Timothy Roberts, whose name will be familiar to St. Louisans with a memory of the late-1990s Internet bubble, has paid $30,000 to settle stock-manipulation charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition to paying the civil penalty, Roberts faces a five-year ban on serving as an officer or director of a public company. He also can’t participate in any penny-stock offering for five years. He neither admitted nor denied guilt in the settlement.

The charges stem from a junk-fax scheme that promoted the shares of Infinium Labs, a video-game company run by Roberts. According to the SEC:

The faxes made it appear as if Infinium Labs were on the verge of launching its flagship product, a home videogame system called the “Phantom.” In fact, at the time of the fax campaign, Infinium Labs lacked the financial resources to overcome the significant technological and manufacturing hurdles preventing it from marketing the game system to consumers. The faxes also included baseless stock price targets, predicting that Infinium Labs’ stock price would rise as much as 3,000% in the coming weeks.

Roberts cut his ties with the company, now known as Phantom Entertainment, in 2007.  From here, it looks as if he got off easy in the settlement: The SEC’s original charges said he unloaded $422,500 worth of Infinium shares while the junk-fax scheme was going on.

In St. Louis, Roberts ran Broadband Investment Group, an Internet company that collapsed in 2000 after spending lavishly on private jets and race-car sponsorships.