More insanity:
A Formal Call to Arms –
Dear Fellow CMKM Diamond Shareholders,
Ever since CMKX shares were revoked from trading over five years ago, it seems most of the company’s shareholders have remained confident and have continued to expect a healthy short-squeeze sort of return on their investment.
And let’s face it, many shareholders, including Sparky, bought shares only after watching them trade and only after concluding that the shares being bought had been naked shorted.
In retrospect, it was actually a no-brainer to see that CMKM Diamond shares were being naked shorted into the ground. Why hell, no matter how many billions of shares were purchased, the price just kept falling. To even an unseasoned trader, particularly one who had access to Level II, it was clear that the brokerage community was making no effort at all to locate the billions and billions of shares they needed each day to “properly” fill our buy orders.
After all, unless private penny stock investors were for some reason anxiously buying at the opening bell and selling shortly thereafter at a loss, where would all the shares being sold come from? What; are we collectively stupid and supposed to believe that John Edwards was the sole source?
But with all due respect, since revocation the vast majority of shareholders have done absolutely nothing, with the exception of perhaps venting daily on Paltalk or on message boards. For the past five years, this massive majority has instead relied solely on the efforts of a few to accomplish a lot; and more recently these few have been fellow shareholders who happen to be working on some sort of resolution.
Immediately after revocation, Robert Maheu and attorney Donald Stocklein seemed to be leading resolution efforts, and with “maximum return for shareholders” the supposed objective, who could complain? In fact, because we seemed so well represented, in such good hands, most shareholders seemed to shift into the relaxation mode; and sadly, it seems many have remained in that mode.
The Owners Group and the Taskforce were part of those early efforts; but precisely what was accomplished by them – or the country flags and the share counter for that matter – IMO remains quite questionable. If you recall, one of Kevin West’s primary initial chores supposedly involved an Interpleader action. But what ever happened on that all-important front?
In fact, despite all the work the Tyler people have done over the years, in Sparky’s opinion it was an apparent lack of specific progress on the naked short selling front, and the prolonged absence of any related settlement, or even news of a settlement, that turned many shareholders negative on the Tyler team.
They have surely worked hard trying to reconstruct accounting records; and they’ve obviously spent a slew of time on pending lawsuits and all the related travel, motions, answers, depositions, and discovery-related activities. They were also individually deposed by the SEC and defended your company against charges brought by the Commission; and they’ve clearly uncovered a bunch of old internal corporate crap that can perhaps best be filed under “mismanagement.”
But, because the Tyler team hasn’t remained focused solely on the issue of naked short selling, a bunch of shareholders, which sadly includes some who own huge amounts of shares, seems to have lost all interest in whatever the Tyler team is doing.
It doesn’t seem to matter to these shareholders that past records which were no doubt intentionally altered or destroyed are being forensically reconstructed, that we have a new and seemingly very-capable transfer agent, and that we continue to move closer and closer to the resumption of trading – just as the Tyler folks have consistently suggested we would for years now.
What did seem to swiftly recapture the attention of the shareholder base after years of mounting apathy, however, was a lawsuit filed by California attorney Al Hodges a little over a year ago; a lawsuit in which he sought a verdict that would order the SEC to release $ 3.87 trillion in settlement funds that were held in a trust, a trust the SEC supposedly “controls” with respect to the timing of any its disbursements.
First off, in the initial complaint attorney Hodges focused on the same issue of naked short selling that got most of us into the stock in the first place; and he did this on the public record as part of his lawsuit’s format setup. In fact, IMO he almost had to. In order to claim there was a trust, he had to set the stage and explain what the underlying settlement stemmed from.
And secondly, that huge dollar amount was a big hit; as the size of that treasure chest had been a subject of much speculation for nearly half a decade; and what’s more, $ 3.87 trillion seemed way north of even the most liberal estimate. And hey; way more is better than way less; right?
But despite all the noise, in Sparky’s opinion history will show our ancestors that nothing more was accomplished in the way of a resolution in 2010 than was during the 4-year span between 2005 and 2009.
And as we pause to welcome in the New Year, prudent shareholders should find it rather difficult overlooking the fact that at the strike of 12 last Friday night a whole slew of predictions went down the toilet; and that the trustworthiness of the formerly-thought-to-be-reliable sources that have supplied a slew of established, added-in-the-past-year, and just-now-budding gurus with info, should have been instantly cast into question by even you most avid believers.
So, as a group, what should we do now?
Should we sit idly by and wait, and let our hopes ride with the appeal attorney Hodges supposedly says he won’t have to file? Should we just let Chucky’s one-week extension pass to see if that plays out?
How about waiting a few days for Acca, for he’s bound to return any day now as he always does every time he’s wrong; is that a wise option?
How about just taking the advice of all the over-paid bashers that lurk on message boards where investors chat about a sub-penny that was revoked over 5 years ago, admitting the whole thing was a scam, and ricocheting off into the sunset?
Or, many of you can continue to do what you’ve been doing for the past 1-7 years, vent all your frustrations on message boards where other people are doing the same thing, and where you’re constantly being instigated by the bashing community. That has sure accomplished a lot; hasn’t it now?
How about we start doing things that all shareholders can participate in for a change; activities where if we act as a group we can capitalize on the huge size of our shareholder base and benefit handsomely from the concept of “strength in numbers?”
And hey; if activity number one doesn’t yield any results, we move on to an activity number two, and then three …
Sparky thinks the first thing we should do as shareholders is to each call the SEC, each seeking to file a formal complaint. And each of us should simply and politely ask if we can speak with an investment specialist about a company we in invested in years ago called CMKM Diamonds, Inc, a company whose shares we believe were aggressively naked shorted.
The SEC is very apt to swiftly take defensive steps, but at the very least, for the first time ever those in control will be advised that shareholders are really starting to ask questions and demand answers.
Now please be advised, Sparky is in no way advocating that CMKM Diamond shareholders in way, shape, or form harass or verbally assault anybody associated with the SEC. To the contrary! We will learn much more, and be much more feared and respected if we come across as concerned investors, not as a bunch of noise-making whiners.
And although Sparky urges all of you to be aggressive when formerly demanding answers and that forms be mailed to you, he urges you to be extremely polite and to act professionally.
For years now, Acca has been telling us shareholders that it all started with Citi, and that it will end with Citi. Well, in Sparky’s informed opinion, it actually all started with the SEC, and therefore it should end with the SEC.
Just remember folks, the SEC was formed in response to the 1929 Crash and the lengthy and misery-causing Depression it caused; and one of its primary initial purposes was to prevent what happened from ever happening again.
And in case some of you don’t know this, naked shorting, which back then was called watering, had a lot to do with the 1929 Crash, an awful lot actually; and so did highly-leveraged trading based on insider information by powerful investor groups called syndicates; the same unethical thieves that today we call hedge funds.
So if any entity beyond the brokerage firm that knowingly sold you naked shorted shares should be held responsible, it is clearly the SEC; for preventing the excessive naked short selling in CMKX that happened from happening was their job – and they obviously dropped the ball!
Like most government agencies, departments, divisions, and commissions; the SEC has to turn to Congress each year for the bulk of its budget. So if we as a shareholder group are treated disrespectfully or get no answers, then perhaps next week our Activity # 2 should be to start calling the Chairpersons and Members of all the congressional committees that directly and indirectly “control” the SEC.
The SEC’s main number in Washington, DC is (888) 732-6585. When eventually prompted, you want to hit 6 (Six) to file a complaint, and then when finally prompted again, hit 2 (Two) to speak with a person.
And in Sparky’s opinion, we should begin calling tomorrow (Wed – 01/05/2011) at around 9:00 AM east coast time, and urge every shareholder you know to also call between Wednesday and Friday during normal SEC business hours.
And if the SEC representative you speak with tries to talk you into going online to their website, Sparky thinks it would leave a much more lasting impression if instead each of us demanded that the appropriate SEC complaint form(s) be mailed to us.
If for some reason you can’t get through, you may want to try the SEC’s Public Service number, which is (202) 551-4120; as that number is usually answered by a human being.
And worst case, there have been a slew of SEC filings involving CMKM Diamonds, and each one of those filings contains a slew of SEC Enforcement Dept numbers – Those should work.
Lastly, if you agree with what Sparky has advocated above, it would be very much appreciated, and it would greatly strengthen participation, if you would kindly repost, as well as copy and paste this post everywhere you think it might be read by a fellow shareholder.
With Utmost Sincerity,
Sparky
AI
