The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Himanshu Jindal, a 31-year-old resident of Jaipur, India, with posing as a certified public accountant to sell a $2,500 audit to a small public company. The audit report he delivered was fake, the SEC says, but it ended up in the company’s Form 10-K, where investors could rely on it.
What happened
Jindal, also known as Manish Jindal, has no accounting credentials anywhere, according to the SEC. His highest education is a high school degree from 2014, and he never finished an undergraduate engineering program, the complaint alleges.
In August 2023, a consultant for Cyber Apps World Inc., an OTC-quoted issuer now known as Leopard Energy, posted a job on the freelance platform Upwork. The posting sought a “PCAOB Auditor qualified to conduct 10K Audits for Public Companies in USA.”
Jindal responded claiming to be a “Licensed US CPA” and a “Registered Auditor of PCOAB,” misspelling the regulator’s name. His Upwork profile described him as a “USA CPA” leading a “team of CPA(US),” the complaint says.
The forged engagement letter
Jindal won the assignment with a $2,500 fee. He then sent an engagement letter on the letterhead of a New York accounting firm, complete with its principal’s forged signature, according to the complaint.
The firm never authorized Jindal to act for it, and its PCAOB registration had been revoked in April 2020. The phone number on the letterhead belonged to Jindal himself.
Over the following weeks, Jindal sent the company audit-status updates and edits to its draft Form 10-K. He asked questions about statutory liabilities and offered to finalize the report once they were resolved.
On September 14, 2023, Cyber Apps paid the $2,500 fee into a bank account held by Helponic Global Private Limited, an entity Jindal controls in India. The fake audit report went into the Form 10-K filed with the SEC on October 25, 2023.
How the scheme unraveled
After learning that the New York firm was not registered with the PCAOB, Cyber Apps hired a new auditor and filed an amended Form 10-K that restated its financial statements. The company is now known as Leopard Energy, Inc.
The SEC alleges Jindal kept at it. In May 2024, he formed a Wyoming company called Helponic Global LLC and continued to seek United States audit and accounting work while misrepresenting his credentials, according to the complaint.
| Detail | Figure |
|---|---|
| Defendant | Himanshu Jindal a/k/a Manish Jindal, 31, Jaipur, India |
| Issuer | Cyber Apps World Inc., now Leopard Energy, Inc. (OTC Pink) |
| Audit fee | $2,500 |
| Form 10-K filed | October 25, 2023 |
| Case number | 1:26-cv-03476 (D.D.C., filed October 5, 2026) |
| Charges | Exchange Act Section 10(b), Rule 10b-5, aiding and abetting Section 13(a) |
What the SEC is seeking
The complaint, filed October 5 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, charges Jindal with violating Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5, and with aiding and abetting the issuer’s reporting violations under Section 13(a).
The agency seeks permanent injunctions, a conduct-based injunction barring Jindal from accounting or financial reporting roles at public companies, disgorgement with prejudgment interest, and a civil penalty. The SEC credited assistance from regulators in India and Canada.
Red flags for investors in small issuers
The case reads like a checklist of microcap audit risks. Investors who hold OTC-quoted companies can apply the same tests the SEC applied here.
- An audit fee of $2,500 is a red flag by itself. PCAOB audits of public companies typically cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- Auditors found on freelance platforms rarely hold the required PCAOB registration, which the public can verify at no cost.
- A company whose audit firm loses or never had PCAOB registration owes investors an explanation.
What investors should do
Anyone holding shares in an OTC-quoted issuer can check the auditor’s registration status directly on the PCAOB website. Annual reports on EDGAR list the audit firm, and any restatement or auditor change usually comes with an explanatory filing.
Leopard Energy filed an amended Form 10-K restating its financial statements after the fake audit surfaced. Investors who traded the stock around the original October 2023 filing can pull both versions from EDGAR and compare them.
How to recover your losses
Investors who believe they suffered losses connected to this matter may wish to consult a qualified securities attorney to review their options. Trade records, filings, and dates matter most in cases built on disclosure fraud.
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