What are the signs of scams and shams, especially here in penny stock land? I'm sure that there are many "tells," but we need to start somewhere...
1. A CEO that issues false and misleading financial statements in otcmarkets.com, or in SEC filings.
2. A CEO who stops issuing periodic financial statements altogether.
3. A CEO who pumps, dilutes and then shorts his own Company.
4. A CEO who creates more bagholders than value for the shareholders.
5. A CEO who releases PRs about deals that never quite get consummated.
6. A CEO who issues false and misleading shareholder updates.
7. A CEO who stops issuing shareholder updates all together.
8. A CEO who authorizes a “Whisperer” to disseminate false and misleading information without being associated directly with the Company.
9. A CEO who threatens litigation against message board posters for asking legitimate questions.
10. A CEO who turns out the lights of the corporate offices without any notice to shareholders.
11. A Company with shady management and a shady history of failed companies.
12. An insolvent Company that refuses to release financial statements and continues to represent itself as a going concern.
13. A Company with a history of failed stock promotions and associations with fraudulent stock promoters.
14. A Company with a revolving door of CEOs who can’t quite get the job done.
15. A Company with a PR guy/gal who does double-duty as the Company’s Whisperer.
16. A Company with a significant drop in PPS where management attributes the decline to interference from outsiders.
17. A Company on the pink sheets that forever talks about uplisting, but can’t ever seem to get its S-1 filing registration together.
18. A company with millions of dollars of revenues in the pipeline but nothing ever seems to flow through the pipeline to the financial statements.
19. A Company with A-list associations that can’t get those A-listers to commit.
20. A Company with corporate offices offshore and a corporate address at a mail drop site.
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