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He wasn't very successful at that....but then again I'm not familiar with pricing in that 'niche'...
Was it $360K??? I mean.... How??? Surely you'd get blisters at least!? A few months at that level of 'exertion' and I reckon he'd be able to bench-press 500pounds one handed, but unable to lift a kleen-ex with the other one! 🤮 Try as I might I just can't make those numbers add up! But as you have yourself intimated, the pricing models and structures of online adult entertainment websites is an area where I shall continue to treasure my ongoing ignorance. The things some people do to make a living boggles my mind!
OMG! Maybe if he came out and publicly admitted his crimes (not just in court) and directly apologized to shareholders, the Feds he insulted, and those that called out his scam for years, I could understand a charity getting involved, but this sickens me.
I suspect
THE ALE
probably refers to the Aleph Institute, a charity that provides support services to incarcerated individuals from the Jewish Faith.
This happens from time to time, and did a few times thru the years the case was active. It gets resolved quickly, and this one has been resolved at this time as well. It's a filing error, paperwork issue....not uncommon.
probably refers to the Aleph Institute, a charity that provides support services to incarcerated individuals from the Jewish Faith. In which case we can only conclude that he truly is on his uppers and is now reliant on charity handouts to secure the basic essentials necessary for any dignified sort of prison existence.
Personally, I think that's far enough a fall from grace for anyone! - especially a non violent criminal like Mr Berman. I hope his many victims can get some modest respite from the knowledge that his actions have rebounded on him personally in such a devastating manner. The man is down, brought down by his own hubris, and so there is no reason or justification for anyone to kick him any further now, I feel!
In addition to his latest public defender not being able to correctly spell meager, he is also not qualified to submit the appeal, and it was rejected! What a mess!!!! The incompetence in this matter is almost as if this is Berman's own work!
attorney renewal/government certification has not been received. As a result, your membership with the U.S. District & Bankruptcy Courts for the District of Columbia is not in good standing, and you are not permitted to file.
Please be advised that the presiding judge in this case has been notified that you are currently not in good standing to file in this court.
Was just reading this and about to post it. We all knew Mr Berman before he became and angel and a saint! We are all very lucky!
Since being incarcerated, Mr. Berman has worked for the prison and his fellow inmates. Mr. Berman teaches three hour-long classes, each one requiring three hours of preparation. He also hosts office hours for four hours every Saturday. In total then, Mr. Berman spends about 16 hours every week using his education to rehabilitate fellow inmates. Next semester, Mr. Berman will add an additional class to his schedule.
Separately, Mr. Berman works on the suicide watch team. During each 4-hour shift, Mr. Berman monitors prisoners at risk of harming themselves. On average, Mr. Berman works 4 shifts each week. For this work, he is compensated at a rate of 80 cents per hour.
It is too bad his public defender cannot spell meager.
"Mr. Berman’s meagre earnings are not the result of an unwillingness to work"
Berman is appealing the $100 monthly restitution awards. Claims his only income is $100 pcm from a non profit which is not guaranteed plus a maximum of $80pcm for prison work. This prison work involves teaching for 4x1hr session per week and lesson prep of 4 x 3hr per week, along with working as suicide watch. All for $0.80 per hour. All very worthy - although you would like to think that there would be some opportunity to increase those earnings once the lesson prep had been done and some of that lesson prep could start to be recycled. After toiletries and food, there is not enough to meet the court mandated payments, it seems? I actually don't mind if the judges accedes to this request. If Berman's time in incarceration means that some of those who have not benefited from his privilege get to advance their education at no cost to Jon Q. while he undergoes some inescapable and unavoidable social re-engineering, than that's all to the good. I see no losers. Keith has no daughters. I'm Glad. As far as I can tell his estranged common law wife and son are entirely innocent upstanding citizens in all of this, who can go about their lawful business with my absolute best wishes. They too are victims. I am not suggesting that - if he had daughters - that they should ever be made to prostitute themselves in front of webcams in order to pay for his restitution. But I am sure that at least some of his victims might be less forbearing. I would hope that gave him food for thought. Because I am suggesting that he should consider such an outcome could have been of the possible unintended consequences of his decision to cynically use OPM to fund his fraud and web porn habit. Maybe some of those girls he expended DECN's shareholders money on were dutiful daughters simply doing whatever was necessary to raise money desperately needed to keep their dear old incarcerated dad in toothpaste? Those of us lucky enough to have PM conversation from Pluto can now look back on those with a level of schadenfreude Because there is a lack of self awareness by Keith therein that is ripe for introspection.
Restitution payments of $100 a month! Hey, it's much less expensive than his live nude model payments were!
I choose to see this differently. Because these things are relative. Those live nude model payments?.... they were OPM... other people's money. Easy come easy go. They cost Berman himself nothing... You can't get cheaper than when someone else is paying!! Whereas $100 per month? Erm... Weelllll...... Even if Berman has friends on the outside there can be limits on the amount of cash a prisoner can receive in jail, questions asked over where it came from and definite limits on the amount of cash that they can have in their account and how it can be used. US prisoner earnings from working within the jail seem to pay at between $0.38 and $1 per hour. On that basis $100 a month going out on 'rent' before you have bought so much a postage stamp or a chocolate bar? You're gonna notice that!
I'm more interested in finding out how he obtained those funds in the first place.
I think this new revelation helps answer your question as well or if not better than my initial imperfect attempts. The bottom feeding vulture capitalists that bankrolled his excesses and thereby prolonged his scamming actually had the cheek to simultaneously submit victim impact statements and restitution claims (in competition with defrauded DECN retail shareholders) while simultaneously at least one of their number was writing mitigating statements and character references in his favour for submission at his sentencing hearings! It Beggars belief! https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=176205219
My idea, although not likely to be accepted, would have been to at least float the idea of allow Berman Internet access to post on this board and communicate with others.
With due respect, and all deference and humor, PS, that is almost the stupidest idea I could conceive of. Incarceration was the only thing that remotely slowed down his inexorable scamming. It was o0nly when he was handcuffed and wrested away from his computer that he stopped using internet aliases to rip off the unwary. So What you have suggested is tantamount to giving him carte-blanche to carry on scamming as before, but without the -erm- distractions of internet subscription content to blunt his edge. While laying down a carpet barrage of abuse at anyone who calls him out for his lawlessness! Think I'll pass on that one! :) I mean I see where you are coming from, but erm... normal rules do not apply to narcissists like Berman.
My idea, although not likely to be accepted, would have been to at least float the idea of allow Berman Internet access to post on this board and communicate with others. If after 9 months or so of this, if he seemed to be genuinely remorseful, and kind to others, that it could be used as a factor for early release (in a few years time). Why do I suggest this? Because we all know, that most likely he'd show his true colors, show no remorse, which would allow no reason for the Judge to reduce his sentence. If anyone has read some of the other comments by the judge after sentencing, the Judge was of the belief that Berman started to show genuine remorse after his bail was revoked. I say that is bull, and that he was fooling the Judge just like he fooled shareholders here. Letting him post here would prove that.
But even more selfishly, I liked the idea due to the entertainment of seeing everyone engage with him. Yes, I know, far fetched, but I still like the idea.
This is a really interesting read. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.225086/gov.uscourts.dcd.225086.217.0.pdf Reading between the lines here: It looks to me like the A*** C*** redacted 'victim' that was excluded from the restitution order is probably the distressed-corporate finance company that advanced the usurious loans and finance to DECN ($2.8m I believe was mentioned) that Berman used to pay for his peccadilloes and support his lifestyle. Well Good! If my reading is correct (and it may not be I concede!), and IIRC, then one of the principals of that shark finance outfit wrote a glowing character witness in support of Berman's mitigation plea, after he had plead guilty. It seems quite unlikely to me that at least some of the retail investor losses have not already ended up enriching the beneficial ownership of that particular financial institution one way or another. In which case imo It would be an insult to those genuine DECN marks to be made to queue up for whatever pitiful restitution they can ever hope to recover alongside the very facilitators of the scam that Berman perpetrated upon them. The peppercorn payments awarded will do little for Berman's victims wellbeing. But they will perhaps make his 'porridge' (jail time) somewhat less salubrious. A bit less to indulge himself with at the commissary. That might land as a further wake up call, who knows! The deterrence effect of ending up sick, elderly, indebted, disgraced and imprisoned and STILL having $100 of whatever monthly subsistence you can scratch together from the meagre opportunities this pitiful existence still affords you... Well that would certainly be enough to make me think twice...
Restitution payments of $100 a month! Hey, it's much less expensive than his live nude model payments were!
Thus while his current financial situation is bad, the Court cannot confidently say that he will be unable to pay an order of restitution in the foreseeable future under a reasonable schedule. 18 U.S.C. § 3664(f)(3)(B); see also id. § 3664(k) (permitting a court to adjust the payment schedule in light of material changes in a defendant’s economic circumstances.). It thus directs Berman to make monthly payments of $100 towards the restitution order. The Court further rejects Berman’s request to delay the start of the schedule until he is released from prison. He may use prison funds and earnings to pay the restitution award until his release. His victims should not have to wait for years before any chance of restitution.
I wonder how many on this board are on this list. Gee if you could have listened to what many said many years ago, think of how much more you would have had in the bank! THIS is the price of buying a pink sheet, and ignoring all the red flags! A 70 year old man in bad health paying $100 a month isn't going to make a dent in these numbers. There are roughly 20 names on this list below. Imagine cashing $5 monthly checks? To me this is the ultimate humiliation and punishment for not doing proper impartial due diligence!
I'd give anything to know what his prison job is!
ORDERED that Berman shall pay restitution in the amount of $613,286.08 to the following victims: J B ($1,423.72); F B ($4,857.68); J C ($1,598.50); B C ($3,399.46); D C ($31,513.46); C G ($3,001.74); A H ($5,889.93); D J ($5,610.61); A J ($1,080.85); A J ($1,939.99); I K ($2,500.00); D L ($2,557.39); L L ($89,415.24); P M ($13,118.18); H N ($138,800.05); P R ($49,428.50); M R ($7,178.98); D S ($2,025.35); D S ($61,099.18); B S ($66,102.71); J S ($2,136.75); D T ($13,125.91); P W ($39,275.02); T W ($66,206.88); it is further
I have no doubts that there was no hacking, just an old stupid man not knowing what he was doing putting something into a folder maybe by accident, exposing it to the public. Or of course, possibly purposely "leaking" it to pump the stock and then crying that he was hacked.
It was definitely the second one. Links to the supposedly 'hacked' content were first posted by accounts aliased to Berman himself. He pushed it through an alias as a pump. When 'detractors' and 'DECN shorts' like me - apparently - (never owned a share - as I have said, all I ever did was put a big yellow cone in front of a massive turd I spotted on the side walk until such time as the powers that be could arrange for the hygienic disposal of the aforesaid) and Johnny C (who had a very legitimate axe to grind on the basis of having been scammed by Berman) and those of a likeminded ilk pointed out the obvious fraud and illegality contained there within, calling it out as the illegal and fraudulent pump that it was, the hack narrative was contrived by Berman to make it sound like the illegal content was merely premature and pre-public release, thus implying there was an actual opportunity that would allow DECN's 'marks' to 'buy in cheap before the 'premature' news became officially released' And it was laughably transparent. Trumpian levels of 'Black = White' there.. As history has born out As Neil de Grasse said:
The thing about science is it's still true whether or not you believe in it.
So if I'm reading this correctly, he profited somewhere to the tune of 2M personally.
Impossible to say for sure. Filings seem to suggest that $2m dollars of cash went into the business in 2020. Their provenance is potentially dubious. We also know for a fact that Berman was not maintaining the legally required distinction between company funds and his personal day to day living expenses. That is a matter of established legal fact. We also know that $360K of DECN company funds was spent on web porn (I don't even know how spending that much on that stuff is even possible, and have absolutely no desire to ever find out!) for Berman's personal gratification. That is also a legally established fact.
But it seems reasonable to presume that Berman was abusing DECN corporate finance long in advance of Genviro scam, based on his pumps and teases in respect of the speculative and ultimately doomed TOV/JnJ patent litigation, as well as all the various Genultimate hyperbolic gushing imminent news that also never amounted to anything.
Berman did not wake up one day in the midst of a global pandemic and suddenly decide to become a grifter overnight. He had been honing his craft for years. And stiffing DECN investors for a decade at least. And as the the SEC filings pertaining to the trading suspension show, he was far from snow white even back before that.
The real zinger is on page 4! Shares issued for financing activities : $26million and change. (NOTE DOLLARS not shares!) Add in another $3.4m dollars in shares issued for debt and derivative liabilities.... And there is $30m of investor losses for Y/E 2020 alone.
And on the other side of the ledger: Net cash provided by financing activities: $2m and change.
So in Y/E 2020 Berman gave away shares to the value of $30m in exchange for $2m cash. He likely blew the $2m cash that came into the company on whatever Berman spent money on (best not to speculate) and the other $28m wasn't actually his loss so I guess he was not overy concerned about it. That's what happened to the life savings of DECN retail investors who invested in Genviro. Some of it was spaffed by Berman. The rest went to bottom feeding distressed corporate finance sharks.
I (think) I have pulled the numbers. Y/E Dec 2019 before the Covid scam (but NOT before the DECN scam as there was the JnJ litigation pump before then!) shares outstanding was 158.1million. Y/E Dec 2020 when the trust was revealed and the well started to run dry, there were 349.7 million shares outstanding. So almost 200 million freshly minted DECN shares were conjured up out of thin air and made available to buyers in the course of 2020 while the scam was operating at full throttle. During this period, shares traded at between about $0.02 and $0.37 And trading was brisk. Tens of millions of dollars of losses were amassed.
Yes, I see you are asking a specific question, not a general one. Well the OTC markets quarterly financials are still out there and have the outstanding shares at the time in each report.
If you pull up https://www.otcmarkets.com/file/company/financial-report/278905/content page 5 and 6 have the shares issued in 2020. Note the total line on page 6 obviously has the wrong year. Berman made many careless mistakes in all of his published fins (yet another sign of a scam), and after I would ridicule him here about it each quarter, he eventually added a disclaimer in each document (I do miss this!), which is classic Berman.
Error Repair The company will endeavor to repair any and all errors that new sets of eyes find in this document after it's posting, whether these errors are in spelling, grammatical, punctuation or numeric. We are not perfect and we remind the readers of this document that they are not perfect either.
and I'm not familar with the process of how me put money in his pocket.
That was simplicity itself. The company borrowed money. Berman spent it. Rather than investing it in product development, he used it to fund his lifestyle and peccadilloes.
Regardless of what transpired before March 2020, I'm trying to find out how much he profited from just off of the COVID scheme.
The best guess comes from the Sentence hearing which puts the fraud at in excess of $27m. My point is rather that not all that money went to Berman. He will only have seen a fraction of it. What fraction he saw himself is not that relevent. But the best guess would be most of the amount of cash that DECN raised on finance through that period will have been indulged by Berman. And he stopped reporting so its difficult to say exactly how much that was. And even while he was reporting, he may not have been being honest. So its hard to speculate. Much of the investor losses will have ended up in the pockets of the financiers that Berman sat down with to play poker against. And some will have gone the way of those who timed their DECN investments appositely and managed to buy after the dumps and sell on the pumps. Its academic. DECN longs investing in good faith on the back of statements made by Berman were stiffed to the tune of at least $27m. They lost that money because of Berman's fraud. How much of that $27m he profited from personally is not the issue. We know at least $360K was blown on web porn. And whatever he did with the rest, there's none of it left! Its almost like he engaged in a protracted series of 'double or quits' gambles with the share issues to raise more finance, always lost and only stopped when he couldn't borrow any more! Don't forget the guy was indicted on multiple fraud counts, released on bail and STILL he was trying to borrow money using non existent DECN revenue and worthless equity as collateral!
The timeframe within the endictment was from March 2020 to December 2020...the end date might be debateable but the start date is not. Regardless of what transpired before March 2020, I'm trying to find out how much he profited from just off of the COVID scheme. It doesn't matter in the end, but I don't remember the stock reverse splitting during that time....but I can't remember the amount of dilution and I'm not familar with the process of how me put money in his pocket.
I meant from the time the COVID test issues started. So early 2020 to...I suppose late 2020....how many shares were diluted. Would that represent the amount he profited?
Its not as simple as that! How much did Berman really profit? Well ultimately he is in jail. And he's either better at hiding cash than law enforcement are at finding it, or else he is stony broke. If a gambler steals $10m dollars and then loses it at the casino, has he really profited? And has the casino done anything wrong? This is effectively what may have happened here it seems, except the casino was the sordid cess pit that is distressed corporate finance. There is no question that it was never Berman's cash to lose. And there is no question that those who entrusted their savings to Berman have been utterly bilked. But if you are at a card table in a casino and a guy walks in with bags of cash, no idea how to play the game, and takes a seat at a table with 7 guys names 'Doc' who DO know how the game is played, those 7 guys aren't asking him where he got the cash from while they relieve him of it all, in accordance with house rules and the laws of the game he has entered at his own behest. Similarly, those cam girls were under no obligation to ask whether the money he paid out for services rendered was his to expend (it wasn't!). Its hard to determine whether others acted illegally when relieving Berman of the cash that he stole. Its quite possible that this was the case. But at the bottom, it was Berman that stole it!
I meant from the time the COVID test issues started. So early 2020 to...I suppose late 2020....how many shares were diluted. Would that represent the amount he profited?
Posting this for the old DECN lurkers, as the current posters have know this for years, but aside from the Covid test being a scam, any reasonable person can now know that the diabetes testing business was a scam too, as it is worthless. It was running, selling poor quality diabetes test products that didn't meet the standards of any US health insurance. It was merely running, at a loss, so that Berman could pump and sell shares to cover his lifestyle.
There was one screwball on another board who claimed shareholders would see 5 to 10 cents a share from a sale of the diabetes business, or that someone else would step in and continue to run it!
How could a reasonable person now know that this business is worthless now for sure? The fact that now, a year later, no one offered any significant money for the business. Surely at this point, someone, the SEC, the courts, shareholders, debtors, or savvy businessmen would have sought to buy or have the business sold to pay off debts, restitution, or shareholders. Or better yet, to fund his own damn legal defense instead of relying on public defenders!! Does anyone think Berman would turn down a half million dollars for his business?
So, just understand people, this case didn't just finally show you that the Covid test idea was a scam, but the results show that the diabetes test business, which was the rest of the company, was pretty much a scam too.
There is no way any reasonable investor would have needed to see this to know this, but now, for the rest of you, finally now you (should) know too.
Do you recall how much dilution there was during this entire saga?
That's a tricky one! It depends whether you believe the accounts that DECN publsihed! And the problem with doing that should be fairly obvious.... Then there is the fact that the fraud continued after the DECN ticker had 'gone dark' and stopped filings. But safe to say ... its ALOT! In 2014 there were ~44million outstanding ordinary shares. And this was 3 years after the 14:1 reverse split of 2011.So one share bought you about 1/44millionth of DECNs equity in 2014 and it would have cost you between about 27 and 43 cents. By late 2020 there were nearly 355 million shares outstanding. So one share would have bought you about 1/355 millionth of DECN. So that is an 8 times dilution during the last 6 years of operations. Or new shares being pumped out at an average rate of 60 million a year! And that came hot on the heels of a 14:1 reverse split. If you go back before the R/S in 2011 then you are looking at a dilution of at least 110 times. That's almost homeopathic levels of dilution! 😀 Now by any objective analysis there was nothing very much different between the DECN organization in 2011 and the same organization in 2020 that would have in any way justified a 100+ times increase in the value of the enterprise. Ergo shareholders were being bilked. The lesson being that if anyone gave you a DECN share at any point in time for whatever reason e.g. in exchange for services or finance rendered, then you had better sell it on very quick before its value basically spontaneously combusted. Which is what pretty much all the DECN debt financers and probably a few insiders as well will very likely have done.
IIRC Berman made quite a big thing about not having a significant DECN share holding himself as if this was some sort of 'clean hands' virtue and a defence against allegations of dishonest insider dealing. Whereas I postulate that the reason he did not hold DECN shares himself is simply because he more than anyone knew exactly what they were worth, and would have disposed of any that fell into his possession with undue haste!
I'm more interested in finding out how he obtained those funds in the first place.
He used company credit cards. So it was the cash of his investors. The company borrowed heavily. The lenders were then paid off with newly minted shares, handed over at a huge discount to the loan principle advanced. The new shares were then traded by DECN's lenders to gullible DECN retail investors, who were in practice only ever paying over good money in return for an ever shrinking piece of an always increasing pile of debts. They thought they were buying magic beans. As long as Berman maintained a fresh supply of buyers for the shares with his lies and fake news, his lenders would keep forking over more loan cash for him to embezzle. And why would they not? They were charging exorbitant interest rates and getting paid back in shares at a huge discount, and flipping these immediately to turn an immediate and easy profit! Only the shareholders were getting bilked.
Yet he spent $360k on live web porn. You'd have to wonder why he didn't come up with a mental illness porn addiction defense, showing how he spent all the funds this way, with hardly any other assets, and he should be sent for mental treatment rather than prison.
I guess finally something on restitution will be public. I'm guessing the redactions have to do with the details of his assets.
Apr 30, 2025 MINUTE ORDER as to KEITH BERMAN: The parties are ORDERED to meet and confer to propose redactions to the 215 Memorandum Order resolving dispute over 190 Notice of Restitution. Redactions will enable a public version of the Order to be docketed and published. The parties are ORDERED to propose these redactions, if any, by May 14, 2025. SO ORDERED. Signed by Judge Trevor N. McFadden on 4/30/2025.
Pumper... with all respect Fuente has crossed the floor. Its not 'them vs us'. Its 'fact vs fiction'. So get off his back. He is acutely aware of the facts of this case by now. Moreso than you. And while he may have at times acted in a manner that was sub optimal, the only pertinent differences between him and me are (i) He believed some stuff that I doubted and questioned (ii) he put his money behind those ill positioned beliefs and lost money as a result. Fuente is a victim of Berman. How much did you lose on this scam pumper? The only thing you and I lost to Berman was words and abuse. These things are cheap and can be got anywhere. Fuente lost actual money. We are not the victims here.And Fuente is not the criminal. Where Fuente went wrong was mistaking his actual friends - those who were looking after his interests - like me - for his enemies with their own agendas - like - Matthew Steinman. So - play nice an get an ally. ... Sticks and stones. Fuente..... Hail fellow ... well met!
I apply the same scrutiny to anything that falls out of the mouth (or backside.... for they are one and the same) of a certain Donald J Trump as I would to the affadavits of Keith M Berman. This approach has stood me in good stead thus far. This week, particularly.
Fuentes suggestion works where I am. I have listened to the transcripts. "Dull" does not do it justice. Paltering and obfuscation of a Trumpian magnitude. ... so erm...
He's basically repeating defence pleadings at the pre-sentence hearing. If he can limit investor losses to before the trading suspension, He can cut his term. Its clearly bunk as that would take the shareholder letter and all the other ongoing fraud out of the equation. I'd like to say no judge would fall for that nonsense but given the current state of US politics... when the commander in chief is a convicted fraudster and liar ... well anything can happen. I personally am removing my exposure to all US equities on the basis that your entire nation seems to have flipped its lid.
"Mr. Collins noted that Mr. Berman had admitted to his crimes by pleading guilty.
“His reputation is now in tatters,” Mr. Collins wrote. “His business is destroyed. His relationship with his family is strained. And at 70, with significant medical issues and a felony conviction, his chances of living his life like before are nonexistent."
Would have been interesting to get details on that. I remember him pleading to the Judge that he be allowed to travel out of State to see his son.
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