Article: PEN FRAUD CLAIMS EXPAND: Hagens Berman Encourages Penumbra (PEN) Investors to Contact the Firm, Investigation Expanded to Cover More Recent Claims of Fraud

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PEN FRAUD CLAIMS EXPAND: Hagens Berman Encourages Penumbra (PEN) Investors to Contact the Firm, Investigation Expanded to Cover More Recent Claims of Fraud

ACCESSWIRE, 31 December 2020

The investigation centers on whether Penumbra misled investors about the company’s flagship products for treating ischemic stroke.

On Nov. 9, 2020, research firm Quintessential Capital Management (“QCM”) published a scathing report about “Penumbra and its ‘killer catheter'”, concluding: (1) “Penumbra’s flagship ‘Jet 7′ device is linked to 18 recorded deaths, 39 injuries: this might be only the ‘tip of the iceberg;'” (2) “[t]he device is unsafe and unmarketable: we believe an FDA class 1 recall highly likely”; (3) “Penumbra may have been highly misleading in critical parts of its communication with doctors and investors;” and, (4) “[d]espite appearances, financial metrics are rapidly deteriorating, anticipating a possible sharp drop in sales.”
Continue reading “Article: PEN FRAUD CLAIMS EXPAND: Hagens Berman Encourages Penumbra (PEN) Investors to Contact the Firm, Investigation Expanded to Cover More Recent Claims of Fraud”

Article: ZEN Graphene Solutions Announces Grant of Stock Options

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ZEN Graphene Solutions Announces Grant of Stock Options

Newsfile Corp, 30 December 2020

ZEN Graphene Solutions Ltd. (TSXV: ZEN) (OTC Pink: ZENYF) (“ZEN” or the “Company”) announces stock option grants for its directors, officers, employees and consultants. These options are exercisable for an aggregate of 1,425,000 common shares at an exercise price of $3.32 per common share for a period of three to five years from the date of the grant. Continue reading “Article: ZEN Graphene Solutions Announces Grant of Stock Options”

Article: Cormark Securities Inc. and ITG Canada Corp. to pay $1 million to settle SEC charges

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Cormark Securities Inc. and ITG Canada Corp. to pay $1 million to settle SEC charges

The Canadian Press, 24 December 2020

TORONTO — The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission says Canadian broker-dealers Cormark Securities Inc. and ITG Canada Corp. have agreed to pay a total of US$1 million to settle charges of improper trading procedures. According to the regulator, the two firms provided incorrect order-marking information in a period from August 2016 through October 2017 that caused more than 200 sale orders from a single hedge fund, representing total sales of more than US$660 million, to be mismarked as “long” in violation of SEC regulations. By definition, “long” means the seller actually owns the stock they are selling, as opposed to a “short” if the seller is borrowing stock to sell.
Continue reading “Article: Cormark Securities Inc. and ITG Canada Corp. to pay $1 million to settle SEC charges”

Article: Nearly 21% of Shopify stores pose fraud risk to customers

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Nearly 21% of Shopify stores pose fraud risk to customers

Kalila Sangster, 23 December 2020

Nearly 21% of Shopify (SHOP) stores pose a fraud risk to their customers, according to new analysis by e-commerce authentication service Fakespot. Nearly 26,000 of the 124,000 Shopify stores analysed by Fakespot were “related to fraudulent practices,” says Fakespot. Around 39% of those were found to be “problematic sellers,” with issues of counterfeit products, possible brand infringements or a poor reputation.

Some 28% were possible scam stores, with privacy leaks and suspiciously cheap listings and just under 17% had negative reports from consumers, while 10% had no history of any transactions. “We recognise there will be those — however few they may be relative to our base of more than 1 million merchants — that may abuse our service, and we take this matter seriously,” Shopify said in a statement to the BBC.
Continue reading “Article: Nearly 21% of Shopify stores pose fraud risk to customers”

Article: Shopify hosts thousands of fraudulent shops, analysis finds

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Shopify hosts thousands of fraudulent shops, analysis finds

Rachel Gilmore, 23 December 2020

Shopify says it does “not condone the behavior of bad actors” after a Fakespot analysis found that more than 20 per cent of the Shopify stores it analyzed posed a risk to shoppers. Fakespot is a program and browser extension that helps online shoppers to spot fake reviews and counterfeits. But recently, the company used their tools proactively to do an analysis of a little over 10 per cent of Shopify’s storefronts. The analysis found that almost 26,000 of the over 124,000 Shopify stores it looked into were “related to fraudulent practices” and were flagged with a “caution” or “warning determination” by the Fakespot tool. Shopify hosts over a million stores.
Continue reading “Article: Shopify hosts thousands of fraudulent shops, analysis finds”

Article: Canadian brokers pay US$1M to settle SEC charges

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Canadian brokers pay US$1M to settle SEC charges

THE CANADIAN PRESS, 23 December 2020

TORONTO — The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission says Canadian broker-dealers Cormark Securities Inc. and ITG Canada Corp. have agreed to pay a total of US$1 million to settle charges of improper trading procedures. According to the regulator, the two firms provided incorrect order-marking information in a period from August 2016 through October 2017 that caused more than 200 sale orders from a single hedge fund, representing total sales of more than US$660 million, to be mismarked as “long” in violation of SEC regulations.

By definition, “long” means the seller actually owns the stock they are selling, as opposed to a “short” if the seller is borrowing stock to sell. The SEC says that because the hedge fund’s sale orders were, in fact, short sales, the incorrect order-marking caused the executing broker to violate regulations by failing to borrow or locate the shares prior to effecting those short sales.
Continue reading “Article: Canadian brokers pay US$1M to settle SEC charges”

Article: NJ Securities Trader Gets 18 Months For $17M Stock Scheme

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NJ Securities Trader Gets 18 Months For $17M Stock Scheme

Bill Wichert, 22 December 2020

A New Jersey federal judge on Tuesday dashed a securities trader’s hopes of receiving home confinement, sentencing him to 18 months behind bars based on his plea agreement with the government over charges he orchestrated a market manipulation scheme that reaped more than $17 million in illicit profits.

In making the request for home confinement, Joseph Taub told U.S. District Judge John Michael Vazquez during a Zoom hearing that “I’ve never been away from my kids more than one day at the most,” and that his wife’s father died as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Continue reading “Article: NJ Securities Trader Gets 18 Months For $17M Stock Scheme”

Article: Credit constraints and fraud victimization: Evidence from a representative Chinese household survey

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Credit constraints and fraud victimization: Evidence from a representative Chinese household survey

L.COLIN XU, NAN GAO, YUANYUAN MA, 21 December 2020

Fraud victimization has profound economic and social implications. With the widespread leakage of private information and ever-evolving fraud schemes, people frequently encounter fraud schemes. Millions of people suffer from fraud victimization with enormous economic losses every year. A Federal Trade Commission survey reveals that 15.9 percent of the respondents were victims of fraud in 2017, which represents approximately 40 million U.S. adults. The direct monetary costs incurred by victimization could reach $50 billion (Brenner et al. 2020). Continue reading “Article: Credit constraints and fraud victimization: Evidence from a representative Chinese household survey”

Article: What Kind Of Shareholders Own Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Incorporated (NYSE:RBA)?

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What Kind Of Shareholders Own Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Incorporated (NYSE:RBA)?

Simply Wall St, 21 December 2020

If you want to know who really controls Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Incorporated (NYSE:RBA), then you’ll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. Institutions will often hold stock in bigger companies, and we expect to see insiders owning a noticeable percentage of the smaller ones. Companies that used to be publicly owned tend to have lower insider ownership. Continue reading “Article: What Kind Of Shareholders Own Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Incorporated (NYSE:RBA)?”

Filing: SEC VS. CORMARK SECURITIES INC.,

Filing

SEC VS. CORMARK SECURITIES INC.,

21 December 2020

These proceedings concern Cormark’s role in repeatedly causing a U.S. executing broker (the “Executing Broker”) to violate the order-marking and locate requirements of Regulation SHO of the Exchange Act.

From August 2016 to October 2017 (the “relevant period”), Cormark entered more than 200 sale orders for a hedge fund customer (the “Hedge Fund”) into an intermediary broker’s execution management system as “long” orders.2 At the time these orders were entered, the Hedge Fund was not “deemed to own” the stock being sold and did not have a net long position in the stock. Thus, the orders should have been marked as “short” sales under Regulation SHO. The intermediary broker, ITG Canada Corp. (“ITG Canada”), routed the sale orders, with the incorrect order-marking information provided by Cormark, to the Executing Broker, which in turn executed the orders as “long” sales on U.S. exchanges. As a result, Cormark caused the Executing Broker to mismark sale orders as “long,” in violation of Rule 200(g) of Regulation SHO.

PDF (8 pages): SEC VS. CORMARK SECURITIES INC.,

 

Article: SHAREHOLDER ALERT: Pomerantz Law Firm Investigates Claims On Behalf of Investors of MultiPlan Corporation – MPLN

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SHAREHOLDER ALERT: Pomerantz Law Firm Investigates Claims On Behalf of Investors of MultiPlan Corporation – MPLN

GLOBE NEWSWIRE, 19 December 2020

Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of MultiPlan Corporation (“MultiPlan” or the “Company”) (NYSE: MPLN). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at newaction@pomlaw.com or 888-476-6529, ext. 7980. The investigation concerns whether MultiPlan and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices.
Continue reading “Article: SHAREHOLDER ALERT: Pomerantz Law Firm Investigates Claims On Behalf of Investors of MultiPlan Corporation – MPLN”

Article: China’s Luckin Coffee fined $180m for accounting fraud

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China’s Luckin Coffee fined $180m for accounting fraud

Pat Sweet, 17 December 2020

The company, founded in 2017, was one of the few Chinese companies listed on the US NASDAQ exchange until it de-listed in July this year following the admission of a series of financial scandals. The US regulator said its investigation found Luckin had defrauded investors by materially misstating the company’s revenue, expenses, and net operating loss in an effort to falsely appear to achieve rapid growth and increased profitability and to meet the company’s earnings estimates.

The SEC alleged that, from at least April 2019 to January 2020, Luckin intentionally fabricated more than $300m in retail sales by using related parties to create false sales transactions through three separate purchasing schemes. Continue reading “Article: China’s Luckin Coffee fined $180m for accounting fraud”

Article: Swiss central bank chief rejects ‘currency manipulator’ label from the U.S.

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Swiss central bank chief rejects ‘currency manipulator’ label from the U.S.

Elliot Smith, 17 December 2020

LONDON — Swiss National Bank President Thomas Jordan has rejected a U.S. decision to label Switzerland a “currency manipulator.”

The U.S. Treasury on Wednesday added Switzerland to a list of nations it suspects of deliberately devaluing their currencies against the dollar.

Jordan told CNBC on Thursday that neither the SNB nor Switzerland itself has artificially manipulated the value of the Swiss franc.

“Our monetary policy is necessary, it is legitimate, and we have a very low inflation rate — it is even negative at this moment — so we have to fight this deflation, and the Swiss franc is very strong, so it appreciated in nominal terms over the last 12 years enormously, both vis-a-vis the euro and vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar,” he said. Continue reading “Article: Swiss central bank chief rejects ‘currency manipulator’ label from the U.S.”

Article: Analysis: A currency manipulator tag for Switzerland may not deter FX approach

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Analysis: A currency manipulator tag for Switzerland may not deter FX approach

Saikat Chatterjee, John Revill and David Lawder, 16 December 2020

LONDON/ZURICH/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The threat of being named a currency manipulator by the U.S. Treasury may be an embarrassment for Switzerland, but even if the country does get the tag, it likely will have little effect on the Swiss National Bank’s monetary policy.

Switzerland is expected to meet all three criteria for such designation in the long-overdue U.S. Treasury report on the foreign currency practices of major trading partners. The Treasury has some discretion on whether to issue such a label, and the coronavirus pandemic, which has thrown trade and capital flows into chaos this year, could be a factor.

There would be no automatic punishment with a label, though U.S. law requires Washington to demand negotiations with designated countries.

Vietnam, Thailand and Taiwan this year have also been in violation https://www.cfr.org/article/tracking-currency-manipulation of the Treasury’s three manipulation criteria: a $20 billion-plus bilateral trade surplus with the United States, foreign currency intervention exceeding 2% of GDP and a global current account surplus exceeding 2% of GDP.

Currency experts expect Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to issue the report within days, just over a month before he leaves office.

“The subtle implication of being put on this list is that you eventually could come under sanctions, and that puts pressure on these countries not to weaken their currencies so much, or to allow strengthening,” said Win Thin, global head of Currency Strategy at BBH.

But he said that in Switzerland’s case, as the exchange rate is its main tool for fighting deflation, “they may say, ‘Well, tough’”.

The Swiss central bank is firmly under the Treasury’s focus after spending 90 billion Swiss francs ($101.50 billion) on foreign currency intervention in the first half of 2020 amid pandemic-driven safe-haven inflows.

The SNB has long argued it is not trying to weaken the franc to gain a trade advantage. Instead, it aims only to stem the appreciation of its currency to head off the threat of deflation, which runs contrary to its goal of price stability.

“Switzerland has always been treated as a special case when it comes to exchange rate policy and even the U.S. Treasury has conceded in the past that Switzerland’s economic situation is “distinctive” and that its monetary policy options are limited by its small stock of domestic assets,” said David Oxley, a senior European economist at Capital Economics.

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Article: FOREX-Bitcoin breaks $20,000 for first time, Switzerland named currency manipulator

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FOREX-Bitcoin breaks $20,000 for first time, Switzerland named currency manipulator

Suzanne Barlyn, 16 December 2020

Bitcoin smashed through $20,000 for the first time on Wednesday while the Swiss franc gained after the U.S. Treasury labelled Switzerland a currency manipulator.

Bitcoin last jumped 6.9% to move as high as $20,651. The cryptocurrency has gained more than 170% this year, buoyed by demand from larger investors attracted to its potential for quick gains, purported inflation-resistant qualities, and expectations it will become a mainstream payment method.

“The latest run to $20,000 hasn’t been accompanied by nearly the amount of hype as there was back in 2017,” said Paul Hickey, co-founder of Bespoke Investment Group. Bitcoin then garnered more interest from retail investors, but some may now be leery after getting burned, Hickey said.

The Treasury, also on Wednesday, said that through June 2020 both Switzerland and Vietnam had intervened in currency markets to prevent effective balance of payments adjustments. It is not surprising that the Trump administration might make a case about currency manipulation, given recent “runaway appreciation” of the Swissy,

The Swiss Franc was last at 0.8844, with the dollar down 0.12% against the currency on the day. The Swiss government, on Wednesday, said it is open for bilateral talks with the U.S. Treasury about the currency manipulation issue.

Strong euro zone survey figures and hopes of progress on Brexit negotiations pushed the euro above
$1.22 against the U.S. dollar on Wednesday for the first time since April 2018, but later notched
downward. Continue reading “Article: FOREX-Bitcoin breaks $20,000 for first time, Switzerland named currency manipulator”

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