The Securities and Exchange Commission

[Telephonics]

In Oklahoma, a man faces up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines after pleading guilty to selling $21,000 worth of concert and sporting event tickets on the internet, but never delivering them. In another case, a man and a woman are charged with selling computer software to customers on Ebay, and face felony charges for not delivering the products. In that case, Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson said that “We allege that customers paid for items they never received. The internet should not be a safe harbor for criminals.”


Yet every day, six billion dollars worth of shares are purchased in companies in the US stock market, and not delivered. Someone signs on to their brokerage account, or more accurately, millions of someones sign on, and pay for shares in companies that their broker doesn’t deliver. In some cases, those shares are never delivered, creating what is essentially a flood of counterfeit shares in publicly traded companies, harming both investors and the companies themselves.


In the next few weeks, the Oklahoma Legislature will vote on a landmark bill that could serve as the model for stock market reform efforts nationwide. It has been written to withstand the legal assault that Wall Street has unleashed on other legislation introduced in other states. The measure, SB979, has already passed the Senate and will come up for a vote in the House sometime in the next few weeks.


This issue is NOT as much about Wall Street screwing investors as it is about the loss of potential jobs, local and state tax revenue lost, citizens’ investment funds stolen, and retirement funds decimated. It’s about hedge fund managers building hockey rinks in their backyards while the rest of the country struggles just to make ends meet.


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http://www.faulkingtruth.com/Articles/Investing101/1073.html