Seaveiws previous analyst saying good bye to his fans:
Payola and a little pump 'n' dump
January 12, 2005
Two nasty instances of media gone wrong. First The New York Times has a story about a former columnist for CBS MarketWatch.com who was forced to pay a fine for acting like a character in Boiler Room:
Thom Calandra, a former columnist for CBS MarketWatch.com, will pay more than $540,000 to settle federal regulators' charges that he used an investment newsletter to pump up the price of penny stocks he owned before selling them.
In a complaint filed yesterday, the Securities and Exchange Commission accused Mr. Calandra of using The Calandra Report, an Internet investment newsletter, to promote the thinly traded stocks of 23 companies, without disclosing that he owned them, and then went on to sell them for a gain of more than $405,000. Mr. Calandra also failed to tell his readers that he received heavily discounted shares in two mining companies when he recommended them in the newsletter before selling them for a large profit, the complaint said.
And, of course, the now broadly reported tale of Armstrong Williams, a syndicated columnist and pundit who took money from the US government to promote the No Child Left Behind education bill on air and in his writing. In case you missed it, try this, this and perhaps a little bit of this. |
