It was and is a convincing argument, except for one small obstacle--it had no chance of coming true. Back before any reverse splits, Wave hit $50+ during the bubble and then slowly declined.
In 2006 (if memory serves) Wave put out a faulty PR misinterpreted by Investor Relations to contain dollar amounts (as in a real contract) with both IBM and Intel. The price had been trading between the one and two buck range and suddenly it shot up again over $5, which is when SKS and his CFO pulled the trigger and sold hundreds of thousands of shares.
Their rush to profit on Wave's mistake, cost the insurers $1.75M--not a lot, but it came at a time when Wave's first reverse split was being set up and the plaintiffs were told that is all they were likely to get from a dying company.
They settled, but the allegations against Sprague and Feeney for greedily self-dealing were never answered.
Even at this late date, it is incredibly instructive to read the particulars of the lawsuit brought by 13 groups of investors and all rolled into one suit.
It was clear Sprague and Feeney were only interested in what they could get and the shareholders had zero influence on the outcome.
It was an eye-opener. But guess what the leaders told their followers? They were told it was gold-digging attorneys out to make a quick buck and Wavoids did not need to even read such trash. They should have, because the lawsuit pulled back the concern-masks that Feeney and SKS wore when dealing with shareholders.
After one of the most loyal followers of all read the allegations against the two top Wave execs, that person became a critic and was immediately drummed out of the cult for asking pertinent questions--like asking Feeney why the overseas numbers, shares and other factors never added up.
That person has been out of Wave for several years and is glad of it. We remain close, although we have never met in person.
Isn't it interesting and amazing, once again, the Wave crowd was steered away by their leaders from reading the damaging allegations. It's crap!" said one Wave stalwart--and he is an attorney, too--and he never read the suit's allegations himself before pronouncing judgement on it for the followers.
Could all this be simple coincidence? Huh? The same astronomical odds against 17 members of one family being killed by separate lightning strikes in different countries? Boggles the mind computing all those combinations and permutations.
If I was involved in the current attempts to claw back money and justice from those who took so much from so many--I would start my investigation by reading that lawsuit. It is that revealing about the motivation of Wave execs. [Hint] It did not show these two had any concern at all for the folks financing the fraud--it was all about grabbing as much as those two could.
Irrelevant? Hardly, IMO. But once again, the discussion was tightly controlled by the board leaders, leaving shareholders with the mistaken impression the lawsuit had no bearing on them or their future. Shame. It could have told them a lot.
Blue
