Drexel Burnham Lambert, and immunity to testify against Milken Out of college in 1983, Peizer worked for a few months at
Goldman Sachs when he was 21 years old. Later that year he worked for a stint at
First Boston as a
high yield bond salesman. His job was to manage the Drexel account of the president of high-yield
mutual fund manager Solomon Asset Management, with whom Drexel had an illegal arrangement that included insider trading and phony tax losses. Peizer worked directly under (and at the same desk as) Milken and admired him, sometimes pretending to be him on the phone, and calling him "Dad". When investigations into Milken's illegal activities began, Peizer, starting in 1988, provided material evidence to prosecutors against Milken and Solomon. At Milken's pre-sentencing hearing for
securities fraud in 1990, Peizer testified against Milken in exchange for
immunity from both
criminal prosecution and
SEC sanctions.
Investor and executive in small-cap companies 1989–2000 After Drexel, Peizer became a private investor in a series of small companies. He sold the team the following year. In 1991, he gained control of plastics company UTI Chemicals Inc., which had 26 employees, and became its president for a salary of $100,000; the company had a loss of over three million dollars each of the following two years. He stepped down as its chairman in 1994. In June 1991, Peizer purchased $3.5 million of
convertible debentures from Candies, Inc. (formerly known as Millfeld Trading Co.; a shoe importing and marketing business), and became a director of the company. He had by that time already purchased 135,000 shares of the company's common stock, and when he became a director he received
warrants to purchase 1.1 million shares of the company's common stock at $10.00 per share. He sold his shares in 1993 at what was reported to be a $6 million profit, and the company never delivered, lost money, and went bankrupt in 1997. In 1993, he acquired a 37% share of now-defunct computer parts producer
CMS Enhancements. He was elected chairman of the company, and held the position for two years. In the mid-1990s, Peizer played a role in now-defunct
Towers Financial Corporation. The company was a
debt collection agency
Ponzi scheme founded by fraudster
Steven Hoffenberg, with which
Jeffrey Epstein was involved. Peizer purchased an interest in Advanced Promotion Technologies, which manufactured electronic barcode coupon machines for checkout lines.
The New York Times covered the company and his involvement in it in an article entitled: "No Sales, but Watch the Stock Soar". The money that was raised allowed Tera to later buy the remains of
Cray Research, and Peizer was its chairman and a director from 1999 to 2000. He stepped down as chairman in 2000.
2001–present In 2004, Peizer founded Hythiam Inc., a tiny pharmaceutical company, from which in 2006 when he was majority shareholder he received $1.3 million in compensation. The firm bought the rights to an ineffective addiction treatment, and marketed it. Despite the fact that no
placebo-controlled or
double-blind study or
peer-reviewed publication of its "
Prometa" (the marketing name for Gabasync) approach had been undertaken, and although no
FDA approval had been obtained, Hythiam advertised the "innovative, medically based treatment" (which could cost $15,000 per patient) and franchised doctors to use Prometa, in exchange for a per-patient fee. Journalist
Adam Feuerstein opined: "most of what Peizer says is dubious-sounding hype". In June 2008, Hythiam had generated a net loss each year for 5 straight years, and while its stock had traded at $61.26 a share in 2007, it traded at $0.18 per share three years later (a 99.7% drop). According to independent investment research firm
Morningstar: "Over the long haul, this company has posted some of its industry's worst returns on assets." In 2021 the company entered into an agreement to buy a product from another company he controlled, NeurMedix, for up to $10 million and over 8 million BioVie shares; that led to a 15% share price drop in one day to $18.30 a share, and in April 2023 the company's share price was down to $8.08. He resigned on March 2, 2023, the day after he was criminally indicted, at which point the company had not yet received any revenue, and had lost $26 million in 2022. He resigned as EVmo Chairman on February 17, 2023, as the company
defaulted on a $7.5 million loan, and its stock price had declined to $0.17 per share.
Ontrak: indictment and conviction Until his 2023 indictment, he was CEO and chairman of Catasys, Inc. (later renamed Ontrak Inc.), a publicly traded healthcare company that he had founded in 2003. Peizer was also Ontrak’s biggest shareholder. His 2018 compensation at the company was $2.4 million, over twice that of CEOs of similar companies. On March 1, 2023, after an
FBI investigation, Peizer was charged with
insider trading by the SEC, which alleged that he sold $20 million of Ontrak Inc. stock in 2021 while he was in possession of material nonpublic negative information related to the company's largest customer. Ontrak shares, which had traded at $85.21 in February 2021, were trading at under $1.00 since July 2022. In addition, the
U.S. Department of Justice announced
criminal charges of insider trading and securities fraud against Peizer, charging that thereby he had avoided $12 million in losses; Peizer was arrested. His case was assigned to the
U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, before U.S. District Judge
Dale S. Fischer. On March 7, 2024, Judge Fischer denied Peizer’s motion to dismiss, holding that the government had alleged facts sufficient to give rise to a charge of insider trading. His sentencing hearing is set for June 23, 2025. Peizer could face a maximum penalty of 65 years in prison. On January 16, 2026, President Donald Trump gave Peizer a full and unconditional pardon. ==See also==