SEC Sues Pasta Giant’s Top Bosses for Fraud

KANSAS CITY, MO. (CN) - American Italian Pasta Co. CEO Timothy Webster defrauded the market and inflated the company's stock price by overstating its income by $59 million from 2002 to 2004, the SEC claims in Federal Court. The company claims to be the biggest producer of dry pasta in the United States.

Webster, 46, of Mission Hills, Kan., was CEO from May 1992 until he resigned in December 2005.

In three other complaints in the same court, the SEC sued the company; CFO David Schmidgall and executive vice president David Watson; and accounting director Stephanie Ruskey.

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