It's easy for anyone to "take their company public," thanks to the fact that there are hundreds of shell companies trading on the Pink Sheets that exist on paper but have no assets.
Consider Wind Farming, created when William Telander bought a Pink Sheets-listed company called Applied Research. Applied had no assets, just a Pink Sheets listing, according to an SEC complaint filed this year. After buying Applied, Telander changed the name to Wind Farming, which allowed him to avoid regulatory scrutiny because he took over another company rather than issuing new stock. Starting as far back as summer 2004, Telander began issuing trumped-up and "false" press releases extolling Applied's success, the SEC complaint says, including fabricated business contracts. Trading volume soared from basically nothing to more than a million shares a day, the SEC says, allowing Telander and a group of partners to make hundreds of thousands selling shares. The attorney representing Wind Farming declined to comment.
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