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Lots of writing, no answers.
The company themselves said they dealt with the CNPA.
If they were working with "the highest officials" as you say, then what are the names of those officials? How do you know that? Why did the company tell you and not the public? That's in violation of RegFD.
How did you verify the claims?
Tell us how you verified and whom you contacted so we can do the same. I've not been able to find any way to verify anything.
It also seems odd that you felt it necessary to point out that you're not a company spokesperson when I never said you were.
You also just registered here today.
Any third party verification you can point us to? Any at all? Any names of people you've talked to?
By the way, I have emailed the company and called, and they haven't responded.
I prefer third party verification.
If it's a scam, I already know what the company's going to tell me. Are you relying solely on the company? If you've got some third party verification, please post it.
Why do you consider the article dubious? Chronology certainly wouldn't have anything to do with whether it's dubious or not. If I say, "I married Heidi Klum! I married Heidi Klum!" And then she denies it, that doesn't make her denial dubious simply because it came after my claims.
Of course, I could make up enless stories:
"She just doesn't want it leaked to the press."
"Her management company didn't want anyone to know."
On and on.
-If you've got some 3rd party verification, please post it.
Read The News Releases Chronologically
If you real all the news releases in order, this article seems to be a direct denial of XCHC's claims.
Cambodia Says XCHC is lying:
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/TXT/current/stories/explora.htm
Cambodia Says X-Change Is Making It Up
X-Change claims to have been awarded a huge block in Cambodia.
According to this Cambodian newspaper, the Cambodian National Petroleum Authority (CNPA) says they have never heard of and never met with X-Change:
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/TXT/current/stories/explora.htm
GFCI Bulletin Board
I noticed that it looked like a bulletin board, and in fact only a trial to bulletin board software. At the time I noticed it, at the bottom of the bulletin board it said:
Powered by Invision Power Board(Trial) v2.0.0 © 2005 IPS, Inc
So I figured I'd see if it would let me post. It did. No hacking needed (I wouldn't know how). And the post ends up as 'news' on their front page. What a joke. The ridiculousness of these guys continues.
I made several attempts to reach management well before their supposed "buyback". No one ever got back to me.
Would you in a million years let everybody on the internet post to the 'news' section of your website?
I mean that's unbelievably ridiculous. In my book, this is not a company until proven otherwise.
Why Would GFCI (or any co.) lie?
What do they have to benefit? Here's a few thoughts. (This is hypothetical, no accusations.)
Firstly, we have no way to verify ANYTHING the company has said. Therefore, it's best not to assume anything. The post stated,
"An empty shell that embarked on an acquisition strategy in the energy services sector would probably trade higher than .34. So why even bother with the phony financials?"
Until proven, I don't accept that it's an empty shell, I don't accept that they've embarked on an acquisition strategy, and I know for a fact that they don't have phony financials. (They don't have ANY financials.) The only thing I accept is that some press releases have been made with their name on it. Other than that, we simply don't know anything. The CEO could say the PR people we hired made a mistake. They were the ones handling the website and PR. They put my name on those things without my authorization. "It's all a big mixup. I never made any statements to the SEC. I never signed anything. I certainly never swore to anything."
I could see a few ways somebody could pull some shady stuff if they wanted to.
1) We have no idea what the float is. It's entirely possible that insiders could control nearly all the stock, release some fraudulent press announcements and just keep selling their shares, which would have been acquired for pennies. The whole shell probably could've been bought for a few hundred thousand dollars. If you bought for a penny and sell for .30, that's a pretty good margin.
2) They could be conning investors to buy debt in the company based on all the great "deals" they've signed. The company could be deeply in debt. We don't know. Insiders could run off with the money, or run it through another company that they own, hiring that company for "consulting" or other services, leasing their own buildings, etc. Maybe some of these companies they plan on purchasing are their own companies. Could be tons of insider dealing, assuming any of the companies are more than paper.
3) They could be issuing new shares on a daily basis and selling them in the market. The only cost is ink. Again, we have no idea what the float is. Officers could get options at .001 that vest immediately. All sorts of screwy stuff could be going on. Maybe the company already had preferreds to insiders that can get converted at a ridiculous rate. If it's a scam, don't expect them to follow the rules. "Oops, forgot to mention the shares outstanding was going up. Sorry."
4) This is the one that I think may be happening quite a bit, even though I have no proof of it. Total speculation on my part. I think a lot of the people running scams on the bulletin board and on the pink sheets are making money on the short side. Think about it. If you're running the company and you know it's fraudulent, you know WITH CERTAINTY that it's going to zero at some point. The short sale is a sure bet. No risk involved. And it's all profit.
From the pinksheets.com site:
"NASD rules do not require that market participants report their short interest in non-Nasdaq OTC securities. This is required only for Nasdaq (and exchange) listed securities, thus short interest information is not available for Pink Sheet securities."
http://www.pinksheets.com/faq.jsp#7b
That means it's wild west days. Be in cahoots with a market maker, or set up some dummy companies offshore to short your own shares. The market maker doesn't have to disclose anything. He could darn near argue he isn't doing anything illegal. Immoral certainly, but illegal is a different story.
Then, to top it all off, you (the CEO) publicly denounce the short sellers. "They're crushing our stock price and hurting our ability to obtain financing. Speculators are ruining our company that we've worked so hard to build."
Because the really good con men are the ones who, even after you've lost everything, still have you convinced that they were fighting FOR you all along. This allows them to not be an outcast in society. It also will gain them some sympathy for the next deal, because investors will believe the con man lost even more than the average investor. "I owned more than 30% of the company's 40 million shares which at one point were trading at $1.00. Therefore, these ruthless short-sellers cost me $12 million dollars. (Of course, he would conveniently forget to mention his offshore accounts with phony business names that had spectacular returns shorting the same stock.)
So that's one of my theories with many of these slimy companies that complain of naked shorting. It's not illegal for market makers to do it. The company can put out all the press releases they want decrying it, and no one will get in trouble. Everybody's covered. Even if someone asked for delivery of the shares, you control the printing press, so just print them up.
It's that same kind of over-compensating you see in a lot of scams. Many of the best scams are by people claiming to be religious. Gain people's confidence and trust. Be of "like mind" to the victim. Tell him what he wants to hear.
Or even think back to when you were 12 years old and your Mom found cigarettes in your dresser drawer: "I swear, Mom, I don't know how those got there!" Or even better, if your sister had given you the lo-down that Mom was looking through your drawer earlier and found something, you'd take some pre-emptive action, right? "Mom, a friend at school has a step-dad who was going to kill him if he found him with cigarettes, so he asked me to hide them for him and bring them back tomorrow. I'm not gonna do it. Smoking's stupid and I don't want him to get started on a bad habit. I was trying to be a loyal friend, and didn't want to be a snitch, but it was wrong."
Come up with the right explanation ahead of time and you can end up looking noble!
"You think I'm shorting my own stock? That's preposterous! Absurd! I've got $12 million of my own money in this company! Only an idiot would think I want to lose my own fortune! You must be one of the short-sellers! I and all my shareholder despise you for ruining our company. I'm going to fight you with everything I've got!"
Seriously, it seems like the perfect cover to me.
Just a theory.
Sorry I couldn't post this earlier. Been gone for a few days.
Bob Chapman's infamous history.
I think this is the third time I've seen Bob Chapman's "writings" posted here. Firstly, like Lentiman and others, I agree this is not the place for political stuff. Every extra message is one more to sift through and it would be best to start another board for that stuff. This board is specific: it is about value microcap stocks.
Now on to Chapman, and this does apply to stocks. Bob Chapman has a well-known history of violating securities laws (often because of pumping and dumping). He's been disciplined numerous times by numerous securities agencies, and has been banned from the industry in the past.
He's been preaching doom and gloom for decades, always railing against the dishonest government in the process. But might it be fairer to say that Mr. Chapman's record of dishonesty would be hard to match? He conveniently forgets to mention his past run-ins with the law on his website (perhaps there wasn't enough room?). He also has a history of disappearing like a coward when the government (or anybody else) starts asking questions, and investors get left high and dry. Quite the opposite of his "tough talk" writing.
His latest fiascos were with Silverado Gold and Sedona Software as recently as 2003. Sedona was $10.00 at the time, it is currently at .0001 on the pinks (so I guess we can't say it was a 100% loss!). Silverado is similar nonsense.
Here was the writeup on Chapman by WorldNetDaily (which is anything BUT a pro-big-govt publication, so Chapman doesn't get to use the "they're just after me because I'm exposing the truth about big govt" excuse that is common amongst guys of his ilk):
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31106
This was the original story questioning Silverado's nonsense:
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30603
He's one of these guys who claims he's there to protect you from the crooks in govt, yet he should look in the mirror because the losses this guy has caused for many people are staggering. Those people would have been better off sticking with the govt, as bad as it is. He sees nearly everything as a conspiracy, except, of course, for the stock debacles he touts. The losses investors suffer by his hand are just part of market going up and down. It's just a coincidence that some people end up with all the money. No conspiracy there.
Guys like him can keep coming back because there are constantly new people coming in to the markets, and they don't know about the bad guys' pasts.
For the sake of argument, let's put his political rantings aside. Let's focus on his history in the securities markets and not lure any innocents into his next swindle.
Let's please not post any of his stuff on this board anymore.
Ironically the last line of Chapman's rant that was posted on this board was:
"Porter Goss, Director of the CIA, said his agency was not torturing people. If you believe that, we have a bridge for sale."
Mr. Chapman should know. That wouldn't be the first bridge he's sold.
Nah, GFCI wouldn't announce the acquisition of Chevron, they'd announce "a letter of intent to acquire a multi-billion dollar multinational oil company -- the name of which we can't disclose until full due diligence has been completed. We'll certainly go ahead and announce the deal ahead of it being completed, though. That's because press releases are an entirely different ballgame and have an entirely different purpose."
Lots of talk about the size of the market. Absolutely no details. All info comes from the company and is unverifiable.
If the deal gets completed in 60 days, I'm guessing we won't be able to find any info on that company either. Just have to take the company's word on the fantastic numbers.
Company doesn't answer any questions. My guess is that's because they're not after the folks who ask questions; they're after the ones who don't ask questions.
Take your spam elsewhere. You're spamming this stock everyplace. It has no financials. It's not a value stock. And you're using religion to draw people in. That's weak. Beat it.
Yeah, that would be incredible growth and profitability, especially after going bk. Those bk numbers just don't make sense to me.
I've called and written to the company and received no answer, but they seem to have time to keep putting out press releases.
I think I'll sort of watch it out of the corner of my eye, but there are just too many questions and discrepencies for me to look at it much more.
-The more I think about it, the fact that they don't explain on the website who AOT is . . . . that just seems inexcusable.
I mean, put yourself in his shoes, let's say you were the CEO. Would you put up a product catalog that had the name of another company, and simply forget to explain it? I just can't buy that. Somewhere in the description of Grifco, you would certainly remember to mention your operating subsidiaries. That's just not something you would forget to put in.
And even if they contend that they turned it over to a webmaster and he's the one who made the error, that only suggests really sloppy mngmt. They didn't check the website before it went live? And haven't looked at it in the meantime?
So again, it seems like it's either a lie, or incompetence. And neither one is real good.
One final thing I just noticed is that in almost all the press releases, there are no quotes or contact info from the supposed partner companies. That's not the way you write a press release. You nearly always include a quote from someone at the other company, and you name that person. You then give the contact info for both parties, in case anyone wants to follow-up.
The press releases are almost all Jim Dial quotes and nobody else. No way to verify the info with the other company.
-Skeptical, thanks for the info on the pacer system. I've used that in the past at a federal courthouse, but I didn't realize the whole thing was online now. Thanks for the info. Thanks also for the offer by private mail, but I think I'm done looking at Grifco for the time being. Too many things that don't feel right.
Skeptical, can you post a link to the BK filing?
Yeah, if it were just a BK without all the other discrepencies, I wouldn't hold it against somebody.
I do, however, hold it against them for not disclosing it. If somebody is upfront and says, "here's what happened," I have no problem with that. But not disclosing it is a sin of ommission. Only makes you think, "What else are they not disclosing? Debt? Preferred? Phony cash balances?" I'm going to be a co-owner with these guys and they're only going to tell me the full story when required by law? Not the kind of partner I want.
Plus that 94% gross margin doesn't sound right at all for an oil tool/service company. That sounds like maybe Grifco was a consulting company or something.
This is speculation, but the BK would explain (not in a positive way) why Grifco went public via a pink sheet shell rather than an IPO or BB shell. They probably had to, because an investment bank or even a bulletin board shell would have to disclose that BK in a filing. A shell seller usually still holds some of the shares of the surviving company, and probably didn't want to get involved with someone with a recent BK.
-10bag, can you post further info and a link to "World Tool Company?" I don't see any mention of it.
(P.S. Somebody sent something to my mailbox here, but I didn't get to see it. I guess you only get one chance to see it, as it disappeared when I went to another page. Apologies for missing it.)
I'd love for it all to be true. And it may be, who knows.
They have indeed provided an impressive list of supposed clients. But those are just words on a website. I could put up a website that says all those guys are my customers too.
We're asked to believe what they say, without any third-party verification -- especially when it comes to sales and earnings.
There's an impressive product catalog, but it's for Advanced Oilfield Technologies, Inc. (AOT Inc.), not Grifco. The first two pages of AOT's product catalog say "Grifco Coil Tubing Tools", but those words almost look like they could have been photoshopped in. Search the entire rest of the pdf and the word grifco does not appear. Even all of the legalese is about AOT, Inc.
A google search of Grifco's website doesn't even reveal the relationship between Grifco and Advanced Oilfield Technologies:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLD%2CGGLD%3A2003-33%2CGGLD%3Aen&q=site%3Agr...
The front page of Grifco's website makes it look like "Advanced Oilfield Technologies" is a description of what Grifco does, not the name of another company.
Is AOT Inc. a wholly-owned subsidiary? A partner? Or is Grifco just a sales agent for AOT?
The domain for AOT is registered to Jerry Griffith. And this link suggests he represented AOT Inc. on an advisory board:
http://www.cgrpttc.lsu.edu/pag.html
But does Grifco own AOT? Does AOT own Grifco? Are the two companies partners? Does Jerry Griffith serve two masters? Is there a sweetheart deal by which AOT is his private company and he has some sort of agreement to buyout Grifco down the road? Or some sweetheart ownership of preferred shares of Grifco?
And asking the company won't necessarily clarify any of this. Because if this is a scam, a scammer doesn't just throw up his/her hands and say, "Darn, that was a good question! I guess you caught me! I admit it, the whole thing is a scam."
It doesn't work that way. The scammers have usually thought out their scam and tend to have the best stories.
Third party verification isn't a perfect system, because sometimes the auditors are in on the scam as well. But at least it's one more level of theoretical scrutiny. It makes a scam that much harder, because more people have to be in on it.
Nearly all the information one can find on the net about Grifco is simply a reprinting of the company's press releases. Again, no verification of anything, all info is coming from the company. If it were a scam, that's how you'd do it.
Doesn't mean it has to be a scam, just means we've got no way to verify anything the company says.
In general, I'm still pretty iffy on GFCI. Patent numbers not matching up (suggests either sloppiness--in which case, how sloppy will they run the business?--or a lie). My call to the company has not been returned. Email inquiries have not been returned. Website looks like a template and info about some of management is pretty vague. And what's with dot-org?
Announce "earnings" but give no specific info on shares outstanding, debt levels, share structure (are there preferreds with wacky terms? a boatload of options?, we don't know anything).
And that volume of the top is quite disconcerting.
There may be good explanations for many of these, but lentinman makes the point, if it's a scam, the loss is 100%.
I think this may be a slight misunderstanding of the auditing process. As far as I know, quarterlies are nearly always undaudited for all companies (this is not that well known by the investing community). Look at the latest 10-Q for Microsoft and you'll see they also say "unaudited."
BSIC and CTIG do have audited financials (the auditor's statement is always in the 10-K). I didn't look at the rest, but my guess is if they're otcbb, then they do in fact have audited financials.
Dishonest companies will often use the unaudited quarterlies to their advantage. They'll report three quarters of fantastic (unaudited) earnings, and then -- woops (surprise, surprise) -- an earnings restatement in the final quarter when the auditors come calling.
Board for GFCI.PK:
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=3608
Did a reverse merger with Lit Fiber Inc. Lit Fiber had lots of wonderful sounding press releases with rosy projections. Never amounted to a hill of beans.
Grifco, on the other hand, is actually claiming earnings:
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=82071
Re: GFCI
I totally agree that every public company can always at least post their financials on their own website. I suppose GFCI can be cut just a little slack since they've only recently done the reverse merger and it may take awhile to have a public audit done and they don't want to put anything out until then.
But a statement was made that I'm not sure it correct. At any rate, I'd like to know if it's correct.
This statement was made:
----------
But, you will have to agree with me that the EPS is impossible to obtain without doing complete financials. Now, they may not be audited, but so what? Virtually no pink sheet financials are audited, are they? In fact, lots and lots of BB financials are not audited. That can't be used as an excuse.
----------
It was my impression that under the Eligibility Rule of the otcbb, companies on the otcbb must file with the SEC. And part of the filing requirement is a 10-K, which I think by definition must inclue audited financials. Some slack is given to foreign filers, but not much.
So my question is, has anyone really seen a bulletin board company that doesn't have audited financials? (I realize this used to be the case, but the Eligibility Rule was supposed to have changed that and there were losts of delistings when it was implemented.)
Not trying to be a smart-aleck here, I'm serious. I want to know for my own investing safety.
JTC.V does report and is a value stock, albeit reliant on one customer and extremely low float.