Tsafi, Bloomberg used several examples concerning naked short selling. One was Sedona. The short traders were told to "clobber Sedona. Run them out of business". The stock dropped 50% in three weeks.
Two American shortsellers face criminal charges in the first major U.S. prosecution of naked shorting through a Vancouver brokerage in a death spiral financing. A criminal complaint naming Thomas Badian and his younger brother Andreas Badian was unsealed Dec. 4 in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Both face one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud.
Andreas Badian was arrested that same day by U.S. postal inspectors and released on $2-million bail, with $1.5-million cash, and ordered to surrender his travel documents and not to leave the U.S. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) Thomas Badian remains at large and his current whereabouts are unknown. Both remain presumed innocent unless proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt at a future trial.
Both men, who worked for New York-based Rhino Advisors Inc., allegedly used offshore accounts in a death-spiral financing of Sedona Corp.
The criminal case comes nine months after the United States Securities and Exchange Commission jointly fined Rhino and Thomas Badian $1-million in a consent settlement of the regulator's civil case in February. The SEC defendants neither admitted nor denied any of the regulator's allegations.
