Extract: - p 6 Among the many aspects of the scheme discussed on that day, the Affas and the CW joked about the fact that the company that they were going to promote, and whose stock they were going to sell into the market, consisted of nothing more than a cardboard box containing a miniscule amount of sample items:
MICHAEL AFFA: Isn’t there a company or not really?
CW: No. There's the company right there [gesturing to the cardboard box in the corner]. I mean-- [Laughter.]
CW: We’ve got some t-shirts, we’ve got some hoodies, we’ve got some boxing gloves.
MICHAEL AFFA: Take a picture of that.
CW: Um, you know.
MICHAEL AFFA: If somebody wanted, I mean, if somebody wanted an order for—
CW: Yeah, that’d be tough right now.
MICHAEL AFFA: For shirts, there’s nothing?
ANDREW AFFA: There’s a website.
CW: There’s a website, the website’s down, getting it back up. We just kind of retooled it a little with some graphics and there's an order page that says “Coming Soon.”
MICHAEL AFFA: There you go right there.
CW: So if someone wanted to buy a shirt, not now but we'll get you one later, right. [Laughter.]
MICHAEL AFFA: We got two mediums left. What do you want? I weigh 260... Eh, stretch it out a little bit.
(Exhibit F, Session 2, 28:26-29:05.) [6] This was just one of several times during this meeting that the CW reiterated that the company consists of nothing of substance.
[5] On this video recording, Michael Affa is seated on the right, and Andrew Affa is seated on the left.
[6 ] This notion that Amogear really consisted of nothing more than that cardboard box in the CW’s office was reiterated during a January 29, 2014 meeting in Boston, in which Michael Affa participated by telephone (PSR ¶ 23), and which again caused Affa to react with laughter and jokes
N.J. stock promoter admits to 'pump and dump' scheme
By Tim Darragh | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com on February 16, 2016 at 5:31 PM
A Toms River stock promoter who was caught in a sting operation targeting market manipulators will spend 33 months in prison and pay a $1 million fine after being sentenced Tuesday.
Michael Affa, 36, was sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge William G. Young in Boston after Affa pleaded guilty last September to conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud in what is commonly called a "pump-and-dump" scheme.
According to court records Affa, Andrew Affa of Huntington Station, N.Y., Mitchell Brown of Long Branch, and Christopher Nix and Christopher Putnam, both of Charleston, S.C., plotted to pump up the stock price of a shell company purportedly selling clothing and supplies for mixed martial arts fighters -- but which had no real operations. The conspirators created a false media campaign designed to increase the price of the stock in the company called Amogear, Inc., it said.
Affa and the other conspirators planned to sell the stock at artificially high prices from which they would profit, said office of U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz in Boston.
Michael Affa, 36, was sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge William G. Young in Boston after Affa pleaded guilty last September to conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud in what is commonly called a "pump-and-dump" scheme.
According to court records Affa, Andrew Affa of Huntington Station, N.Y., Mitchell Brown of Long Branch, and Christopher Nix and Christopher Putnam, both of Charleston, S.C., plotted to pump up the stock price of a shell company purportedly selling clothing and supplies for mixed martial arts fighters -- but which had no real operations. The conspirators created a false media campaign designed to increase the price of the stock in the company called Amogear, Inc., it said.
Affa and the other conspirators planned to sell the stock at artificially high prices from which they would profit, said office of U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz in Boston.
Unbeknownst to Affa, however, Amogear was part of a sting operation being run by the FBI and its chief executive was an undercover informant.
Once the scheme was under way in February of 2014, federal authorities suspended trading in Amogear and arrested Affa and the others.
The FBI had set up the investigation in an attempt to identify potential fraud in the market of microcaps — small, publicly traded companies who stock trades for pennies per share.
The office said microcaps are frequently the source of stock fraud because many of them do not file financial reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Andrew Affa, Brown, Nix and Putnam also pleaded guilty in 2015, according to court filings, and are awaiting sentencing.
Tim Darragh may be reached at tdarragh@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @timdarragh. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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