National Bank's P.I. client also jailed for mail fraud
National Bank of Canada NA
Shares issued 188,728,712 2001-07-13 close $29.5
Friday Jul 13 2001 Street Wire
Also B.C. Securities Commission (BCSEC)
by Brent Mudry
A well-promoted California-based penny-stock short named as a questionable client of scandal-plagued Vancouver brokerage Pacific International Securities by the British Columbia Securities Commission, due to regulatory troubles with the National Association of Securities Dealers, also spent four months in jail last year after pleading guilty to mail fraud.
"Anthony" Elgindy, whose real name is Amr Ibrahim Elgindy, however, is extremely touchy about being named as a client of Pacific International, which is fighting BCSC charges that it catered to New York Italian and Russian Mafia associates and other American securities violators and penny-stock rogues. "You truly slapped me in the face and I have done nothing wrong and no one has ever said I'm suspected of doing anything wrong," Mr. Elgindy told Stockwatch, referring to his regulatory history.
"My account was so clean bubbles popped out when anyone looked at them and I have always claimed the existence of the account on my taxes," states Mr. Elgindy. (The short was never asked about his taxes or how clean his P.I. account was.) Mr. Elgindy initially denied being a P.I. client, then said he never had an account under the name "Anthony Elgindy," then repeatedly proclaimed his account was squeaky clean, and has since downplayed his dealings at the besieged Vancouver brokerage.
"My account was never involved in anything improper and I never did anything wrong, ever while at P.I. I just bought and sold stocks like anyone else, I never bought any penny stocks and my account was never involved in any stock deals or investment banking relationships," protests the customer, who prides himself on being a fraud-buster who works for the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Mr. Elgindy is well known in penny-stock shorting circles and equally well known to officials at the NASD and the United States Bureau of Prisons, which recently hosted him as a special guest at one of its exclusive gated communities in Southern California, designed to keep riff-raff in, not out. Although the felon was convicted in Fort Worth, as he then lived in Colleyville, Tex., he served his time in California, near his new home in Encinitas.
While Mr. Elgindy did not volunteer details of his criminal record, he likes to portray himself as a fine upstanding citizen, a white knight ferreting out stock frauds as a hero of the small investor. Indeed, he was featured as such a penny-stock hero by Wired magazine, Barbara Walters on 20/20 and the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Elgindy has been credited with helping expose a number of penny-stock scams.
"Yes at one time I worked for some really crappy, crummy, lousy firms. That was four or five years before I had an account at P.I.," Mr. Elgindy told Stockwatch. The born-again short began his penny-stock career in 1988 at Blinder Robinson, a year and a half after the SEC's bid to shut down the notorious bucket shop became widely known.
"I work so hard to clean up my background to undo the damage I did as I couldn't sleep at night and I was sick to my stomach," says Mr. Elgindy, referring to his bucket-shop days.
That is all in the past. "Since 1993, I have led the squeaky clean life and am 1,000-per-cent dedicated to what I do now for a living," states Mr. Elgindy. (His NASD troubles date to 1993.)
This "squeaky clean life" included ripping off an insurance company to the tune of $90,645 by collecting bogus disability payments while he was working as a broker at two national brokerage firms in 1994 and 1995. Mr. Elgindy's fraudulent insurance claim had been supported by a fraudulent tax form altered to double his base 1990 insurable earnings to a purported $208,000.
This, of course, is not the sort of thing Mr. Elgindy wants to be known for. "Wall Street is a corrupt cesspool and my job is to expose it, that's what I do," he told Stockwatch.
The notable P.I. client has been quite upset with recent coverage linking him to the Vancouver brokerage. "What on God's green earth did I do wrong? I'm not a party to any money laundering or any stock scams ... I didn't do anything at all at P.I. nor am I involved in any of their troubles," he states.
"What law have I broken, what charges am I accused of, what did I ever do wrong at P.I. or anywhere in your scandal-ridden country?" the American short asked the Canadian reporter.
In a private E-mail to a fan, republished on Silicon Investor, Mr. Elgindy is especially anxious to distance himself from P.I. "I had an account there for exactly five months, and I bailed after I heard they were in trouble," he stated. "Since when are we guilty of something because we have an account somewhere?"
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