Re: Web Stock Pundit `Tokyo Joe' Park Charged With Touting by SEC
Web Stock Pundit `Tokyo Joe' Park Charged With Touting by SEC
Washington, Jan. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Internet stock pundit `Tokyo Joe' Park, whose recommendations have a wide following among investors searching for investment ideas on the Web, was charged by regulators with manipulating securities.
The Securities and Exchange Commission alleged the high-profile stock picker, whose real name is Yun Soo Oh Park, of New York, urged investors to buy stocks at the same time he was planning to sell them.
The SEC lawsuit, filed in a Chicago federal court, also alleged Park failed to disclose that he was paid 100,000 shares by DCGR International Holdings, a cigar maker, to promote its stock in mid-1998. DCGR wasn't charged. Park is contesting the fraud charges, SEC enforcement director Richard H. Walker said.
``He misled and defrauded customers,' Walker said. ``He was planning to sell when he was telling people to buy.' Park, who posts messages under the names ``TokyoJoe' and ``TokyoMex,' has a subscription-based e-mail club called Societe Anonyme that charges $100 a month to about 1,000 investors,according to a September story by Time magazine's Time Digital.
He was ranked by Time Digital as technology's 49th most important person in 1999, tying him with TheStreet.com Inc. co-founder James Cramer.
Park, whose trading records were subpoenaed by the SEC last March, has said he touted stocks he owned early in his career but doesn't anymore.
``Yes, I was walking a borderline, a shadow gray line, but it was the beginning of cyberspace and investing,' Money magazine quoted him as saying in its May 1999 issue. ``We don't do that anymore.'
Park's Societe Anonyme Web site says, ``Don't hype stocks. We never hype a stock on the Silicon Investor or AOL (America Online) discussion threads. We do good due diligence.'
His trading philosophy, according to the site, is, ``We go for instant gratification. We believe that every stock has Unabomber lurking to take it down. We take our profit and move on.'
Last month, the SEC charged three California men, including two recent University of California at Los Angeles graduates, with illegally netting $364,000 by using Internet chat rooms to manipulate a stock. Two of the men, Arash Aziz-Golshani and Hootan Melamed, were indicted earlier this week by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles.
--Neil Roland in Washington (202) 624-1868/bd
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