Continue reading “#UNRIG Video (29:32) Lucy Komisar on Wall Street Offshore Money Laundering”
#UNRIG Video (29:32) Lucy Komisar on Wall Street Offshore Money Laundering
VideoReport: SEC IG Practices Related to Naked Short Selling Complaints and Referrals
ReportEditor: bottom line up front: SEC does not “do” complaints and considers naked short selling to be legal and generally contributing to “liquidity,”
Practices Related to Naked Short Selling Complaints and Referrals
Naked short selling has been a controversial practice for several years and, while not illegal per se, abusive or manipulative naked short selling (e.g., intentionally failing to borrow and deliver shares sold short in order to drive down the stock price) violates the federal securities laws.
The prior GAO audit found that Enforcement’s system for receiving and tracking referrals from the Self-Regulatory Organizations (SRO) needed improvements and recommended enhancements that would facilitate the monitoring and analysis of trend information and case activities.
Continue reading “Report: SEC IG Practices Related to Naked Short Selling Complaints and Referrals”
Article: In Pursuit of the Naked Short by Alexis Stokes
Article - AcademicAlexis Stokes, Texas State University
Journal of Law and Business 5/1 (Spring 2009)
This article explores the origins of naked short-selling litigation; considers
the failures of significant naked short-selling lawsuits in federal court;
surveys the obstacles erected collectively by constitutional standing requirements, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, brokerage firms, death spiral financiers, and the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation; examines the efficacy of Regulation SHO, SEC rule 10b-21, and new FINRA rules; discusses recent state legislation and state court litigation; and identifies non-litigation options to curb naked short-selling. Ultimately, this article seeks to answer the question: If manipulative naked short-selling is more than a mythological scapegoat for
small cap failure, what remedies are, or should be, available?
PDF (62 Pages): Article In Pursuit of the Naked Short
Article: Naked and Confused
Article - MediaLiz Moyer
Forbes, 12 February 2007
How a tiny software outfit fell victim to an illegal but unrestrained practice known as naked short-selling.
Most investors have never heard of Sedona (otcbb: SDNA.OB – news – people ) Corp., a piddling Pennsylvania outfit that sells customer relationship management software for small U.S. banks and credit unions. But to a rogue band of short-selling hedge fund managers, Sedona was prime meat.
Paper: The Deep Capture Story by Mark Mitchell
PaperThe Story of Deep Capture
By Mark Mitchell, with reporting by the Deep Capture Team
The Columbia School of Journalism is our nation’s finest. They grant the Pulitzer Prize, and their journal, The Columbia Journalism Review, is the profession’s gold standard. CJR reporters are high priests of a decaying temple, tending a flame in a land going dark. In 2006 a CJR editor (a seasoned journalist formerly with Time magazine in Asia, The Wall Street Journal Europe, and The Far Eastern Economic Review) called me to discuss suspicions he was forming about the US financial media. I gave him leads but warned, “Chasing this will take you down a rabbit hole with no bottom.” For months he pursued his story against pressure and threats he once described as, “something out of a Hollywood B movie, but unlike the movies, the evil corporations fighting the journalist are not thugs burying toxic waste, they are Wall Street and the financial media itself.” His exposé reveals a circle of corruption enclosing venerable Wall Street banks, shady offshore financiers, and suspiciously compliant reporters at The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, CNBC, and The New York Times. If you ever wonder how reporters react when a journalist investigates them (answer: like white-collar crooks they dodge interviews, lie, and hide behind lawyers), or if financial corruption interests you, then this is for you. It makes Grisham read like a book of bedtime stories, and exposes a scandal that may make Enron look like an afternoon tea.
Introduction By Patrick M. Byrne, Deep Capture Reporter
PDF (69 Pages): Deep Capture Story
Article: Naked Justice?
Article - Media, PublicationsLiz Moyer, 29 August 2006
Louisiana State Attorney General Charles Foti is trying to force UBS, the Wall Street investment bank, to turn over vast quantities of information on its trading, stock lending and other activities related to shares of software firm Sedona.
The Louisiana Department of Justice filed documents in a state court Tuesday to compel UBS to hand over the information in ten days.
The state is probing naked short-selling, which is the practice of selling shares short without borrowing them. It is an issue that has already been raised in reference to Sedona Sedona. in an ongoing civil lawsuit against a number of brokers and hedge funds and in a Securities and Exchange Commission federal court case filed in April in New York against one brokerage and several individuals. Continue reading “Article: Naked Justice?”
Article: ‘Naked’ short selling is center of looming legal battle
Uncategorized‘Naked’ short selling is center of looming legal battle
Companies on the defensive seize upon an aggressive form of shorting
Alistair Barr
MarketWatch, 14 June 2006
By one contentious estimate, it’s a big problem plaguing more than 10% of stocks on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. An NYSE probe into whether naked shorting was used to force down shares of Vonage Holdings Corp. VG, +3.53% lower during the Internet phone company’s May initial public offering has added fuel to the fire. See full story.
Continue reading “Article: ‘Naked’ short selling is center of looming legal battle”
Web: The Death of a Thousand Cuts
WebBud Burrell
Sanity Check via Wayback, 2 February 2006
During my undergraduate studies, I read of an historical method of execution known as the Death of a Thousand Cuts. I have come to see that as a metaphor for how guerrilla wars (like ours) are won and lost.
Whether any of us have fully realized it or not, we have been engaged by an insidious enemy whose sole desire was to steal what was not theirs from others they viewed as their inferiors, rather than earn it legitimately. When a person was executed by the infliction of a thousand small cuts, the pain was enormous, eventually killing the subject by shock and loss of blood, but very, very slowly.
Article: U.S. Stock Market Commentary by Samex Capital
Article - MediaU.S. Stock Market Commentary by Samex Capital
Samex Capital via RGM Communications via Wayback, 7 February 2005
It seems the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute For Legal Reform has publicly stated their petition of William Donaldson, the chairman of the SEC, asking for an investigation into whether short sellers and the law firm of Milberg Weiss (“MW”) had engaged in securities fraud. MW represented a class action suit led by an investment company that was also shorting the stock of the company targeted by the class action. MW is best known for their role in pursuing class action suits against publicly traded companies.
PDF (2 pages): U.S. Stock Market Commentary by Samex Capital
Article: Future-Priced Convertible Securities & The Outlook For “Death Spiral” Securities-Fraud Litigation
AcademicFuture-Priced Convertible Securities & The Outlook For
“Death Spiral” Securities-Fraud Litigation
Zachary T. Knepper
bepress Legal Series, 29 August 2004
In recent years, many companies in the United States have issued so-called “Future-Priced Convertible Securities.” These companies tend to be small, thinly-traded, and (most importantly) desperate for cash, and look to the Future-Priced Convertible Security as a necessary means of financing to keep their businesses operating. FuturePriced Convertible Securities are thus credited by some with providing an important form of financing in the marketplace.1 Yet these securities are also a source of controversy. Many companies have wound up regretting issuing these instruments, after watching their stock values tumble and their market capitalizations dry-up subsequent to issuing these securities. Issuers have even started to sue.
PDF (71 pages): Future-Priced Convertible Securities & The Outlook For
“Death Spiral” Securities-Fraud Litigation
