Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Interesting news today from Puda Coal for those who have been following: http://ih.advfn.com/p.php?pid=nmona&article=48556231&symbol=PUDA
Vianna: Thanks for that post. We all need to reread that information from time to time to realize exactly why we are here.
We are at war with those who would like to see FFGO fold up its tent and disappear. Management chose to fight the good fight and devised a plan that would stand the test of time while at the same time protecting company assets and insuring that the companys shareholders including the long suffering longs would be well rewarded for the abuse they had to suffer from those who tried so hard to steal their money. Kudos to managment for the design and implementation of this plan. I believe the record and payment date will be announced soon and what a glorious day that will be. Go FFGO!!!
3400%+ is an awesome return!
Congrats to you! Cheap at three times that price imho! Go SRSR!!!
OldBen: All the longs are very anxious to have the situation addressed. Just think of the immediate reaction when the record and payment dates are announced. Our portfolios should immediatly look far better than they do today. BTW lest we forget we will still have our FFGO shares ater the record and payment date unless of course the price is so attractive we choose to sell some or all of them. Our time draws nigh! Go FFGO!!!
3400%+ is an awesome return!
Is JBII set up for a bear raid on the companies stock today? Will we all have a great buying opportunity this morning? If this goes anywhere close to the $1.50 range I will be buying. The company has started generating revenues and those revenues have nowhere to go but up and as they do so will the stock price.
The longs know it and so do the shorts. Go JBII!!!
OldBen: No, it was not my intention to imply that. Vianna's to sum up post perhaps explains more clearly the process and is worth reviewing: http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=57609132
My understanding is we will receive Preferred A's and B's which will trade. Where will our brokerage firms if already short FFGO shares obtain them? Go FFGO!!!
dreaminbig: I suspect that article was posted here because many of us are following naked shorted stocks and JBII seems to be a classic case. We have seen complaints filed with the SEC which no doubt resulted in the company receiving a Wells notice. The information on the coming Wells notice was posted here on IHUB well before it became public knowledge. We have seen a bear raid on the stock cutting its price in half due to lots of selling and the company in their recent filing has stated no insider has sold shares. Interestingly a Pennsylvania attorney has now indicated his plans to file a class action suit against the company. All this coincidence or well planned and orchestrated by those who short to scare investors and drive down the shareprice of the company or to prevent it from rising on continue buying because of good news like the Chrysler news? Some of us are asking that the OIG investigate because this certainly appears on the surface to be following standard operating procedure and have all the earmarks of a classic case of naked shorting.
Muddy Waters indeed! China stock analyst claims blackmail, libel
7/22/2011
http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/New_York/News/2011/07_-_July/Muddy_Waters_indeed!_China_stock_analyst_claims_blackmail,_libel/
The whirlwind of controversy surrounding supposed securities fraud by China-based, U.S.-listed companies spins ever faster. Today's development: an utterly fascinating libel and defamation complaint that a tiny Hong Kong research outfit called Muddy Waters filed late Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court against yet-unidentified defendants.
Muddy Waters and its founder, a onetime Jones Day lawyer named Carson Block, have been at the red-hot center of allegations that Chinese companies are fleecing U.S. investors. Block knocked around a bit after graduating from Chicago-Kent College of Law: He practiced law in Shanghai at Jones Day, then started up a Chinese self-storage company and wrote a book about doing business in China. In 2010, Block's father, the founder of W.A.B. Capital, was considering an investment in a company called Orient Paper and asked his son to check it out. When Carson Block and a friend visited Orient Paper's headquarters, according to a Dealbook profile of Block, they allegedly found heaps of junk masquerading as corporate assets.
Block put out a report on Orient Paper, urging traders to dump the stock. (As OTC reported yesterday, a federal judge in Los Angeles just green-lighted a securities fraud class action against the company.) And thus a research company-and short -seller-was born. Block was inspired to call his new firm Muddy Waters, according to the company website, by an old Chinese proverb that says it's easy to catch fish when the fish can't see what's going on. His research philosophy is that some Chinese businesses have been taking advantage of U.S. investors who don't know what's really happening on the other side of the world. Muddy Waters promised to expose fraud-racked companies through on-the-ground investigation. It also wasn't shy about admitting that it intended to make money by shorting the stocks of the companies it was about to expose.
In the year since Block founded Muddy Waters, he's issued negative reports on a half-dozen China-based companies, including a fair percentage of the Chinese securities fraud defendants in the U.S. Most notoriously, a Muddy Waters report sparked the enormous June sell-off of Canadian-listed shares of Sino-Forest. Sino-Forest's swoon cost U.S. investors, including hedge fund manager John Paulson, hundreds of millions of dollars but brought Muddy Waters and its founder quite a bit of attention. Block's newfound fame had its advantages--he was profiled in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal-but also a dark underbelly. Critics such as Perrie Weiner of DLA Piper, who represents several Chinese companies in securities fraud cases, complained to Dealbook that short sellers like Block were engaged in rumor-mongering to make money for themselves. (Weiner didn't return a call from me.) Orient Paper claimed Block and his father tried to blackmail the company. Sino-Forest threatened to sue Block and Muddy Waters for defamation.
And someone did much worse than that. On June 21, an anonymous poster put out a press release on a public website called Briefingwire.com, claiming that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had charged Block and Muddy Waters with fraud. The press release said Block had realized $240.2 million in ill-gotten profits through manipulating stock prices of three publicly-traded Chinese companies. The document had an aura of authenticity-it quoted longtime SEC enforcement division lawyer Scott Friestad, for instance, and accused Muddy Waters of manipulating stock in companies Block short-sold, including Sino-Forest. But as Reuters reported later that day, the press release was a sheer fake.
Meanwhile, another Muddy Waters-hater is out there pretending to be a Muddy Waters employee issuing blackmail demands. According to the libel complaint the company filed Thursday, a third party informed Muddy Waters that someone calling himself "Shaun Coffey of Muddy Waters" left "Mr. Wong" a phone message in Hong Kong that said, "Have you reported out [sic] meeting to your bosses? Now they only have 2 choices, to either pay us 2 millions [sic] U.S. dollar or we will release our initial research report to public. You must reply or within 2 days!" (The former federal prosecutor, Sean Coffey, now running a start-up litigation funding company called BlackRobe Capital, told OTC he has no ties to Muddy Waters.) In a Muddy Waters press release announcing the suit, the company says the extortion demand was made to a public company.
Block and Muddy Waters are represented by Donald Burris of Burris, Schoenberg & Walden, who met Carson Block through Block's father, a Burris client. The law clearly has some work ahead of it if Muddy Waters is going to make a go of the case. The defendants are now listed as Does 1-100 because Muddy Waters doesn't know who was behind the fake press release or the alleged blackmail threat. Burris told me Friday that Block-who says he has received death threats because of his research reports-suspects the fake release and the fake extortion threat were made by people with similar motives, but he's not sure. In announcing the suit, Block said the case "enables us to begin an investigation to which we will direct significant resources."
Briefingwire.com is protected by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, but Burris said he plans to ask the Internet site to turn over whatever information it has on the poster of the fake press release. "There's no reason to go after the website, although we think they were awfully sloppy," Burris said. "We believe when we request information through litigation, they will need to identify [the poster]." (Briefing.wire didn't respond to Reuters e-mails when it first published the fake release.) Block's announcement of the litigation says that he is hoping the case "will lead to better controls, consistent with the legitimate First Amendment constraints, on the publication and dissemination of defamatory material by anonymous or ill-defined authors."
Burris also said Muddy Waters is going to investigate whatever can be gleaned from the fake press release itself. The faux document, which the libel complaint quotes in its entirety, says Block "carried out the market manipulation schemes with others he met through a stock web site, which is operated by Matthew Brown of Aliso Viejo, Calif. Block, Brown, and other participants in the schemes often timed the manipulative trading to coincide with the false and misleading press releases issued by Muddy Waters." The fake release claims the SEC lodged charges in Delaware federal court.
Here's the weird thing: A Californian named Matthew Brown, who once ran a penny stock website called InvestorsHub, really was charged in Delaware civil and criminal stock manipulation cases. (Here's the 2009 SEC complaint; the case was stayed for criminal proceedings.) According to the docket in the criminal case against him, Brown pled guilty to four fraud-related counts in February 2010 and was sentenced in May to four years in prison. I called Brown's lawyer, Delaware solo John Garey, to ask about his possible ties to Muddy Waters but didn't hear back.
This is going to be a wild case if Muddy Waters and Burris can make headway in their investigation. Turns out there aren't just fish swimming in the muddy waters of China stock research: There are also sharks.
(Reporting by Alison Frankel)
http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/New_York/News/2011/07_-_July/Muddy_Waters_indeed!_China_stock_analyst_claims_blackmail,_libel/
original post by scion
SEC rejects proposal by its enforcement staff to settle landmark ‘clawback’ suit
By David S. Hilzenrath, Published: July 20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sec-rejects-proposal-by-its-enforcement-staff-to-settle-landmark-clawback-suit/2011/07/19/gIQAZujzPI_story.html
The SEC has rejected a proposal by its own enforcement staff to settle a landmark case in which the agency is trying to force a former corporate chief executive to give up millions of dollars in bonuses and stock profits he received while the company was cooking its books.
The plan to settle for significantly less money than the agency originally sought posed a test question for the Securities and Exchange Commission: Was the staff letting the former executive off the hook too easily?
Or was the agency being overzealous when it brought the case in the first place?
Both sentiments combined to torpedo the deal when the commissioners weighed the proposal last week, according to a source close to the matter.
The case involves Maynard L. Jenkins, former chief executive of CSK Auto, an Arizona-based auto-parts retailer that had to correct years of financial statements.
In 2009, the agency sued Jenkins, saying he should repay the auto parts retailer more than $4 million that he reaped while the company was “engaged in a pervasive accounting fraud.”
Jenkins, however, was not personally charged with fraud.
It was the first time the SEC had filed a so-called clawback suit to wrest money from an executive who was not accused of complicity in accounting fraud.
The SEC was using the watershed Sarbanes-Oxley law enacted in 2002 in response to accounting scandals at companies such as Enron and WorldCom.
The law calls for chief executives and chief financial officers to forfeit stock profits or bonuses they receive while their company is misleading the public about its financial performance.
He and the SEC staff notified the trial court in March that they had reached a tentative settlement, subject to approval by the SEC’s governing commissioners.
On Monday, they notified the court that their efforts “have not been successful.”
The proposed settlement was for less than half the amount the SEC originally sought, according to a second source familiar with the matter.
Jenkins and the staff thought the deal was in both his interest and that of the agency, but a bipartisan majority of the SEC’s commissioners disagreed, the first source said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because the information involved internal SEC deliberations.
“We cannot comment on Commission deliberations, but we will continue to pursue the case vigorously,” SEC spokesman Kevin J. Callahan said by e-mail.
John W. Spiegel, a lawyer for Jenkins, declined to comment.
The law’s clawback provision was meant to hold top executives accountable for fraud and to prevent them from profiting from it. It can encourage executives to be vigilant, but it can also penalize executives who had nothing to do with the wrongdoing.
The objective is to reimburse the company and shareholders. But it can cost companies money to recoup money.
In a January court filing, CSK Auto said it is responsible for Jenkins’s legal costs. The company has been billed “approximately $1.9 million in legal fees and costs associated with Mr. Jenkins and $1.5 million since litigation commenced” in the SEC’s case against him, according to a court filing by Jeffrey L. Groves, general counsel of CSK’s parent company, O’Reilly Automotive.
Those costs have been covered by an insurer for CSK, according to another court document.
Jenkins is 68 and in declining health, his lawyers said in a January court filing.
The SEC lawsuit has left him in financial limbo, they wrote. As long as it remains unresolved, he “cannot plan financially for his future and that of his family,” they said.
His defense team has argued that the SEC “is attempting to impose a Draconian penalty on an admittedly innocent person.”
“The SEC’s nonsensical view is that Mr. Jenkins must pay (literally and figuratively) for .?.?. misconduct by others because he was the ‘captain of the ship,’ despite the fact that under its own view of the evidence, his crew was mutinous,” his lawyers have argued.
The rejection of the settlement came soon after the SEC took flak for a settlement in which it fined J.P. Morgan Securities but took no action against any of the firm’s employees or executives.
In another case, SEC Commissioner Luis A. Aguilar last week took the extraordinary step of publicly dissenting from an SEC enforcement action on the grounds that it was too weak.
The rejection of the Jenkins settlement sets the stage for a civil trial.
Barring a new settlement, the case will test the SEC’s application of the clawback law, and it will call on the agency to prove that CSK’s accounting involved “misconduct” rather than innocent error.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sec-rejects-proposal-by-its-enforcement-staff-to-settle-landmark-clawback-suit/2011/07/19/gIQAZujzPI_story.html
original post by scion
fourkids 9 pets: Thanks for your dedication and service on behalf of all investors everywhere. Your efforts are making a difference. If we all utilize whatever gifts we have we can make a difference and put an end to much of the criminal activity which is robbing hard working families of their savings. Lock these conciousless criminals up and throw away the key!
Awesome collection of data should make tracking down the culprits much easier. I hope you are ccing the OIG: http://www.sec-oig.gov/ It is high time an internal investigation was conducted to determine if they have any employees whose hands are not clean.
The FDA discovered that was the case with their shop and I would not be surprised to learn some folks at the SEC have been captured as well.
indebt2: When the Preferred A's & B's are declared and the short is huge, where will our brokerage firms obtain the A's & B's to put in our accounts? At least a 10 day notice must be given between the payment and record date so do you think the price of FFGO shares might skyrocket with buyers trying to take advantage of the 3400%+ return? Now that buying frenzy should put margin pressure on anyone who is short which should compound the problem.
So now the price of FFGO has been driven up and the dividends are still shorted. Remember those dividends are going to trade as well. Think of the possibilities and realize just how expensive this could be for anyone who is short. Glad I am long. Go FFGO!!!
3400%+ is an awesome return!
Monday works for me. I think it is awesome and look forward to talking to him about the details of his planned suit. I would think many folks who own shares will have questions and I look forward to having him mail me detailed information. Go JBII!!!
Here ya go et Z! Hope they get lots of rest this weekend because I would think they would get many calls from longs on Monday:
http://www.howardsmithlaw.com/AboutUs.html
Nice that Howard promises a lawyer will speak to us individually and invites us to call him on his toll free number. He may get lots of curious calls come Monday! I know of a case where a lawyer invited calls and was forced to put out a PR because he received so many calls his phones were jammed up and his office was unable to function.
I agree and this could be just the tip of the iceberg and that is why the OIG should conduct an investigation for the benefit of all investors. http://www.sec-oig.gov/
I disagree Janice I think this provides a perfect venue for the Inspector General to conduct an investigation to determine if someone at the SEC is leaking information to parties who are trading on that information. Let him determine who knew what when and let him look to see who originated the complaint and on what basis they did so. Have other complaints been made by the same party? If so on what companies and what resulted from the complaint? Who were those complaints made to and did those companies see their stock exposed to similar trading patterns? Were the same sellers involved? Can a trend be established? Could someone inside the SEC be helping someone on the outside make money by trading on information before it becomes publicly known? I'm sure FINRA will be able to provide to the OIG whatever information is needed for the investigation. The FDA recently had a dirty employee exposed and I am sure the SEC would want any dirty employee of theirs exposed as well should they exist and this looks to be what the function of the OIG is to me. http://www.sec-oig.gov/
Thanks to ezaltheladispa for posting this:
http://www.bcsc.bc.ca/comdoc.nsf/comdoc.nsf/webpolicies/E7EED6D90F5F64FE882578D1007BCCAA?OpenDocument
Thanks to Old Timer for this you can watch "Inside Job" and not have to pay any rental fee: for those that would like to watch Inside Job for free, here it is--
http://americansjourney.blogspot.com/2011/06/inside-job-2010-video-full-movie.html
It sure makes understanding the whole mess much easier.
fourkids_9pets: I agree and in fact this too should be forwarded to the OIG to be included as part of the investigation. Go JBII!!!
"My actual response was: "I think you could be right". One way or another, there was no leak from the SEC."
So if I responded to someone who asked if I thought the leak might have come from the SEC "I think so there was no leak from the company" I guess it would be the equivalent of your statement.
Well I am hopeful that the OIG has already opened an investigation on this matter. Who originated the Wells notice at the SEC and on what basis did they do so? Was it as the result of a tip and if so from whom? Has that individual provided other tips that have generated investigations? To wjom at the SEC were those tips provided and what resulted from them? If so, perhaps that person should be thoroughly investigated to determine what motivated them to file these tips/complaints? You never know what might surface. Who would have ever thought the FDA had employees that were dirty? Go JBII!!!
fourkids_9pets: Thanks for the update on the number of outstanding shares as well as the tradable float. With a less than 35 million share legal float, JBII seems well positioned to make a move to a higher exchange. With revenues from P2O sales now being generated I think increased institutional investments are a sure thing as well. Go JBII!!!
Kop: If you think that is amazing rent the movie "Inside Job" and you will be stunned as will anyone who watches it with you. I rented it from Netflix and watched it this week. After watching it you will realize why things are the way they are, just incredible.
Did you file a complaint with FINRA yet? Go FFGO!!!
TheStockBull: Financially it might be better for some long longs for the bid not to arrive until the record and payment date are announced. I believe once that happens the bid will go past .0001 in a flash as many will want to participate in the huge return. Go FFGO!!!
3400%+ is an awesome return!
I agree. It is almost as though the regulators decided to freeze things until they could sort things out. Both longs and shorts are locked in and cannot escape! Let justice be served! Go CDIV!!!
GAO 16 trillion in secret loans
« Thread Started Today at 10:10am »
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 21, 2011
The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. "As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," said Sanders. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else."
Among the investigation's key findings is that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. "No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president," Sanders said.
The non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress also determined that the Fed lacks a comprehensive system to deal with conflicts of interest, despite the serious potential for abuse. In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans.
For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the New York Fed's board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. Moreover, JP Morgan Chase served as one of the clearing banks for the Fed's emergency lending programs.
In another disturbing finding, the GAO said that on Sept. 19, 2008, William Dudley, who is now the New York Fed president, was granted a waiver to let him keep investments in AIG and General Electric at the same time AIG and GE were given bailout funds. One reason the Fed did not make Dudley sell his holdings, according to the audit, was that it might have created the appearance of a conflict of interest.
To Sanders, the conclusion is simple. "No one who works for a firm receiving direct financial assistance from the Fed should be allowed to sit on the Fed's board of directors or be employed by the Fed," he said.
The investigation also revealed that the Fed outsourced most of its emergency lending programs to private contractors, many of which also were recipients of extremely low-interest and then-secret loans.
The Fed outsourced virtually all of the operations of their emergency lending programs to private contractors like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. The same firms also received trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near-zero interest rates. Altogether some two-thirds of the contracts that the Fed awarded to manage its emergency lending programs were no-bid contracts. Morgan Stanley was given the largest no-bid contract worth $108.4 million to help manage the Fed bailout of AIG.
A more detailed GAO investigation into potential conflicts of interest at the Fed is due on Oct. 18, but Sanders said one thing already is abundantly clear. "The Federal Reserve must be reformed to serve the needs of working families, not just CEOs on Wall Street."
http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9E2A4EA8-6E73-4BE2-A753-62060DCBB3C3
The news for those who are short SRSR just keeps getting worse.
We longs are golden. Everything to keep the price down in spite of what is going on is being done by those who have a lot to loose. The SRSR spring cannot be coiled much tighter. Our pot will boil over soon and it is going to be an awesome event. Thanks Scott and all who have helped. Retirement for many is close. Go SRSR!!!
Those who sold shares at $1.50 per lost yesterday that is for sure! Go JBII!!!
Now that would be funny!
I can well understand why the institutional investors are adding rather than selling. The growth by ZAGG is just incredible!
Nice to see all the activity here and all the attention JBII is receiving these days. Lots and lots of money at stake here and with JBII now producing revenues from sales and having dozens of samples out for testing with various companies I can well understand why. Think of the possibilites. Think of what the year over year revenues should look like next year at this time. It makes perfect sense why anyone who owns shares is excited and anyone who owes shares is a nervous wreck and certainly explains this surge of activity. How much will shares purchased at today's cheap prices be worth in a few weeks, months, years? I suspect a lot lot more than they are today hence all the energy being devoted to JBII. Must be close to breakout imho. Go JBII!!!
More great news! Poor shorts they just keep getting in deeper and deeper as the price rises steadily.
Tom: Are your shares for sale as a market order? That is what is being referenced. Go FFGO!!!
BillyJack: No question about it. It was leaked by someone at the SEC to those who sell non existant shares and they sold them with a vengence. Hopefully the OIG will investigate and determine who the dirty employee is and fire him/her.
BTW Rubberworm. I am now banned on the EIGH board becasuse of the post I made yesterday. I am now in your club!
Congrats on your add. Looks like the SEC has a dirty employee who leaked the information. Hopefully that employee will be exposed and terminated. I think JBII is about to put it to the shorts! All imho.
Perhaps someone will forward to the Inspector General JBII's trading history for this month along with the filing regarding the Wells notice. Seems pretty obvious to me that an internal investigation might be very revealing and helpful. To me it could not be more obvious that someone at the SEC passed on this information to those who traded on it more than likely selling shares that do not exist. Talk about insider trading, this takes the cake.
duke00324: lol Congrats to you if you shorted at the peak but that being said if you don't think the shorts took it in the shorts here you need to do more DD. Buying back shares shorted for pennies for dollars each is not a good thing and shorts go bankrupt doing that. Good luck to you! BTW I observed and did not buy or sell a single share fyi.
SevenTenEleven: Actually I was told the shorters were mostly Americans using Canadian and other offshore brokerage firms to do the naked shorting.
Some of those folks who have stolen billions may be losing their shacks in the Hamptons soon as the worm is turning on them. Go FFGO!!! 3400%+ is an awesome return!
After watching the movie "Inside Job" via netflix last night nothing would surprise me including this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/20/federal-reserve-plans-contingency-default_n_905068.html?ncid=webmail1