Shares in Avon rose by 20 percent last month following a fake takeover bid.

On Thursday The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused a Bulgarian man and several other people from Sofia of submitting a fraudulent takeover bid for Avon Products Inc and two other companies to manipulate share prices.

The complaint was placed against Nedko Nedev, the man behind a firm calling itself PTG Capital Partners and was filed in Manhattan federal court just three weeks after Avon shares rose by 20 percent on May 14th, when PTG filed an alleged offer to buy the cosmetics company for $18.75 per share, a 181 percent premium.

According to the SEC, Nedev and others attempted to manipulate stock prices of Avon, Tower Group International Ltd and Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory Inc by filing bogus bids on its public Edgar database whilst also releasing fraudulent press releases.

The regulator said Nedev, who is 37 and lives in Sofia, Bulgaria, had along with others purchased stocks in the company prior to manipulating the share price, hoping to sell once the prices increased; the manipulation made Nedev tens of thousands of dollars.

The case with Rocky Mountain started with an alleged fake acquisition on Dec. 18, 2012 from defendant PST Capital Group Ltd to purchase the retailer for a 27 percent premium, resulting in its share price rising by 4.6 percent.

In their previous manipulation, the SEC said the stock price of Tower Group jumped by 32 percent on May 13, 2014 after another fraudulent press release was released in the name of Euroins Insurance Corp, also based in Sofia, to acquire the insurance company.

The SEC lawsuit is seeking civil penalties and also aiming to collect any illegal profits from Nedko and the other defendants, including their alleged brokerage companies based in the British Virgin Islands and Nevada where the accounts were accessed from Sofia.