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Duane is an advisor for Revvim, and Steven Marshall is head of global analytics For Revvim as well as the Vice President of Business Development for Revvim
https://www.revvim.com/company/leadership/
Read it again, Janice. It clearly says non stock specific boards.
Also, the customer service here is horrendous, your paying members are treated like trash, you're down to one admin, and that particular admin spends her free time posting with her buddies, on non stock specific boards like cooking/recipes, who happen to be run and moderated by the same group of people that hate us, the same group that hates your members. In other words, your only admin here commiserates and spends her free time with the people that hate us, they are her friends, she aligns with them, not us, so it is no wonder why we get treated like shit when we ask her for help. Please fix that. GLTY Amit. I hope you make the right decision here, it is a very easy decision and simple one to make, otherwise your goal here of bringing anyone of value back to Ihub will fail.
Yep, enjoy the show!
BIG $MONI
Mr. Marshall, that last post to you from the protection team leader is bait, do not take the bait! Here at IHUB if you are officially deemed an insider of any of the public companies discussed here, the same rules that apply to everyone else here will no longer apply to you. Once officially deemed an insider they will attack you personally, and relentlessly with no recourse or protection. I've seen it a dozen times and it is not pretty. Do NOT take their bait or answer any of their questions. Let them just wonder and worry their asses off about you like they are now. Read rule 2.12 in the link below. Have a great day!
https://ihwiki.advfn.com/index.php?title=FAQ:Deletions_and_Restores#I_don.27t_understand_why_calling_the_CEO_of_our_company_a_liar_is_not_considered_a_personal_attack.
Yep, there they are. ASCM still boxing us in and they must be dealt with. This post applies to you too ETG58. You seem to know a lot about this subject, and unless you are willing to do something about it, you are just as much part of the problem as ASCM is. We must work together to make sure that FINA is aware of ASCM's illegal behavior here with MONI. File your official complaint to FINRA today. If you see something, say something, right? Thank you.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174836698
Report ASCM to FINRA now:
https://www.finra.org/investors/need-help/file-a-complaint
Mr. Marshall, as a MONI shareholder, I feel compelled to inform you that trying to reason with these bashers here aka the self proclaimed "Protection Team" will never work. They can't be bargained with, they can't be reasoned with, they don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop... ever, until MONI is dead! They are Terminator bashers. Something else you should know, and something you should definitely relay to Kristen Shaughnessy, who just happens to be a hero of mine for the work she does for us retail traders, is that Market Maker (ASCM) ASCENDIANT CAPITAL MARKETS, LLC been actively shorting the piss out of MONI for at least the last 3+ years, I suspect much longer, but do not fear them Mr. Marshall as they are scared of you. Your endeavor here with MONI has them literally panicking as I'm sure you've noticed by their responses to you. Reasoning with them is futile. Take the fight directly to FINRA. ASCM has a long wrap sheet with FINRA and has literally been fined, sanctioned, suspended, hit with digorgements, and censured by FINRA at least 10 times. Two of those times have been for violating regulation SHO(naked shorting), locking and crossing just like they are doing now, as you can currently see from their best bid/ask position on level 2. ASCM is not a retail broker. Not a single one of your current shareholders buys or sells will ever be routed through ASCM. They are shorting MONI from their own account, and their short position here is large enough to choke a hippo. You are in a position here where you can break ASCM spine, and create a short squeeze on them that they will not survive, and help run MONI's stock price higher than most would believe possible. These are the goons I speak of:
https://ascendiant.com/our-team/
Here is ASCM's wrap sheet with FINRA. The terminator bashers here will try to convince you and all others that this illegal naked shorting does not exist. They attack you and call you a conspiracy theorist if you try talk about it. It seems to really ruffle their feathers, and that's regardless of you being able to see the official FINRA infractions/events that are posted from FINRA of them doing just that, naked shorting these stocks. Below are attached 2 events with FINRA of ASCM getting caught red handed naked shorting stock. Feel free to read all 10 of FINRA's events against ASCM to get a good feel of who you are dealing with here. Real criminals!
https://files.brokercheck.finra.org/firm/firm_152912.pdf
and here is one with them locking and crossing to drive the stock price down.
When you see ASCM in the top bid/ask position on the MONI level 2 quote, with their not held 10,000 share iceberg orders, you know they are illegally suppressing the stock price. I've seen ASCM do this here 1,000 times. Below is from them doing it earlier today about an hour ago, and they are still probably doint it right now as I type this to you. Remember, none of these orders that routed through ASCM are retail shareholder. They're shorting it.
I suggest that you do as I have done and report this ASCM behavior yourself directly to FINRA. As an officer/director of MONI it would probably be taken more seriously by FINRA. I just got my confirmation number emailed to me from FINRA for my official complaint to FINRA about ASCM. I think that you and any of the previous officers and directors should file a complaint about ASCM's activity on MONI as well, heck I think every MONI shareholder that cares about their MONI investment and the OTC as a whole should file an official complaint about ASCM and their illegal behavior here too. You/they can do that here at the link attached below. It is simple and should only take 10 minutes.
https://www.finra.org/investors/need-help/file-a-complaint
With that said, I am very excited about your endeavors here with MONI, and as a shareholder I look forward to supporting you in any way I can. I also couldn't be any more thrilled about your host for tomorrows twitter spaces call @3:00 pm est with Kristen Shaughnessy. She has been fighting tirelessly for years to combat these crooked market makers just like ASCM. She's an incredible woman and an invaluable asset to you and your team. Best of luck to you Mr. Marshal, and I am so thankful that you are here.
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MONI to the MOON
Like clockwork? As soon as ASCM takes the best bid and best ask position on level 2 a certain basher starts literally panicking. Anyone else notice this weird phenomenon? I've seen it at least 100 times. The bashers will assure you that Market Makers can not and do not naked short OTC stocks, all while you can so easily go read public FINRA reports about how FINRA had to censure and fine ASCM for doing exactly that (naked shorting stocks) It's all right here in black & white FINRA print. Everyone can see them with their own eyes "locking & crossing" just like they are right now. Anyone can simply check the timestamps of when ASCM shifts positions on level 2 to take the best bid & ask, and match that up with when the "protection team" leader starts literally panic posting. Who is the "protection team" here to protect? Looks like the ASCM "protection team" to me.
https://files.brokercheck.finra.org/firm/firm_152912.pdf
Just read this FINA report about how ASCM was sanctioned, censured, fined and suspended by FINRA for doing exactly what the bashers try so hard to convince you that they are not. Here is one example(pic related) click the link and read the rest for yourself.
11 years? WOO WEE Warmachine, that's quite the commitment, I am so impressed. Since you've been here on this thread for 11+ years, do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions? How long has the market maker ASCM(Ascendant Capital Markets LLC) been shorting MONI? You see I have only been here for about 4 years now, and came across MONI(WOGI) when it was in the low to mid trips, 9 months later it hit .1465 for like a 146,000% gain from it's bottom in roughly 9 months, it was awesome, but back then 4 years ago I remember the market maker ASCM being here on the MM lineup on level 2 from the beginning for me. I was unfamiliar with ASCM at that time so I did a little research on them and it turns out ASCM is a notorious shorter. They don't let retail traders use them, and I have asked literally dozens of full time OTC traders if they have EVER had a single one of their trades routed through ASCM on the buy or sell side, and every single one of them said no. I personally have never seen any of my orders ever routed through ASCM either, and that's because, like I said, they are not a retail firm. So I guess my questions to you are: How long has ASCM been shorting MONI? I can contest to at least 4 years because I've watched them with my own eyes for at least that long, but how long before I got here 4 years ago was ASCM actively shorting MONI or whatever the previous ticker was here? Have they been here for 11 years? Also, there is one particular basher that shows up religiously and immediately after ASCM joins the MONI's level 2 market maker lineup. They'll be times when ASCM leaves for months or weeks and that particular basher goes quiet, but then like clock work, ASCM shows up, and almost immediately this panicked basher shows up. Have you noticed that too, Warmachine? Do you think there is a connection there? I do.
11 YEARS of ACCURATELLY calling out scams on this thread and still being called a basher.
Ascendiant Capital
Let's return to Mr. Woo's firm. They must have been aware of his GME coverage and could have stopped him (or encouraged him). Why would ACM want him to provide coverage on GME? It's not in their focus of biotech. Who are they and why are they paying his salary to cover a game retailer?
Their official statement is:
Ascendiant Capital Markets, LLC is a full-service boutique investment banking firm providing corporate finance, M&A advisory, equity research, market making, and institutional sales and trading services.
So they raise capital for corporations, arrange M&As, provide research, and also buy/sell equities. They seem to specialize in small or micro-cap biotech. Typical investment bank: lots of room for conflicts of interest, but that's not unique on Wall Street.
What does FINRA have to say about Ascendiant? A lot, it turns out. (Ref: https://files.brokercheck.finra.org/firm/firm_152912.pdf)
Ascendiant was formed in 2010 in Nevada. Its main office is in Jupiter, Florida, and it has another office in Irvine, CA. Hold up just a second, ACM's offices are in Jupiter, Florida. That's just 30 minutes down the freeway from the Four Seasons Palm Beach, until recently the home of Citadel trading desk. That's just another coincidence, right? Yeah, right.
ACM is 75% or more owned by Ascendiant Capital Partners, LLC (ACP). But, there's more: Ascendiant Capital Group, LLC is the owner of both ACP and ACM. Layers within layers. And where is ACP located? Yep, also in South Florida.
According to FINRA, there have been 9 "final, formal proceedings initiated by a regulatory authority" against ACM. Let's take a little trip down memory lane:
In their earliest regulatory tangle, on 9/17/2014, FINRA caught ACM running locking/crossing quotations in OTC securities. That sounds familiar, doesn't it? These are the same techniques implicated in some of the dark web and Philadelphia exchange moves against GME being discussed here. They claimed it was a result of inadequate supervision and got a censure and a $7.5k fine. (aka. a slap on the wrist)
NASDAQ, on 2/12/2015, found 20 times the firm had failed to provide an order/execution record corresponding to an apparent proprietary order entered into the NASDAQ system. They broke several rules and blamed it again on bad supervision and training. But get this, they were also caught "LOCKING/CROSSING AN EXISTING NASDAQ QUOTE". So they were playing with order entries and got caught on NASDAQ after getting caught 5 months prior on the OTC. But again, "bad training." Censure with another measly $7k fine.
2/23/2015 - FINRA fines and censures again. Ascendiant was not disclosing information properly to customers, not sending FINRA the right data on time, and...wait for it:
EFFECTED A SHORT SALE IN AN EQUITY SECURITY FOR ITS OWN ACCOUNT WITHOUT: BORROWING THE SECURITY, OR ENTERING INTO A BONA-FIDE ARRANGEMENT TO BORROW THE SECURITY OR HAVING REASONABLE GROUNDS TO BELIEVE THAT THE SECURITY COULD BE BORROWED SO THAT IT COULD BE DELIVERED ON THE DATE DELIVERY IS DUE
So they didn't have reasonable grounds to believe the security could be borrowed? And failed to deliver? That's naked shorting, in a nutshell. Holy hell. They got off with censure and a $52.5k fine, without admitting guilt.
Right after this, it breaks in the press that there's been a lot more bad behavior for the previous few years. According to FINRA investigators, two traders at Ascendiant were actively committing fraud between July 2012 and July 2014:
The first Spearman case (12-04191) proved especially egregious, as a FINRA arbitration panel found he engaged in "acts of fraud and malice" in penny stock trading, and that he and Ascendiant Capital engaged in acts of fraud and malice in bad faith by trying to cover up the fraud by giving false testimony at FINRA hearings. FINRA ruled against Spearman and Ascendiant Capital jointly and ordered them to pay their claimant $437,603.25, plus interest, in compensatory damages, plus $10,000 in punitive damages, costs and attorneys' fees.
Spearman also faces a pending dispute alleging that he failed to liquidate a customer's entire position with Dewmar International BMC (DEWM) by selling shares in the open market, as ordered by the complaining customer. The complaint charges that Spearman and Ascendiant were shorting a large position in DEWM, which posed a conflict of interest and, according to the complaint, was the reason Spearman refused to sell the shares. Alleged damages are $150,000.
Kevin Tufts has worked with Ascendiant from February 2011 to the present in the Irvine branch office. Tufts filed for bankruptcy in 2013.
(Ref: https://www.stocklaw.com/securities-fraud-blog/2015/july/finra-fines-ascendiant-capital-markets-of-irvine/ and http://disciplinaryactions.finra.org/Search/ViewDocument/54155)
Digging into these two, I found that Sean Spearman lost his license and was barred from the securities industry forever. Kevin Tufts, however, was not. And he wasn't even fired from Ascendiant for what was some pretty shady behavior. Guess where he is today? That's right, he's still at Ascendiant. He's listed as in charge of "Trading Operations", no less. (Ref: https://ascendiant.com/Team/Market-Making-Trading)
6/25/2015 - FINRA complaint about not updating the status of "two registered representatives" that they were under investigation by FINRA, and that another was subject to an IRS tax lien and had a customer complaint. It seems likely this is referring to Spearman and Tufts. Ascendiant was trying to hide the investigation. The firm was censured and fined $20k. Mysteriously, "A lower fine was imposed, after considering, among other things, the firm's revenue and financial resources". Fine wasn't paid until 8/14/2017.
3/11/2016 - Two separate regulatory findings around while it was offering a company's common stock, purchased the stock on its own, violating Rule 101 of Regulation M. Another set of censures and two $12.5k fines.
3/23/2016 - Failed to transmit to the FINRA/NASDAQ trade reporting facility (FNTRF) last sale reports of transactions. They accepted a censure and fine of $57k. It took them until Aug 2019 to pay the fines.
11/28/2016 - Late to pay their FINRA membership fees of $33k. Mark Bergendahl was trying to work a payment plan with FINRA but they suspended ACM for a few days over it. So the firm is having money troubles.
12/19/2017 - FINRA accused them of overcharged a customer $140k for stock trades. ACM initially denied the allegations and said they were "without merit", but on 3/15/2018 they agreed to being censured, paying a $60k fine, and being "prohibited from engaging in principal basis stock and equity trades" for 12 months. So, they got pretty well busted there and out of the trading business for a year. Not that it stopped them from getting back into it, judging by their recent filings.
OK, so it's been quiet since 2018, so they either stopped breaking the rules (haha) or got better at it. Ascendiant appears to have been running a small hedge fund/private office for the last few years. In their SEC annual filings for the years 2017-2019, their finances aren't great. They ended 2017 with equity of $208mm, 2018 with equity of $336M, but ended 2019 down to $205M. They haven't published their 2020 results, which is at least a month late for them; every year until now they filed it by March 11. Maybe bad news?
Refs: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/vprr/1800/18005225.pdf https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/vprr/1901/19010276.pdf https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/vprr/2000/20009495.pdf
Wedbush
Now Wedbush is larger and has been around a lot longer, starting in the 1980s, but has been up to much the same tricks. They have a massive FINRA violation file. It clocks in at 336 pages and has 111 violation disclosures. I read through it so you don't have to. (Ref: https://files.brokercheck.finra.org/firm/firm_877.pdf)
The most interesting behavior by Wedbush is in the last 6 years. Spoiler alert: FTDs, naked shorting, improper reporting. I know, shocking, right?
In 2015, Wedbush was caught allowing a client over a period of 2 years to redeem ETFs it was not long on, in a scheme to reset Failure-To-Delivers while shorting a stock. Here we go again with the FTDs:
During the review period, Scout Trading submitted at least 255 naked redemption orders through Wedbush in 11 ETFs, totaling over 295 million shares. This naked redemption activity, along with short selling of the ETFs on the secondary market by Scout Trading, resulted in substantial, repeated fails to deliver by Wedbush.(Reference: https://www.finra.org/media-center/news-releases/2016/finra-and-nasdaq-fine-wedbush-securities-inc-675000-supervisory)
In 2017, they did it again. On 9/26/2017, Wedbush accepted a censure and $70k fine for violating Rule 204 of Regulation SHO, ie. FTDs/naked shorting. They also got hit the same day for failing to transmit 548,669,414 orders, creating 171 naked short orders, and not properly reporting their short positions for 61 dates. Censure of course, and $470k in fines, which they probably laughed about and wrote it off as a "Cost of Doing Business." Wedbush is like a low-rent Citadel.
Most recently, in 2018, FINRA fined them $1m, censured them, required them to bring in an outside auditor and hire a full-time regulatory compliance officer. Why? Because their late Owner/CEO Edward Wedbush was running 70 different accounts for himself, friends, family, and others, trading across them, between them, front-running and who knows what else, with no supervision. He broke all sorts of rules, too many to list here. But $1m?? It's a joke.
FINRA/SEC/NASD
One common theme from this DD (and I only looked at two broker-dealers) is that our security regulatory bodies are all talk and no teeth. They make a lot of serious-sounding noise about violations and failures to comply and supervisory negligence, but then they roll over and hand out meager fines and don't even get them to admit guilt, much less pay serious fines or go to jail.
Wedbush, for example, got to enter into "an offer of settlement and consent for the sole purpose of settling this disciplinary proceeding without adjudication of any issues of law or fact, and without admitting or denying any allegations or findings referred to in the offer of settlement." And this was for intentionally violating Rule 204(A) of Regulation SHO on FTDs! They don't admit any guilt, they just pay a fine and do it again.
Reading Wedbush's file, it's painfully repetitive. The same violations with no real consequences. "Settlement and Consent" is all over the place. It's no wonder that Citadel has been and continues to blatantly break the rules to try to avoid bankruptcy. Have enough expensive lawyers and a few connections in the regulatory agencies, and you can just do whatever you want.
And if you need any more confirmation on how employees in FINRA/SEC/NASD hit that sweet revolving door to cash in with private enterprise by using their knowledge of the rules to help them, check out these two individuals:
Michael O. Brown, a former FINRA compliance examiner, NASD arbitrator and member of NASD Examination Review Committee: https://ascendiant.com/Team/Compliance/Michael-O-Brown (According to his LinkedIn profile, he has been consulting for the last 27 years, and was consulting for Ascendiant while all these violations were going on)
Brian M. Megenity, a former FINRA compliance examiner, now works for Ascendiant: https://ascendiant.com/Team/Compliance/Brian-M-Megenity (According to his LinkedIn profile, he's also an independent consultant for the last 20 years, and was consulting Ascendiant during the time of the violations)
So Ascendiant's top two compliance officers are A) not full-time employees, B) were around during their violations, and C) seem to be asleep at the wheel or complicit in what their traders have been doing.
Back to the present
Now, if you were a hedge fund that had your "Senior Analyst" telling you in early 2020 that GameStop is going flat or down, which is what Mr. Woo was publishing, AND you have low-conscience traders with experience in naked shorting, FTDs, and lock/cross trading, AND you only ever get minor fines for breaking the rules AND you're desperate to make up for losses in 2019, you'd probably be tempted to go deep shorting GameStop into bankruptcy. Just like your well-heeled friends at Citadel or Susquehanna tell you they're doing, over drinks in the Hamptons, or on the yacht in Marina del Rey.
Which was great fun, until things turned wrong for you in January and the apes bought the float. And to handle this catastrophe, you went back to your roots: naked shorting, because, well, the same reason Citadel is. Kick the can down the road. Bend the rules.
But now, it's April, and you're sitting on a stack of naked shorts, and you don't have the resources of Citadel to keep kicking the can down the road, cycling FTDs, and paying journalists.
Maybe one of the SHFs offered you some loans, or let you in on the dark pool, or shared some shorted ETFs. However it happened, Ascendiant realized that if they don't help out the SHFs and do whatever it takes to get GME down to $0, then their goose is cooked in the same pot.
And this brings us full circle back to Mr. Woo, who got them into this problem in the first place by publishing bearish reports on GME with low price targets. He chose to or was pressured to publish some even more bearish analysis, reduce the price target, and change to a SELL rating. This was then pushed out widely to MarketWatch, CNBC, Barron's, Yahoo, and everywhere else that boomers get their news in a coordinated PR blitz.
Nice try, Mr. Woo and your shady compatriots. This time you're going to get more than a fine and a slap on the wrist.
AI
