A hearing set by state regulators in a case alleging that ISA Industries Inc. committed Securities Act of Arizona violations has been moved to 2024.
Scottsdale-based law firm Weiss Brown, which is representing ISA Industries, filed a motion to continue the hearing from a previously scheduled date in August to allow sufficient time to complete an independent validation study of the company's fusion technology.
ISA claimed in the motion it must hire a nuclear fusion and physics expert to conduct the study, which "requires significant resources of time and money."
The hearing is now rescheduled for 10 a.m. on April 22, 2024, at the Arizona Corporation Commission’s offices in Phoenix.
ISA Industries is a Phoenix-based startup focused on developing new clean energy. ISA Industries describes itself on its website as a "collective of entrepreneurs and engineers who believe that all energy should be inherently sustainable, affordable, and decentralized." The company said it develops "new sources of power that enable users to become energy independent."
The Arizona Corporation Commission’s Securities Division issued a temporary cease and desist order in September 2022 to ISA Industries, its founder, Hunter Bjork and his wife, Grace, for supposedly misleading investors about the company’s technology, its lack of manufacturing facilities and the background of its employees, in addition to conducting unlawful sales of securities.
In its cease and desist order, ACC's Securities Division alleged that ISA Industries falsely claimed in private placement memorandums to potential investors that it produces an emerging technology called the “Split Flux," which generates self-replenishing energy and is used by the company’s "strategic partners and government."
Read more in this Business Journal investigative report: Valley startup ISA Industries promises a clean energy future. Much of its technology is shrouded in secrecy
The order also alleges ISA Industries omitted to investors that its core leadership team — consisting of Bjork, Jared Gobler and Skylar Lysaker — have exclusive control over board decisions as they are the only ones holding voting stock, despite the company claiming it has a board of more than six directors that have "complete charge of the business and affairs of the company."
ACC's Securities Division is requesting ISA Industries take action to correct “conditions resulting from the company’s acts, practices or transactions," including a requirement to make restitution as well as pay state administrative penalties of up to $5,000 per violation.
Bjork told the Business Journal in an April 3 email that ISA Industries disputes the allegations in the ACC's cease and desist notice and "will be fully prepared to defend should the case proceed to hearing."
Alan Baskin, an attorney with Weiss Brown who is representing ISA Industries, was not immediately available for further comment.
