Author: Mia

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Article: Current Attempts To Define Regulator Roles in Cryptocurrency Enforcement Actions

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Current Attempts To Define Regulator Roles in Cryptocurrency Enforcement Actions

Kenneth M. Breen and Phara A. Guberman, 19 March 2021

On March 5, 2021, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York charged John McAfee and his former employee, Jimmy Gale Watson, with conspiracy, fraud, and money laundering charges in connection with his cryptocurrency activities—specifically McAfee’s Twitter statements touting various cryptocurrencies and his false and misleading statements concerning personal investments or other involvement with those same cryptocurrencies. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have filed civil charges against McAfee and his former colleague in separate parallel actions, each based on a different aspect of McAfee’s alleged scheme. This case and the expected upcoming congressional task force on cryptocurrencies are likely to provide the market with more clarity on how coins and projects will be treated in investigations, including whether they can be treated as securities or commodities and the relative roles of the SEC and CFTC.

In the McAfee case, the first alleged part of the scheme is a pump-and-dump. A pump-and-dump scheme generally involves a party or entity acquiring a position in a financial instrument and then artificially inflating the value of that instrument before selling at an inflated price. In this case, McAfee and his team allegedly bought large quantities of various less popular than Bitcoin but publicly traded cryptocurrencies, such as Dogecoin, Reddcoin, and Verge. McAfee, a public figure of sorts because of his anti-virus software and social media following, then publicly endorsed and recommended a particular cryptocurrency on Twitter. When the value of that cryptocurrency increased, McAfee and his team sold their investments, earning a cumulative profit of approximately $2 million. According to the indictment, McAfee liquidated many of his cryptocurrency holdings through New York Stock-Exchange-based companies, implicating various securities laws.

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Article: UPDATE 1-Italian court sentences Popolare Vicenza managers to jail over bank’s collapse

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UPDATE 1-Italian court sentences Popolare Vicenza managers to jail over bank’s collapse

Reuters Staff, 19 March 2021

VICENZA, Italy, March 19 (Reuters) – An Italian judge on Friday sentenced four executives of former cooperative bank Popolare di Vicenza to jail for market manipulation and obstruction of regulators following the 2017 collapse of the Veneto-based lender.

Reading out the sentences at the end of a trial lasting some two years, judge Debora De Stefani said the court had sentenced former President Gianni Zonin to six-and-a-half years in prison.

Former executive Emanuele Giustini was given a jail term of six years and three months, while former managers Paolo Marin and Andrea Piazzetta were both given six-year prison terms.

Lawyers of the four convicted managers could not be reached for comment.

Italy liquidated Popolare di Vicenza and regional peer Veneto Bank in June 2017, selling their good assets for 1 euro to Intesa Sanpaolo, while state-owned loan manager AMCO took on 18 billion euros ($21.42 billion) in troubled debts from the two regional banks.

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Article: GameStop stock surge lingo: Here’s what Reddit’s WallStreetBets vocabulary means

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GameStop stock surge lingo: Here’s what Reddit’s WallStreetBets vocabulary means

Katie Conner, 19 March 2021

Reddit’s community, WallStreetBets, is still assisting in the rise of GameStop’s stock, which is currently sitting at $272 per share and even hit an all-time high last week. Reddit users are battling it out with Wall Street to keep GameStop’s stock prices soaring while Wall Street expected a crash. Small investors are using Reddit communities to drive “meme stocks,” causing short sales and https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shortsqueeze.asp. And it’s not just GameStop. Other companies, like AMC and Nokia, have also been affected by the coordinated surge.

No, this doesn’t mean you should necessarily drop everything and fully invest in the stock of the moment. Some are calling the market manipulation a “Ponzi scheme,” and the stock price will likely even out once the hullabaloo dies down.

In fact, broker TD Ameritrade restricted trading of the GameStop and AMC stocks on Jan. 26 and continues to post an advisory note to clients about market volatility. Trading app Robinhood followed suit on Jan. 27 in response to the runaway growth — the company got itself into trouble by restricting stock trades and will be closely reviewed by the SEC (It’s currently limiting buys on AMC and GameStop stocks). The White House has said it’s monitoring the situation.

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Article: UPDATED | Lordstown Motors now facing class-action lawsuit as stock slips another 14 percent

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UPDATED | Lordstown Motors now facing class-action lawsuit as stock slips another 14 percent

Justin Dennis, 18 March 2021

“I don’t think anyone thought that we had actual orders, right? That’s just not the nature of this business,” Lordstown Motors CEO Steve Burns said during an interview this morning on CNBC’s Squawk Box.

LORDSTOWN — Lordstown Motors Corp. is now facing a class action lawsuit from investors alleging executives delivered misleading statements about the company and committed securities violations.

Attorney Drew Legando of Cleveland law firm Merriman, Legando, Williams and Klang LLC filed the suit Monday in Ohio’s Northern District federal court on behalf of Lordstown Motors shareholder Matthew Rico.

Rico purchased 24 shares of Lordstown Motors (NASDAQ: RIDE) between Feb. 18 and March 5, paying in total about $540, according to a shareholder certification filed alongside the complaint. The stock has lost nearly half its value since Rico’s first purchase, which he made just a week after the stock had reached a nearly five-month peak.

At a 47 percent loss, Rico’s shares lost about $250 in value, more than half of which was lost after the short-seller firm Hindenburg Research published a damaging report on the state of the company and accused executives of misleading investors.

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Article: $COTI — the undeniable SCAM run by criminals — Investigation Report

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$COTI — the undeniable SCAM run by criminals — Investigation Report

api3cloud, 18 March 2021

Part 1
‘’The criminals’’

I start this article with a disclaimer that this investigative research would not be possible without the help of many. A combined effort on Reddit, Discord, Telegram and Twitter to put together information of undeniable official evidences that COTI is in fact an orchestrated fraud operated by Israeli well known Binary Options criminals. All information provided is backed by public sources and data. This is not FUD. These are undeniable public evidences that the COTI team tried to hide from the public for a long time, the victims of the soon to be known as one of the biggest crypto scams ever seen, need to be informed and law authorities need to act fast.

In this article I will deep dive on the extensive criminal background of COTI team.

When was COTI created? In 2017, the exact month Israel authorities banned Binary Options the COTI team needed the next scam to pull. ICOS were hot at the time, easy money and easy preys.

SIMONA WEINGLASS: Twitter @simonaweinglass /// Email simona@timesofisrael.com

A reputable white collar crime and corruption investigative journalist for the biggest newspaper of Israel, and the responsible for taking down COTI founders Binary Options scams back in 2017 reports

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Article: American Acquisition Opportunity Inc. Announces Pricing of $100,000,000 Initial Public Offering

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American Acquisition Opportunity Inc. Announces Pricing of $100,000,000 Initial Public Offering

ACCESSWIRE , 18 March 2021

American Acquisition Opportunity Inc. (the “Company”) announced today that it priced its initial public offering of 10,000,000 units at $10.00 per unit. The units will be listed on the Nasdaq Capital Market (“Nasdaq”) and will begin trading tomorrow, Thursday, March 18, 2021, under the ticker symbol “AMAOU”. Each unit consists of one share of the Company’s Class A common stock and one-half of one redeemable warrant. Each whole warrant entitles the holder thereof to purchase one share of Class A common stock at a price of $11.50 per share. Only whole warrants are exercisable and will trade. Once the securities comprising the units begin separate trading, shares of the Class A common stock and warrants are expected to be listed on Nasdaq under the symbols “AMAO” and “AMAOW,” respectively. Continue reading “Article: American Acquisition Opportunity Inc. Announces Pricing of $100,000,000 Initial Public Offering”

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Article: ASC orders lifetime bans, penalties in Bluforest pump-and-dump scheme

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ASC orders lifetime bans, penalties in Bluforest pump-and-dump scheme

The Canadian Press, 18 March 2021

CALGARY — The Alberta Securities Commission has ordered permanent market access bans against Cem (Jim) Can, Charles Michael Miller and Bluforest Inc. after finding they acted fraudulently in a pump-and-dump stock market manipulation scheme.

In its sanctioning decision, the provincial regulator also ordered the men to pay a total of about $2.67 million in penalties, costs and returns of ill-gotten gains.

An ASC panel ruled last August that Can and Miller engaged in a deliberate fraud, that Bluforest made misrepresentations and that Can illegally distributed securities to Alberta investors while engaging in activities designed to set an artificial price for Bluforest securities.

In its decision, it says the scheme originated in 2010, when Can acquired control over Greenwood Gold Resources Inc., whose shares traded through US OTC Markets Group, then negotiated a framework in 2012 to repurpose it as a carbon-credit marketing company and changed the name.

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Article: Think twice before signing ‘2021 Hong Kong Charter’

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Think twice before signing ‘2021 Hong Kong Charter’

SCMP Editorial, 17 March 2021

A campaign seeking to unite Hongkongers based overseas and the international community to fight what it calls suppression of the city’s freedoms and autonomy had barely made a ripple before being branded “illegal” by the Security Bureau.

The “2021 Hong Kong Charter” will not just make its founder, Nathan Law Kwun-chung, and others liable to breaching the national security law, but also whoever else signs up. Such a move is likely to be seen as foreign collusion.

The 25-point document contains statements on Hong Kong, mainland China and the international community and calls for the “liberation” of the city and the end of China’s one-party rule – slogans that are now deemed in violation of the law banning acts of subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.

It also mentions issues in relation to Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan, and urges the international community to “stand together, to safeguard democratic values under the threat of totalitarianism”.

The city’s development has always been at the heart of many overseas Chinese with Hong Kong roots, even more so in the wake of the political and economic turmoils in recent years. It would therefore be unsurprising if the campaign attracts some support abroad and at home.
Taiwan
But people should think twice before signing up to the document. The Security Bureau has warned that it would be an offence for anyone planning or participating in acts that undermine sovereignty or colluding with foreign forces to sanction or engage in hostile activities against Hong Kong and the mainland. The extraterritorial effect of the law makes those participating from overseas also liable.

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Article: Stop the Game!: How To Chill Bubbles Sensibly

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Stop the Game!: How To Chill Bubbles Sensibly

John C. Coffee Jr., 17 March 2021

Much of the excited journalism on GameStop has focused on its asserted “Democratization” of the markets or the new “populism” sweeping Wall Street. This sort of commentary is the product of journalists being on tight publication deadlines and willing to generalize based on a data sample of one. Those of us who take a longer-term view see it differently: Bubbles are bad; GameStop was a bubble; and the influences that caused it (which were indeed new and novel) need to be chilled. Those who disagree with the last sentence should probably stop reading here.

But how you chill a bubble is not a simple question. Many commentators have unrealistic solutions: (1) Prosecute everyone (or at least those on Reddit) for manipulation; and (2) subject websites to tight regulatory controls. Such solutions, proposed by those who can reach legal conclusions faster than the average knee can jerk, face formidable obstacles. First, manipulation is a crime of intent that requires the actor to attempt willfully to move a stock price (up or down) to an “artificial” price that the actor knows is different than that which would be reached by the normal intersection of supply and demand in a fully informed market. Currently, the circuits are split, but both the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second Circuit and D.C. Circuit insist that the defendant must intentionally send a false pricing signal (such as a wash sale or a factually false statement). See Fezzandi v. Bear Stearns & Co., 777 F.3d 566 (2d Cir. 2015); Koch v. SEC, 793 F.3d 147 (D.C. Cir. 2015). Second, the First Amendment largely precludes any attempt to shut down social media. In addition, §230 of the Communications Decency Act gives immunity to websites, such as Reddit, for what their users say on them. Beyond that, mere statements of opinion—even manic opinions—are not fraudulent. Most of the lost souls on WallStreetBets sound like true believers, not cynical manipulators, and their prediction that GameStop was “going to the moon” were silly, but not fraudulent. According to Motley Fool, the average investor in a Robinhood account had an account balance (in 2020) between $1,000 and $5,000. A colleague tells me that his account balance on Draft Kings (a different betting venue) is greater than that. In short, Robinhood’s investors are not big-time and are probably feeling their losses keenly at this point.

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Article: VIDEO | After Hindenburg Research report, Lordstown Motors set to face investors today

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VIDEO | After Hindenburg Research report, Lordstown Motors set to face investors today

Justin Dennis, 17 March 2021

Lordstown Motors has vowed to refute last week’s scathing short-seller report, which called demand for its Endurance all-electric pickup truck a “mirage” and claimed the company has been misleading investors.

LORDSTOWN — Lordstown Motors Corp. executives are expected to address the company’s investors during their end-of-year financial report this afternoon.

The report comes days after Hindenburg Research, a short-selling stock market research firm, delivered a damaging deep-dive into the Voltage Valley leader, claiming that its investors are being misled; that its all-electric pickup truck the Endurance is actually years away from production, despite executives’ September 2021 target; and that its book of about 100,000 non-binding pre-orders for the vehicle “are largely fictitious and used as a prop to raise capital and confer legitimacy.”

Lordstown Motors on Monday vowed to refute the report “in due time,” and a spokesperson last week promised a “thorough” statement. CEO Steve Burns, addressing reporters during a Monday tour of the plant where dozens of test vehicles are currently being built, reassured the Endurance is on-track.

“Whatever anybody thinks of us in the world, the main thing is we are going to be the first electric pickup truck in the United States, full-size, and that starts in September,” Burns said, as reported by The Business Journal.

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Article: A long list of Anson short positions.Good post on Stockhouse here

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A long list of Anson short positions.Good post on Stockhouse here

u/Rubarbarbara, Reddit, 17 March 2021

I have the full post below:We all know how the dirty rats at Anson Funds work. Wash trading, down ticking, spoofing among a host of other dirty tricks the banks let them get away with.

Then we have their army of social media bashers, their relationships with Nate Anderson at Hindenburg Research, Ben Axler at Sprucepoint Capital Management and Andrew Left at Citron Research, amongst many others. All of them in the pay of Moez and Anson Funds.

All working together to destroy companies and profit off their illegal deals.

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Article: Column: Forget GameStop and short sellers — the SEC says ‘OCMillionaire’ manipulated a worthless stock higher

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Column: Forget GameStop and short sellers — the SEC says ‘OCMillionaire’ manipulated a worthless stock higher

Michael Hiltzik, 17 March 2021

If you’ve been following the ludicrous saga of trading in GameStop shares, you’ve probably heard about how short sellers try to profit by manipulating stocks to fall in price.

But that’s not the only way people try to play the market.

The Securities and Exchange Commission just unveiled fraud charges against a trader allegedly trying to profit by manipulating a stock higher.

He’s Andrew Fassari, a 33-year-old Orange County resident. According to the SEC, he staged a vigorous campaign in December using the Twitter handle “OCMillionaire” to suck penny-stock investors into shares of Arcis Resources Corp., which had been defunct for years.

Fraudsters can use online platforms (including social news aggregators, investment research websites, online investment newsletters, ratings websites, message boards, chat rooms, and discussion forums) to spread false or misleading information.

Securities and Exchange Commission

Fassari made $929,693 in his first round of trading in Arcis shares from Dec. 9 through Dec. 16, the SEC says in a complaint unsealed in Los Angeles federal court Monday. He bought back in on Dec. 17 and sold his entire stake the next day, sustaining a loss of $436,312.

Fassari’s overall net gain was $493,381, the SEC says. The agency notes that Arcis never traded higher than about 5 1/2 cents while Fassari was buying, selling and promoting, and often traded for a few tenths of a cent.

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Article: China tells Alibaba to sell off media assets in tech crackdown

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China tells Alibaba to sell off media assets in tech crackdown

Mark Sweney and Helen Davidson, 16 March 2021

Beijing has ordered e-commerce company Alibaba to sell off media assets including Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP) as the Chinese government looks to crack down on the growing public influence held by the country’s sprawling tech conglomerates.

Alibaba has become the lightning rod in the crackdown on big tech after founder Jack Ma, one of China’s most popular, outspoken and wealthiest entrepreneurs, delivered a blunt speech last year criticising national regulators that reportedly infuriated the president, Xi Jinping.

Following the comments, Chinese regulators blocked the $34bn stock market flotation of Alibaba online payments subsidiary Ant Group, which would have been the biggest share offering in history, and Ma disappeared from the public eye for three months. Last week, it emerged that regulators are reportedly preparing to hit Alibaba with a record fine in excess of $975m over anti-competitive practices.

China’s protectionist business regime, which shuts out foreign companies including Google and Netflix, has enabled a group of homegrown conglomerates to flourish as the country looks to build the next wave of global tech champions to challenge Silicon Valley.

Beijing has struggled to maintain control over their activities and wider influence with Alibaba’s media empire expanding to buy SCMP, Hong Kong’s premier English-language newspaper, in 2016 and holding stakes in social network Weibo, video streaming service Youku and Yicai Media Group, one of the country’s most influential news outlets.

“What is interesting here is that the Chinese Communist party has done a good job of cultivating huge tech giants, national champions,” said Jamie MacEwan, a senior media analyst at Enders Analysis. “But there has always been a split under the surface between those who want to encourage the great tech leap forward and a growing unease among those worried about these huge companies and the big public figures at the head of them, like Ma, outgrowing the patronage of the [Chinese communist] party.”

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Article: The Next ‘Gamestop’: How China or Russia Could Attack Our Financial System

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The Next ‘Gamestop’: How China or Russia Could Attack Our Financial System

Robert Carlson, Gray Gaertner, 16 March 2021

Last week, the dramatic rise and fall in the price of Gamestop demonstrated how vulnerable the stock market is to social media speculation. U.S. regulators should now turn their attention to a greater risk—that in the near future, China, Russia, or another adversary could coordinate an unwitting mob to harm the American financial system.

The potential for financial warfare follows from a playbook that China, and especially Russia, have drawn from repeatedly to meddle in U.S. domestic politics. First, foreign state agents have used social media to spread disinformation or stoke existing grievances. Second, they have counted on naive users to share the original posts, allowing the content to reach a larger audience. Finally, they fan the flames to provoke action.

In 2016 and 2020, Russian propaganda decreased U.S. voters’ trust in their candidates and the political system. During last year’s protests over race and policing, foreign bots amplified instances of both racial discrimination and violent protests, further polarizing American society. Following Joe Biden’s electoral victory in November, Russian agents embraced false allegations of fraud, providing the rationale for an armed mob to assault the Capitol Building. China spends at least $10 billion per year on its own influence operations through the United Front Work Department, which promotes pro-Beijing narratives overseas.

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Article: Britain’s NatWest bank faces money laundering charges

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Britain’s NatWest bank faces money laundering charges

Tom Wilson, Iain Withers, 16 March 2021

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s financial regulator has started a criminal action against NatWest over allegations it failed to detect suspicious activity by a customer depositing nearly 400 million pounds ($553 million) over five years, mostly in cash.

The action is the first such case against a British bank under a 2007 money laundering law. If convicted, the bank faces a maximum penalty of an unlimited fine.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said it was bringing the proceedings after NatWest’s systems failed to adequately monitor and scrutinise activity over an account held by a British customer between November 2011 and October 2016.

Around 365 million pounds was paid into the unnamed customer’s accounts, of which around 264 million pounds was in cash, the watchdog alleged.

NatWest had previously disclosed in its 2020 annual report an FCA investigation in relation to “certain money services businesses and related parties”.

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THE DOLLAR HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE : DO YOUR ASSETS?