already know that applying Albert Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity plays an important role in the Global Positioning System (“GPS”). Perhaps less well known, but equally important to that technology, are the scientific contributions of Dr. Gladys West, the second African-American woman hired (in 1956) at the Naval Proving Ground in Virginia. Dr. West “programmed the computer that calculated Earth’s geoid to sufficient precisions to enable the existence of GPS. [That was] no small feat; to accomplish this, [she had] to account for variations in all the forces and effects that can distort the shape of the Earth.” Ethan Siegel, “GPS Only Exists Because of Two People: Albert Einstein and Gladys West,” Forbes (Feb. 18, 2021), available at https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2021/02/18/gps-only-exists-because-of-two- people-albert-einstein-and-gladys-west/?sh=6901af125864. For this, and numerous other accomplishments, Dr. West was inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame in 2018. See id. 3 Stable Road is a publicly traded special-purpose acquisition company (“SPAC”). Dkt. …
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