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Web: SEC Charges optionsXpress and Five Individuals Involved in Abusive Naked Short Selling Scheme

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SEC Charges optionsXpress and Five Individuals
Involved in Abusive Naked Short Selling Scheme

SEC, 16 April 2012

The SEC’s Division of Enforcement alleges that Chicago-based optionsXpress failed to satisfy its close-out obligations under Regulation SHO by repeatedly engaging in a series of sham “reset” transactions designed to give the illusion that the firm had purchased securities of like kind and quantity. The firm and customer Jonathan I. Feldman engaged in these sham reset transactions in a number of securities, resulting in continuous failures to deliver. Regulation SHO requires the delivery of equity securities to a registered clearing agency when delivery is due, generally three days after the trade date (T+3). If no delivery is made by that time, the firm must purchase or borrow the securities to close out the failure-to-deliver position by no later than the beginning of regular trading hours on the next day (T+4).

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Web: Patrick Byrne, Facing Dilemma, Lashes Out at Penson Financial

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Patrick Byrne, Facing Dilemma, Lashes Out at Penson Financial

Gary Weiss

gary-weiss.com, 9 October 2009

Sam Antar today describes the serious dilemma facing Patrick Byrne, the wacky CEO of Overstock.com. Thanks to an SEC investigation instigated by Sam, who has posted frequently about how Overstock has systematically inflated its financial statements, Byrne is caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

He has to either restate Overstock’s recent earnings–including a much-ballyhooed “profit” in the fourth quarter that was actually a loss–or wait until the SEC forces him to do so.

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Web: Byrne: SEC Enforcement Division Takes Orders From Short-Sellers

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Byrne: SEC Enforcement Division Takes Orders From Short-Sellers

Gary Weiss

gary-weiss.com, 19 September 2009

Patrick Byrne has a new conspiracy theory to explain why his corporate crime petri dish Overstock.com is under investigation by the SEC. Seems that short sellers, in addition to having a fax machine at CNBC, also have a hotline to the SEC, in which they bark out orders to start investigations against innocent CEOs like Byrne.

Byrne made that comment on Fox Business News, where he is trotted out as an “internet retailing expert,” no doubt because of the skill at which he has eased Overstock into negative shareholder equity. He was brought out this time for a ritual denunciation of new bank compensation rules.

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Web: Jim Cramer Called Onto The Carpet By Jon Stewart

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Jim Cramer Called Onto The Carpet By Jon Stewart

Bob O’Brien

Sanity Check via Wayback, 13 March 2009

Everyone needs to watch these three segments of the Jon Stewart show. They are remarkable, because they show an intelligent, reasoned man confronting the intellectual dishonesty, if not larceny, that is financial reporting in America.

What makes them so remarkable is that Stewart is not a top economist, nor a seasoned DA, nor an expert on financial markets, nor a skilled attorney. He’s a comedian. He makes funny remarks about things, and mocks the world, and is generally hysterically funny in his efforts.

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Web: Random Musings On The End Of The American Experiment

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Random Musings On The End Of The American Experiment

Bob O’Brien

Sanity Check via Wayback, 6 March 2009

I think the defining moment for me was when Bernanke responded to the question from Congress, as to whether the American people (and their elected representatives in Congress) would be told to whom all their tax dollars have been given or lent. That single word summed it up perfectly for me: “No.”

Any illusions that the money trust in the US, that collection of bankers and hedge fund managers and industrialists who are the beneficiaries of the systematic looting of the Treasury under the current “emergency” measures, is going to do anything other than precisely whatever it likes, or is going to report to those being looted, was dispelled at that moment. Likewise, nobody has been able to articulate why the massive swindle at AIG continues to be subsidized by our tax dollars – but again, no reporting on where those dollars are going will be forthcoming.

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Web: Remember How Naked Short Selling Wasn’t a Big Deal?

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Remember How Naked Short Selling Wasn’t a Big Deal?

Bob O’Brien

Sanity Check via Wayback, 28 January 2009

Bernie Madoff’s brokerage owed $600 million in stock to its clients, that it, well, didn’t actually have on hand, as in the shares were either never delivered to the brokerage, or far more likely, it just, “Desked the trades” – meaning that it took the client cash, represented the securities as having been bought in the market and delivered (via the brokerage statement the client got every month), but never bothered with buying the shares.

Also known as one type of naked short selling.

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Web: Merrill Pays $15 Billion in Compensation After Taking $10 Billion in TARP Funds

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Merrill Pays $15 Billion in Compensation After Taking $10 Billion in TARP Funds

Bob O’Brien

Sanity Check via Wayback, 23 January 2009

After all, the logic, or rather the gun to the head of the taxpayer by Hank Paulson, was that the economy would vaporize if we didn’t take taxpayer money and give it to Wall Street banks and insurance companies, to, er, lend, or to relieve them of the burden of having to carry the toxic paper they created on their books any longer.

At the time, I said that was clearly a lie, and all this would be is a redistribution from the Treasury, to the Wall Street buddies of Paulson’s who got us into the mess in the first place.

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Web: Goldman Sachs and Madoff – Mr. Paulson Shocked To Learn There’s Gambling Going On In There!!!

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Goldman Sachs and Madoff – Mr. Paulson Shocked To Learn There’s Gambling Going On In There!!!

Bob O’Brien

Sanity Check via Wayback, 11 January 2009

Apparently, Goldman knew that Madoff was a fraud almost a decade ago. As this article in the Telegraph points out, there was a company-wide ban against doing anything with his firm after they did diligence on him:
“More than a decade ago bankers from Goldman Sachs’ asset management division were despatched to Bernard Madoff Investment Securities to discover how the legendary fund manager maintained such consistently good returns.

The American banking giant prided itself on managing funds in-house but if it could get a better deal for its clients at Madoff, Goldman would gracefully admit it and allocate some funds.

One former Goldman partner said: “I remember the guys came back baffled. Madoff refused to let them do any due diligence on the funds and when they asked about the firm’s investment strategy they couldn’t understand it. Goldman not only black-listed Madoff in the asset management division but banned the brokering side from trading with the firm too.”

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Web: Will the Justice Department and the SEC Go After Blatantly Illegal RICO Activity by the Nation’s Most Prominent Hedge Funds?

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Will the Justice Department and the SEC Go After Blatantly Illegal RICO Activity by the Nation’s Most Prominent Hedge Funds?

Bob O’Brien

Sanity Check via Wayback, 3 January 2009

Apparently hedge funds like Kynikos, and SAC, have a secret for their outsize performance.

Racketeering, and illegal frontrunning, if my read is correct.

That’s the only conclusion one can draw from the stunningly simple and obvious analysis of email records that Judd Bagley, over at the Deepcapture site, has compiled.

You have Jim Chanos, who is all over the airwaves as the advocate and public face of the hedge fund world, who argues against any and all regulation or oversight for hedge funds or short sellers, apparently actively frontrunning information illegally obtained from stock analysts, who eagerly shared their analysis and spreadsheets with him in advance of publishing negative smear pieces subsequently shown by time to have been nothing more than hatchet jobs.

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Web: SEC Allows Deci-Billion Dollar Ponzi Scheme to Run For Years

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SEC Allows Deci-Billion Dollar Ponzi Scheme to Run For Years

Bob O’Brien

Sanity Check via Wayback, 16  December 2008

So, you have these cops, see? They patrol the neighborhood where all the cocaine gets sold, and yet for all their hard work, the coke problem spirals out of control. Many, when they choose to leave the force, get massive pay increases by going to work for some of the private security firms long linked to the coke dealers. They will occasionally bust small time dealers, or new entrants into the market, however the very visible kingpins in the neighborhood, who drive Bentleys and have their own planes, never get looked at. In fact, should anyone suggest that a Colombian with a 4th grade education not be a legitimate multi-million dollar business owner, they will get investigated. The town’s awash with coke and coke profits, but according to the cops, nobody knows where it all comes from, who is trafficking in it, or anyone that’s dirty. Everyone is mystified by the coke deluge.

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Web: Naked in Wonderland

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Naked in Wonderland

Patrick Byrne

Forbes via Wayback, 23 September 2008

Recent concerns about short-selling have culminated in a regulatory flurry of emergency orders and amendments. What should be of concern, however, is not short-selling per se: As its devotees frequently remind us, short-selling is a vital and legitimate market activity. What should be of concern are specific types of stock manipulation that cloak themselves within legitimate activities such as shorting, and which, in one way or another, rely upon loopholes in our nation’s system of stock settlement.

“Settlement” is the moment in a stock trade when the seller receives money and the buyer receives stock. Our settlement system has gaping loopholes that allow sellers to sell shares but fail to deliver them. In such cases, the system creates IOUs for shares, and lets those “stock IOUs” circulate in the expectation the seller will soon correct his error. This is harmless–as long as the IOUs are inadvertent, temporary and few.

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Web: The SEC May Be The Country’s Worst Enemy

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The SEC May Be The Country’s Worst Enemy

Bob O’Brien

Sanity Check via Wayback, 19 September 2008

Government has now, with the stroke of a pen, altered the way the markets work. Which again, is fine, if short selling goes the way of the buggy whip, for good. But that is unlikely. So what it has done is prepare the stage for volatility unlike any seen in the markets ever before. Wildly high highs, to be followed by devastating lows.

I’m not so concerned about the wildly high highs. It’s when the rule expires that I have a problem with. And it is the absence of coherence in the reasoning that I have a huge problem with.

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Web: How Big is the Failure to Deliver/Naked Shorting Problem? Yet More Information

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How Big is the Failure to Deliver/Naked Shorting Problem? Yet More Information

Bob O’Brien

Sanity Check via Wayback, 8 August 2008

How big is the problem? I mean, we hear the now famous $6 billion delivery failure number tossed around from the DTCC, but how accurate is that, really? Is it a complete answer? Is there more information that is knowable?

The answer is, yes, more is knowable.

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Web: Why The DTCC Is A Prime Mover In Securities Fraud and Naked Shorting

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Why The DTCC Is A Prime Mover In Securities Fraud and Naked Shorting

Bob O’Brien

Sanity Check via Wayback, 5 August 2008

To hear them tell it, they are powerless to deal with NSS, acting more as a vessel through which stock flows. They ignore that they are an SRO, chartered with regulating the business conduct of their owner/members. They pretend that they don’t become the intermediary, and thus the contra-party to the trade to both buyer and seller, and thus in full control of buying in failed trades (if they wanted). They pass self-serving rules that declare they can’t force a failing member to buy in the fail, even though they are chartered with ensuring timely clearance and settlement. And for years they have been claiming that NSS is basically a non-issue, while their press geeks and counsel employ mind-numbing doubletalk.

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Web: Cox: “Many people think naked short selling is already illegal, but that isn’t true….”

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Cox: “Many people think naked short selling is already illegal, but that isn’t true….”

Bob O’Brien

Sanity Check via Wayback, 17 July 2008

Remarkably, or perhaps not so remarkably, literally hours after issuing an emergency order requiring short sellers to actually borrow the stock they sell – but only in the large financial companies largely complicit in causing hundreds of billions of dollars of damage to the financial markets via naked short selling – several interesting things happened. If you read my last blog, you’ll see I saw it coming. Loopholes, poor craftsmanship, silliness, dishonesty, all baked into the SEC cake so that the proclamation has little real world effect.

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THE DOLLAR HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE : DO YOUR ASSETS?