Vardi – Financial Treason & Crime

SEC And Manhattan DA Investigate Southridge Capital

Nathan Vardi, 07 October 2009

Southridge Capital Management, a Ridgefield, Conn., hedge fund firm run by Stephen Hicks that primarily employs an investment strategy known as PIPEs, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.

The SEC has opened an investigation into Southridge, according to two subpoenas the SEC sent in late July to companies that had received financing from the firm’s hedge funds.

In the five-page subpoenas, Vyta Corp. and Hyperdynamics Corp., two micro-cap companies that have been fighting Southridge for years in court, were asked by the SEC to produce documents reflecting all transfers of cash between them and the Southridge hedge funds over a four-year period. The companies were also told to provide documents relating to securities they issued to Southridge and communications between the companies and Southridge. Continue reading “Article: SEC And Manhattan DA Investigate Southridge Capital”

The 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

Tag: Vardi

Article: SEC And Manhattan DA Investigate Southridge Capital

Paper: The Deep Capture Story by Mark Mitchell