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It's not an opinion, rruffie. It's an obvious fact.
It's not a lottery ticket, rruffie. It's a scam, pure and simple.
It's not a matter of downplaying anything, jimbo. It's a matter of accurately reporting the hearing topic, something that seems to escape your comprehension.
Do you enjoy being trivial, jimmy? The hearing is about front funning PIPES.
Shapiro can't even do basic arithmetic. Nowhere near 10% if equities have even t+4 fails.
Prosecuting attorneys have long memories, Janice. Jimbo should have realized that.
GTC-do you know what a compliance officer is? Read up on it.
You are really quite ignorant as to the basics of the market.
I get no kick from moraine
Mere over till
90 meters of fill
Is my idea of bogus voodoo
But I got a pump out of you
Your posts are clear, rrruffie. You suck up to any naked short/scam claim in sub-penny pump and dumps.
I'm quite familiar with FOIA requests, crossbow. I get them answered in ten days generally.
No, gtc, it isn't possible.
What he's doing is perfectly legal, rruffie. Just like your advocating obvious scams on the basis that they might go up in price.
And as questionable.
FOIA request in:
The Naval Sea Systems Command, Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division, Dahlgren, Va
No they aren't, rrruffie. They are based on fantasyland "ifs".
I think I have some issues with Mr. Cuban on that one. While it may be legal, it certainly blurs some ethical lines in journalism. I would be much more comfortable if he bought or sold simultaneously with publication, as Our-Street.com did.
Response to what, rrruffie?
OT-Hasher, goldwings beat harleys with an ugly stick. And they even make BMW's look lame.
LOL, phil. The logic is quite simple. This was a pump and dump scam run by an amway con-man fronting for organized crime.
And guess what: they are getting nailed for it.
OT-It looks like nufced's hero Jim Bolt has really stepped in it this time:
--QT-------------------------------------------------------------
FBI Used Fake Broker To Target Arkansas Co
By Carol S. Remond
A Dow Jones Newswires Column
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--In an unusual sting operation, the U.S.
Department of Justice used a bogus securities firm and federal
agents posing as brokers to target a small private biotech
company it suspects of fraud.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation used fake brokerage firm
Talon Holdings to ensnare insiders at Arkansas-based Shimoda
Atlantic Oncology Biosciences LLC.
The Justice Department issued criminal subpoenas to these people
last month. A target letter accompanying the subpoenas shows
that a grand jury in the Western District of Arkansas is
investigating whether the company committed securities fraud or
conspired to commit mail fraud, wire fraud and securities
fraud.
Jim Bolt, Shimoda's compliance manager, told Dow Jones that a
man called John Firo, who claimed to be a securities broker
registered with NASD, contacted the company in April 2005. Firo,
who provided an NASD registration number which later turned out
to be phony, offered to help Shimoda raise cash by bringing in
new investors.
Bolt and Shimoda, a company which says it's developing an
anti-tumor drug which may one day help cancer patients, claim
the sting operation is actually retaliation for a long
contentious relationship with a local prosecutor. Shimoda
recently filed a complaint in the Circuit Court of Benton
County, Arkansas, against Talon Holdings and NASD.
The FBI and NASD declined to comment.
By his own account Bolt is no choir boy. He blames alcohol abuse
for his several run-ins with the law. Bolt was convicted in 1982
in the Northern District of Oklahoma of mail fraud and making
material false statements to a federally insured bank and was
sentenced to three years. He was convicted in
1992 of one count of theft of property in Washington County
Arkansas and sentenced to three years to run concurrent with his
federal parole revocation.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons' Web site, Bolt was
released in July 1995.
"My past is what it is. But how long does one have to pay for
his past mistakes," Bolt told Dow Jones, adding that he has been
sober since 1993.
But people familiar with Bolt say he and his associates continue
to play the same games that led Arkansas securities regulators
in 2002 to issue a cease and desist order to Golf Entertainment
Inc. and some of its insiders, including
Bolt, to stop selling unregistered stock. Also named in that
action were John Dodge and Mel Robinson, Shimoda's corporate
counsel and marketing director, respectively.
Although he acknowledges that Shimoda used several fictitious
names to promote its fledging pharmaceutical business, Bolt
claims that "it was benign deception" to protect the company and
its insiders from a smear campaign launched by a competitor.
In Golf Entertainment's case, the use of a bogus lawsuit to
transfer stock to an insider was troubling enough for then
Prosecuting Attorney for Benton County, Robert Balfe, to write
the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Department
of Justice in August 2002 asking for their help to investigate
Bolt and others.
"In short, Golf Entertainment is an organization created and
operated simply to funnel stock to a fictitious organization,"
Balfe wrote in his letter. "These habitual criminals should not
be allowed to continue to manipulate markets and defraud
investors," Balfe wrote, referring to Bolt and Robinson.
Balfe, now U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas,
said he is aware of the criminal investigation into Shimoda but
that his office recused itself from it.
Back in August 2002, when asked about Golf Entertainment in a
telephone interview with Dow Jones, Balfe said the company was
"a complete sham ran by a group of con men." Golf Entertainment
at one time threatened to sue Balfe but Bolt said no complaint
was filed.
Bolt recently reached out to a number of reporters after he
became aware that he had been tricked by the FBI. A lawyer for
Shimoda said he received a call last month from Peter
Loewenberg, a Department of Justice attorney in charge of the
Shimoda investigation, who asked him to tell Bolt to abstain
from talking to the media.
There was no way for Bolt to know it at the time Firo contacted
Shimoda, but Firo and Talon are fake entities made up by the
Albuquerque division of the FBI to conduct undercover
operations.
According to the May 9 deposition of retired FBI special agent
Robert Bettes in the U.S. District Court for the District of New
Mexico, Talon Holdings was used in 2004 to apply to do business
with the State of New Mexico as part of a federal corruption
investigation into former state treasurer Robert Vigil.
Vigil in 2005 was accused of demanding kickbacks from investment
advisers and charged with racketeering, conspiracy, money
laundering and extortion. A mistrial was recently declared and
prosecutors have asked for a retrial.
According to Bettes' testimony in the Vigil case, Talon was
registered with the NASD under a cooperative agreement but had
no license to conduct business with the general public. NASD
public records show that Bettes, who went under the alias Robert
Brewer, and Talon had fake registration numbers just like Firo.
That means that anybody checking on them in NASD's public
database would be led to believe that they were members of NASD
in good standing. Those records were removed from that database
after this reporter inquired about them.
Claiming that it was misled and defrauded by Talon Holdings and
the NASD, Shimoda has filed a complaint against the two entities
and others in the Circuit Court of Benton County, AR.
According to Bolt, Firo and an associate named Patrick Lochrie
visited Shimoda in late March and offered to bring in a wealthy
Dubai investor.
Bolt says the three men visited Shimoda's laboratory in Rogers,
AR in May and signed an agreement under which Mohammed Galani,
the would-be-Dubai-investor, agreed to purchase 20 million
shares of the company for $3 million.
The next day, according to Bolt, FBI special agent Michael
Patkus hand-delivered federal grand jury subpoenas to Shimoda
insiders and told the company that the three people which whom
it had been dealing with were "law enforcement."
Patkus declined to comment.
FBI sting operations are rarely directed at securities fraud.
Most recently, five people were arrested in Newark in 2002 in a
scheme to pass $125 billion in fake federal reserve notes. The
men attempted to obtain a credit line backed by the bogus notes
from a broker who ended up being an undercover FBI agent.
Meanwhile back in 1996, 45 people were arrested after a
three-year investigation uncovered a ring of stock promoters who
bribed brokers. In that case, the FBI had set up an undercover
firm in New York to nab the defendants. An FBI agent said at the
time that it was the first time that the Bureau had used such a
front to go after stock fraud.
Lochrie, one of the three men who took part in the sting
operation, dismisses Shimoda's claims that it was deceived and
suffered financially because of it.
"This company is ran by a bunch of con men," said Lochrie in a
telephone interview. Lochrie, who appears to be a cooperating
witness, declined to comment on the FBI probe.
Lochrie disputes Bolt's claim that Shimoda was first contacted
by Firo. Instead Lochrie said that one of his clients was
contacted by Shimoda seeking financing. After conducting due
diligence research, Lochrie said he found Shimoda lacking on all
aspects and told his client not to invest.
Bolt called Lochrie's recollection "untruthful" and pointed to
an April 4, 2005 email in which Firo posing as a broker appears
to be soliciting Shimoda for business. "He is clearly cold
calling us and introducing himself. The two stories don't wash,"
Bolt said.
Firo didn't return a telephone call seeking comment. Galani
couldn't be located.
Arkansas securities commissioner Michael Johnson said he was
aware of thesting operation but that state regulators stayed
clear of the federal probe.
"These guys are easily spooked," Johnson said referring to Bolt
and others at Shimoda.
(Carol S. Remond is an award-winning columnist who won a Gerald
Loeb Award
in 2005 for best news service content with "Exposing Small-Cap
fraud," a series of articles that described how three small
companies unscrupulously pumped up their stocks.)
-By Carol S. Remond; Dow Jones Newswires; 201 938 2074;
carol.remond@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
13-06-06 2041GMT
_________________________________________________________________
rrruffie-uncritical acceptance of company claims when all the evidence is to the contrary sounds like pumping to me.
Sam-I think you are on your own. Pearlie will gladly undercut you.
Yeah, hasher. RRRuffie has the rare distinction of being the only person ever banned from Jeff's SI board. Same aimless, board clogging behavior over there.
Jimmy-a trust would be listed in the shareholder list.
Dragon-rrruffie also conveniently omits other issues, such as the massive FUBAR and likely total lack of liquidity that this "debenture" will bring about. And the likley dropping of trading it by the point and click brokers, who are getting very tired of dealing with stink sheet BS.
Read exhibit 14 from the hearing, jimmy. Insiders hold nil.
How would you do the extrapolation, GTC. Do be specific...for once.
The market refutes you, rrruffie. It is valuing the bogus debenture at zero.
Lol, rrruffie. The odds of that debenture being paid (if it is indeed legal) are precisely zero. And your lending any credence to Pearlie's moronic claims of a "naked short" in a gray market DoM scam shows exactly where your "logic" is coming from.
Are you still flogging the CMKI "naked short" over at SI?
Maybe Urbie is going to frame his windows with that Muscovite.
I'm using terraserver, which is also dated. Pretty country, though.
May urban be infested with black flies.
Best resolution I could find is 15 M. Doesn't reveal much.
Jonsie-it looks like a body shop. They use the "disabled vet" schtick to get the set-aside contracts, take a cut off of the top, and sub the actual work out to others.
Limo-I found one reference to them in a list of the Georgia DOT approved contractors. Clearly they are not big players.
NASD-does anybody have the coordinates of Urbie's wilderness retreat? I'll see if I can find a satellite shot.
I would think the delay of the book is not a good sign. Its release may coincide with the RICO indictments.
Not good for sales.
That's not just a risk, cosmo; it's a given.
HLS start trading? Aren't you forgetting little details like a registration statement?
I don't think a company headed by a felon on probation is eligible as a Federal prime or sub-contractor for anything remotely involving security.
Tell me, jag. If I were looking for a used car or a keyfarb, exactly how would I happen upon 995ad.com?
Uh, mellons, I believe you were warned of this well in advance.