I have researched these companies by looking at press releases, website registrations and websites, and combined that info with information from field operatives who visited their NY office located at 5 East 59th st. 7th floor, New York, NY 10022. What we found has the look, feel and smell of a CLASSIC, big 'ol HUGE scam.
~ Small companies doing in some cases no business it would seem, that have $150-200 million dollar market capitalizations?
~ All of the Companies appear to be run out of the same offices?
~ CTRN - which hit 42 today - up from the $2 range less than 30 days ago, does not even have a phone number listed under the corporate name according to 411 information in area code 212 where it's offices are listed?
~ CTRN's business plan involves producing a website that any 9th grade dropout could produce in 15 minutes with a copy of Microsoft FrontPage98 (which costs about $129.00)... webforce10.net
~ CRTN claims to have New York and London Offices, but further research suggests the London office is simply a photographers office owned by Robert Lawrence the "so called" technical genius at CTRN. Check rdlawrence.force9.co.uk in the UK.
Robert Lawrence also appears to be working for IVHD. If you go to ivhd.com and try to order a product, you will be taken to another site (conveniently located off-shore), at the bottom of the page you will see that the site is actually run by a company called RDL Marketing Services. Click on the link and voila you are at RDLawrence Photography!
This looks like a regular scamaramma! It sounds like one that will go down in history as one of the "BIG ones".
This appears to be how they run the scam...
They have some of these other companies own much of the stock in each company, thus when they increase the price of the stock of company X, the assets of each company increase dramatically. Since I suspect they own just about all of the stock in each of these companies, it's not too hard to push the stock higher.
Go to a bank with a company showing 100 million in assets and see if they will give you a nice loan... See if NASDAQ gives you listing...
The companies also do business with each other, making impressive sounding announcements about new contracts with each other...
Interesting until you discover neither company really does any business, has any revenue from sales, or any assets other than the stock in the other companies. This is particularly evident with CRTN and ECTS. There are a number of press releases announcing really great sounding contracts between the various companies (Like between CTRN and ECTS). Funny thing is - they forgot to mention the relationship between the two companies?
dljdirect.com
"Company X announces a great new agreement with company Y"... The fact that company X & Y really do no business besides produce press releases does not seem to make a bit of difference...
Several of the companies do actually do some business. SMEK is a construction company - likely the original biz these guys were in. Hmmm.. Construction in New York? That's always been a "Mob Free" biz...
IVHD sells a baldness cure and a sex aid, (get a boner or keep a boner longer, or something like that).
I think the only way to bring about the truth in these stocks, is to sue them (class action), on behalf of shorts who lost money based on the companies fraudulent issuance of press releases and apparent group effort to manipulate the price of these stocks. A new twist on class action suits - representing short investors instead of long investors.
I have talked to two lawyers about this today - should know more this afternoon. A lawsuit and subsequent investigation will likely turn over a rock uncovering some pretty slimey stuff...
Without a lawsuit/formal investigation these guys can pretty much manipulate the stock price wherever they want - for that reason be careful shorting this scam, and think twice about going long, because when the game is over, these companies appear to be nothing but hot air.
I welcome all addtional comments and information about these companies.
All Comments In My Opinion
Steve |
