April 2018 – Financial Treason & Crime

F McGuire, 26 April 2018

Investment guru Jim Chanos is betting against Dunkin’ Brands and Burger King’s parent. Chanos told CNBC that he has been shorting fast-food stocks Dunkin’ Brands Group Inc. and Burger King’s parent Restaurant Brands International Inc. “for about a year.”

The founder and president of Kynikos Associates said in a “Squawk Box” interview that he’s shorting Dunkin’ Brands and Burger King’s parent Restaurant Brands International. “We’ve been short these things for about a year,” said Chanos. Chanos said price-to-earnings ratios for restaurant stocks have been going “higher, higher and higher as restaurants themselves have struggled.”

“At some point, that has to come to an end,” he said. “This is part of a broader theme … the franchisers versus the franchisees,” Chanos said. He said he doesn’t like what he calls “this asset-light idea” of these companies not owning their restaurants while “basically clipping the coupons, collecting royalties” from the franchises, CNBC.com reported.
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04/26/201802/26/2021

Article: Why Famed Short-Seller Jim Chanos Is Betting Against Burger King And Dunkin’ But Praising Chipotle

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Why Famed Short-Seller Jim Chanos Is Betting Against Burger King And Dunkin’ But Praising Chipotle

Maggie McGrath, 26 April 2018

The tale of two restaurant ownership models — wholly-owned and franchised — is translating into similarly divergent market performances for certain restaurant stocks Thursday. And much of the movement has to do with the comments of one short-seller.

Shares of Dunkin’ Brands and Restaurant Brands International (QSR), which is Burger King’s parent company, are in negative territory after Jim Chanos, the investor who famously shorted Enron, told CNBC Thursday morning that he’s taken short positions in both names. His reason: he is not optimistic about the future of asset-light, franchise-focused businesses. “[E]verybody wants to sell the restaurants and not own them but basically clip the coupon of collecting royalties,” he said. “And we’ve had this dichotomy now of restaurant stock multiples going higher and higher and higher as restaurants themselves have struggled. I think at some point that has to come to an end.”
Continue reading “Article: Why Famed Short-Seller Jim Chanos Is Betting Against Burger King And Dunkin’ But Praising Chipotle”

04/25/201803/13/2021

Article: Ex-UBS trader beats market manipulation charge

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Ex-UBS trader beats market manipulation charge

New York (AFP), 25 April 2018

Former UBS precious metals trader Andre Flotron was acquitted on Wednesday of market manipulation, a development that could spell trouble for similar cases against other Wall Street traders.

Authorities arrested Flotron late last year on charges he engaged in a Wall Street practice called “spoofing,” which involves placing and then immediately aborting trades to move prices. The acquittal follows January’s $46.6 million settlement with UBS, Deutsche Bank and HSBC over allegations traders at the banks worked to manipulate futures markets in precious metals between 2008 and early 2014.

Before this case, only three other people had ever been charged with “spoofing,” according to the Justice Department, a practice banned under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform legislation. Continue reading “Article: Ex-UBS trader beats market manipulation charge”

04/25/201803/11/2021

Article: Russia’s greatest Ponzi mastermind is dead, but his legacy lives on in the crypto world

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Russia’s greatest Ponzi mastermind is dead, but his legacy lives on in the crypto world

Sara Hess & Eugene Soltes, 25 April 2018

Sergei Mavrodi, creator of one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history, died last month at age 62, potentially leaving millions of “investors” in countries around the world in the lurch. Beginning around the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Moscow-born Mavrodi’s exploits expanded and evolved over the course of nearly 30 years, putting him in the same league as Bernie Madoff, who operated arguably the biggest such fraud ever, and Charles Ponzi himself, the Italian con artist whose name is now synonymous with this type of financial deception. Continue reading “Article: Russia’s greatest Ponzi mastermind is dead, but his legacy lives on in the crypto world”

04/25/201803/01/2021

Article: Isodiol International Inc. (ISOLF): $ISOLF news out!

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Isodiol International Inc. (ISOLF): $ISOLF news out!”

stockman69, 25 April 2018

It has come to the attention of Isodiol International Inc. (CSE: ISOL) (OTC: ISOLF) (FSE: LB6A.F) (the “Company” or “Isodiol”) that an anonymous author by the fictitious name “Grumpy Bear” has posted a lengthy article on the website www.seekingalpha.com that is intended to disparage the Company by any means possible. While Isodiol has a general policy of not responding to anonymous media and online postings, this particular article is the first of its kind, has had wide dissemination, and has a misleading air of credibility due to the website where it was posted.

We wish to be clear. The author is not credible, and the article is not credible. The author has written four articles under the Grumpy Bear alias, and each one appears timed to an artificial sell-off in the stock of the target issuer for the benefit of a specific short-selling fund group. There also is evidence that suggests the real people behind the Grumpy Bear alias have engaged in similar tactics for the better part of the last decade under other aliases, two of which have resulted in several hundred million dollar lawsuits against the fund group.
Moreover, the article was not written to journalistic or regulated research analyst standards and has no such integrity. Other than scattered facts with citations to voluntary public disclosures by the Company and certain other limited public information, the article is fiction. The fictional and defamatory nature of the article also is why the true identity of Grumpy Bear is concealed by use of an anonymous third-party e-mail server based in Switzerland. Isodiol intends to pursue all available legal remedies against the author and these artificial short sellers.
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04/23/201802/27/2021

Article: Isodiol Is MJNA 2.0 – Expect Massive Dilution From Not-So-Arm’s-Length Transactions

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Isodiol Is MJNA 2.0 – Expect Massive Dilution From Not-So-Arm’s-Length Transactions

Grumpy Bear Research, 23 April 2018

During the past few months, Isodiol International Inc. (OTCQB:ISOLF) has seen its stock price rocket up by over 300%, giving it a market capitalization of about CAD$300 million (CAD$424 million fully diluted). The company has the appearance of a rapidly growing business in phytoceuticals (plant-based health supplements) that focused on derivatives of hemp. Hemp is a cousin to the cannabis plant and is a source of non-narcotic cannabidiol (“CBD”), which is used in many nutraceutical products and is presumptively legal throughout the United States.

Revenues have also gone up exponentially at Isodiol in the past year, due largely to a plethora of acquisitions. In fact, the company actually delivered sales of CAD$5.9 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2017, which was an enormous increase over the CAD$3 million of revenue just two quarters ago. While they only eked out a small net profit of CAD$0.2 million, with that kind of revenue growth, the obvious sales pitch is that Isodiol is a rapidly growing company in the red-hot marijuana sector…even though they are not selling marijuana. Isodiol CEO, Marcos Agramont indicated his confidence in the company’s future by stating “We had another strong quarter of revenue growth and will continue our commitment to delivering high-quality hemp-derived CBD products through innovative delivery methods, which is the core of our success”.
Continue reading “Article: Isodiol Is MJNA 2.0 – Expect Massive Dilution From Not-So-Arm’s-Length Transactions”