Pearlasia Gamboa

ZNext Mining was investigated by a multi-agency taskforce as part of Operation Broken Trust, a US-wide operation in 2010 that targeted investment fraud. Although her husband Mark Pedley was charged, under the name Tzemach David Netzer Korem, and pleaded guilty, Gamboa was not.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission took her to civil court over a company she owned, ZNext Mining, in 2009, alleging that she had used fictitious reports of gold mining operations to profit by fraudulently sell shares, siphoning off more than $1 million. She maintained that any fraudulent manipulation of stock prices was carried out by her husband without her knowledge. After Gamboa failed to appear in federal court to contest the government's accusations, a default judgment was ordered against her in August 2010 totaling $1.8 million; a $650,000 fine for the ZNext corporation, and $1.18 million for Gamboa personally. Gamboa was also permanently barred from selling penny stocks. In 2011, she said she had not paid the fine and was attempting to have the decision overturned.

In 1994 companies run by Gamboa, and which were purporting to be banks, were prevented from operating in Indiana and California.

Gamboa was born Elvira G. Gamboa, in 1951, in Manila. She was married to Rocky Austin, but later divorced prior to 1993 and currently lives in California. In 1994, she married Mark Logan Pedley. She has a daughter, Bernadette, and a son, Raymond, from her first marriage and she has a son, Hazemach, from her second.