Alpine Securities Corp. of Salt Lake City has been fined $40,000 for selling illegal shares in a company.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said Alpine and four other broker-dealers were fined a total of $385,000 for the illegal sale of more than 8 billion shares of penny stock on behalf of their customers. Most of the sales involved Universal Express Inc., which the Securities and Exchange Commission had filed a lawsuit against in 2004. The suit came after the company issued 500 million shares of unregistered stock for distribution to the public.

Despite the SEC action and other "red flags," Alpine allowed two customers to deposit large blocks of Universal stock in certificate form and immediately sell them for a profit of $2.7 million, which netted the firm $47,000 in commissions.

"The firm failed to take adequate steps to verify whether the USXP shares were registered and/or whether they were freely tradeable," according to the FINRA findings.

Alpine did not return a voice mail or an e-mail seeking comment. It did, however, consent to the action by FINRA, which is an independent regulatory body of brokers and dealers.

Tom Harvey