Centennial Tech Ex-Official Pleads Guilty

A former chief executive at Centennial Technologies Inc., Emanuel Pinez, pleaded guilty in a securities fraud case that transformed the computer card maker from Wall Street darling to outcast. Prosecutors in the federal trial in Boston said Pinez spearheaded a scheme to defraud investors by falsely inflating the company’s financial results from 1994 to 1997. Pinez, 61, faces a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro sentences him May 17. Pinez has been in custody since his arrest three years ago. Centennial Technologies, based in Wilmington, Mass., had been the top performer on the New York Stock Exchange in 1996, when its share price increased 450%, trading as high as $55 per share. But the stock was kicked off the exchange in February 1997 after the company admitted that its financial results had been overstated. Prosecutors said investors lost hundreds of millions of dollars when the fraud was discovered.