Consider what we do know, up to this point.
A) Roth has a background involving decades of bringing distressed companies into compliance with the law (SEC regulations).
B) Roth already announced the reason for why the DTCC decided to place a trading restriction (not a 'global' lock, custody services by the DTC for its participants is still active) on SFIO. In so many words, he alluded to the fact that greater than half the float was traded in a single day, even after an hour of trading the day before which saw the pps tank roughly 90%, and it was clear that some brokerages were selling 'phantom' shares and naked shorting the stock.
C) The unusual trading in the last hour seconds after the CEO SEC litigation news hit the wire saw extremely high volume (~80M shares) dumped on the market, tanking the pps from what was a stable $0.03 to within an hour $0.0041, about 90% decline.
D) July 1, Friday morning the followers of SFIO were told that the ex CEO was no longer with the company and had no relationship with SFIO any longer and the sub penny prices moved up on high volume in the first hour of trading quickly to about $0.02. For the rest of that day, intraday trading volume exceeded 180M shares! The float as it was known at that time was about 330M shares, so roughly more than half of the float traded in a single day, yet for most of that volume the pps remained exactly at $0.02, suggesting that with price constant but increased buying pressure, SUPPLY grew exponentially; counterfeit shares flooding the market, increasing existing supply of SFIO 'shares' on the 'market'.
E) From the various SFIO message boards including this one, evidence that MANY buyers had bought tons of shares on the move up on that Friday via ETrade, TDAmeritrade and ScottTrade. Each of these brokerages use DTCC for settlement/clearing. Therefore, it is apparent that most of the phony air shares sold (roughly half the float) were through these three brokerages and so DTCC that Friday night placed a lock on the stock to protect themselves from FURTHER exposing their automated CNS system to faux shares sold by these 'participants' to investors/traders.
F) The SEC/FBI sting operation was actually orchestrated back in early to mid 2009, the news of it made public at the end of June 2011, while TS signed a plea agreement on May 28 2011. Roth was brought in late 2010 (Sept, Oct) after Wilbrink left and they got rid of the 'other' CPA (who had 'taken' with him the old financials, etc). The sting operation was done in a way as to 'not harm investors', as stated by the SEC/FBI. Do they lie? No. What they meant was that the sting was executed with their own money and fake share CERTIFICATES to a phony pension fund which never made its way to the open market. Besides issuing certificates directly from the company would be subject to SEC law which would require that the holder not be able to liquidate the shares until a full year later. Does anyone really think that after the sting operation went down that the SEC/FBI just sat and watched for more than a year the company/whoever keep issuing shares (stock selling scheme) all the while investors/traders were getting diluted?! No. After the sting would not the SEC/FBI keep a pretty close watch on the company and pounce on any phony and/or untrue statements in any PRs thereafter? Yes. Would Roth put out bogus untrue PRs in the midst of a settlement with the SEC and on which the courts had already ruled that the company is bound by law to only announce true statements? No.
After reviewing all that we shareholders know about what has happened with the fundamental story, I cannot imagine that anyone with half of a brain cannot see the writing on the wall. It is OBVIOUS what happened. If you wish to know why this 'lock' was placed by the DTCC, simply re-read the PR by Roth about why the lock was placed on the stock, there is your answer.
Also, in the latest PR, Roth explained that the company was not able to move forward with disclosure/financials UNTIL the SEC litigation/settlement was resolved; with SFIO the company, NOT with TS/Fuents (those individuals or their cases have NOTHING to do with the story of SFIO any longer, whatsoever, drop it).
Why was the T/A gagged through the entire year of 2011 and still will not disclose share structure??! Why did not the SEC bring litigation on TS/Fuentes IMMEDIATELY (months) after they caught the CEO in the sting??! How did such an improbably ridiculous sequence and timing of events in the stock take place so perfectly to trap any and all possibly existing naked short positions in the stock after the unusual trading and timing of the litigation news, subsequent PR, spike in volume, spike in supply holding the pps level then after hours lock??! How is it that the DTCC had been reporting the overall FTD metric to FINRA/SEC for months and months (as usual) for ALL settlement dates up to exactly the June 30/July 1 trading days but then miraculously once it came time for the failure to deliver SFIO entry to show up (as usual) in the list for those particular settlement dates and thereafter, the SFIO FTD entry was no where to be found??! Hmmmmmmmm. Consider, an ongoing investigation into naked shorts in the OTC market and in this stock?! Possibly. I am just simply laying out what we know up to this point and then connecting the dots and saying that it is just possible, merely possible that SFIO stock was used as the vehicle to launch an investigation into illegal naked short selling.
We also know that there exist a myriad traders in the OTC markets who will constantly rant negatives about the company and tell you you better just learn how to 'trade' and NOT invest in such micro cap start up companies because other wise, 'chances are' that you will lose all your money. Why would they want you to trade and not invest? They do not want you locking up the float and owning shares for the long term. If many people did that, over time, the shares would get locked up via investors holding long term and so the SUPPLY of shares would dwindle and the price per share would necessarily move up. This would make it more difficult for them to manipulate the price, and therefore fleece investors week after week. They would then need to pump more IOUs and phantom shares (naked shorting) into the market in order to dilute existing holders, but with a locked up float, more naked shorting than usual would have to be done and so this illegal activity would be more obvious.
They do not care about the potential or positive fundamental factors which could drive the company to success in the future, they care about manipulating the stock price up only occasionally on exactly the time frame that they desire, watching as hordes of traders come flooding in on the 'technical' move, then dumping at will phony shares which cost them nothing onto the open market, all the while shorting and naked shorting more and more on the way down, making tons of illegal gains, rinse, 'lather', repeat.
Comprende?
Look at the chart for the past two years, the 'action' is tell-tale and obvious that the spikes are a rush of buyers on news, then asymptotic free-fall drops in pps on low intraday volume from then on. It is difficult to even fathom the extent of the 'ill-gotten' gains from such illegal activity. It is also, conversely, difficult to even imagine what the pps movements and fluctuations could have been over time in the chart if the stock would have been left to trade naturally on its own normal legit supply/demand and pricing characteristics via the trading of only real shares between real investors/traders.
Roth has already told us everything he could have told us. He actually has saved this company from destruction by what is eating away at our financial system, naked short selling pirates from inside the USA and abroad. All should click on and watch the link that Smoke_em provided to get a handle on how widespread this illegal activity is and even with mandates from Obama in Feb 2011 we still have yet to see the SEC actually put in jail a single person who was responsible for B.Sterns, etc.
Give the company time, marketing and expansion with no cash on hand is right now just a pipe dream, management I am sure is focusing on getting this real company legally current and up to date as we speak. Once the US Patent office gets its act together and grants the USA patent to SFIO, the agreement with Denverson is fulfilled by both parties and the disclosure/financials are allowed to become public then I personally think that the DTCC will unlock the stock, but that is not even a certainty. The stock still trades on low volume because certain brokerages who do not use the DTCC for any services can still make their own decisions as to allow buy/sell or not AND also the MMs can trade it amongs themselves and other traders in the 'market' who are able to buy/sell. We know this.
I think SFIO management has enough on their plate right now and increasing pressure from the shareholder base is not IMO what they need right now. They need time and capital inflows, it is that simple. Once all of this is resolved, we will see this message board blow up with thousands of posts a day and everyone talking about the ecig product and expansion, etc, etc while the pps soars. I have been in this stock for a long long time and what I do know is that it has been through all kinds of periods, periods of despair, periods of jubilation, the key is not be moved by the fluctuations, just keep your long term fundamental analysis of the industry and the public company and hold long term.
GLTA!
$SFIO!
