Dallas-based Texas Coastal Energy Company defrauded 80 oil and gas investors out of more than $8 million, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the stock market regulator.

The lawsuit alleges that the company, its co-founder, Jefferey Gordon, and his sales representatives misrepresented the company's finances, exaggerated a geologist's background and inflated the reserves and expected production of its wells in Texas and Kansas.

In one case, the lawsuit said, Gordon altered a geologist's map to eliminate six dry holes to "make the projects look more desirable," according to the SEC complaint.

"In an offering fraud, people who seek to steal investors' hard-earned money will often use cold calls and inflated promises to carry out their schemes," said Shamoil T. Shipchandler, director of the SEC's Fort Worth regional office. "Their self-serving statements are no substitute for an investor's due diligence."

The SEC complaint seeks to return money to investors and bar Gordon and his company from violating securities law. The lawsuit covers investments made between February 2013 and November 2014.

Gordon could not immediately be reached for comment.

The lawsuit said Gordon misappropriated at least $2.66 million raised from investors. More than $1.9 million of that went to Gordon personally.

Company brochures said that some of the wells were expected to provide returns of 300 to 500 percent, a number the SEC said conflicted with geologist production estimates. One Texas Coastal Energy well produced some revenue but not enough cover its operating expenses. Two other wells produced no revenue, and the fourth was never drilled.

The company, founded in 2011, has had a troubled history for much of its short existence. The company's charter was revoked by the Texas Secretary of State's office in 2014 for failing to pay taxes and then revoked again in 2016.

In 2015, Texas Coastal Energy Company tried to register the names of two joint ventures with the Texas Secretary of State's office, but the credit card was declined.

The company also was sued in 2014 by a former employee — who described himself as a devout Mormon — alleging that the office was a "Wolf-of-Wall-Street-type environment replete with illegal drugs, high-stakes gambling, prostitutes, extramarital interoffice affairs, and ubiquitous sexual innuendo."

Taylor Stilovich said in the lawsuit that Gordon made crude, sexual comments about and "pelvic thrusts" toward Stilovich's wife and offered him cocaine. In legal filings, Stilovich also said Gordon accused him of stealing from the company in response to his complaints.

The lawsuit, which also alleged misuse of investor funds, was later dropped without explanation. In a filing with the court, Stilovich wrote that this "letter serves to retract recent allegations."

That 2014 lawsuit and this week's SEC's litigation do not name Texas Coastal Energy Company's other co-founder Vance McAllister, a former U.S. Representative from Louisiana. McAllister, who is married, lost his seat after a video surfaced of him kissing a married staffer.

In a 2014 National Review story, a Texas Coastal Energy Company spokeswoman said McAllister was "not involved with the day-to-day management of the company."

McAllister said in financial disclosures that he made between $100,001 and $1 million from the Texas Coastal Energy Company, according a 2016 story in The Ouachita Citizen, the newspaper that broke the kissing story. McAllister, now a sports agent, could not immediately be reached for comment. He had unrelated legal trouble recently when a warrant was issued for his arrest for repeated failures to appear in court in a debt case, according to the same newspaper.

Founder Gordon and his Black Shark Family Investments LLC were sued last year for allegedly failing to pay an office leases at Thanksgiving Tower.

Texas Coastal Energy, Gordon and McAllister were also sued last year over an alleged failure to pay the lease on a $130,000 Tesla Model S belonging to the company.

That Dallas County lawsuit from Benchmark Auto said the company and its owners "not only abandoned the Tesla in an undisclosed parking garage, they abandoned the Tesla in a damaged condition." A judge granted Benchmark Auto's motion for a default judgment in that case.