>Why would the broker be involved with the fraud?
Under the doctrine of what a broker knows or should
know (i.e., have reason to suspect). After all, it
isn't a secret that the Foundation is telling people:
'Convert to certs and send them to us; we will
give you a receipt/PDR that you can trade on
our exchange.'
Surely a legitimate broker has a duty to inquire
about the origin of any shares that a company
presents to it to issue for public sale. Is it
a wild guess to figure that brokers must not only
avoid actual fraud and impropriety, but also the
appearance of it? Or am I being naive?
>Those certs have all been signed over to the foundation.
Yes, I know that. That was a detail that made me
uncomfortable when I first read it, but it does rather
make sense (but is a matter of trust), otherwise
what would it take for me to sell a PDR to someone
else if MY name was on the cert that they held?
It would also be a pain to buy PDRs if I had to
wait for the 'real owner' to sign them over to me,
right?
I admit to being somewhat ignorant about the details of
regular stock trading, but I know I haven't literally
signed the stock certs that underlie the shares
in my brokerage account. When I sell stock, no one
asks me to sign over my certs to the new owner.
Obviously I am trusting one or more middle-men to
hold my actual certs and then do whatever needs to
be done when I sell stock. They must be in a form
(unsigned by me) that is suitable for trade -- unless
every stock trade causes a real edit or reissue of
the paper stock certs to record the new owner.
[I never liked the lack of liquidity up until now
in the PDRexchange, which is why I never converted
to certs and then PDRs. But I convinced myself
that signing them over wasn't much different than
what it must take to own stock via an on-line broker.]
AI
