SEC target D'Amaro sentenced to three years
2010-09-22 14:09 ET - Street Wire
Also Street Wire (U-*SEC) U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Also Street Wire (U-PLYCF) Playstar Corp
by Mike Caswell
A Delaware judge has sentenced Gerard D'Amaro, the Florida man who pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the pump-and-dump of Ontario-based Playstar Corp., to three years in jail. He learned his sentence in an appearance before Judge Sue Robinson on Sept. 8, 2010.
Mr. D'Amaro reached a deal with prosecutors earlier this year, in which he agreed to plead guilty to two counts of a four-count fraud indictment. The charges were for helping to manipulate Playstar and other stocks with on-line postings and wash trades. In addition to the three-year sentence, the judge ordered Mr. D'Amaro to forfeit $1.49-million in proceeds of crime. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.)
Mr. D'Amaro was one of several men facing both civil and criminal charges stemming from a two-year investigation into stocks promoted on the Investors Hub website. Those arrested included Investors Hub operator Matthew Brown. He pleaded guilty to criminal securities fraud and money laundering charges on Feb. 17, 2010, and awaits sentencing.
D'Amaro's indictment
Mr. D'Amaro's indictment, filed on April 30, 2009, in U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, was one of several filed against a connected group of promoters who used Investors Hub. In it, prosecutors described how he helped manipulate Playstar and another company called Inca Designs Inc. The indictment also named a Polish citizen, Pawel Dynkowski, who lived in Delaware.
Prosecutors claimed Mr. D'Amaro took control of a large block of Playstar shares on Sept. 10, 2006, and dumped those shares over the ensuing three months. Private companies that he controlled received the Playstar shares as part of a shares-for-debt deal in 2006. They acquired debts from prior creditors, and converted them to shares at 0.125 cent. This gave Mr. D'Amaro control of 34.32 million of the company's 60,928,246 outstanding shares. Initially, he sold some shares when the stock was trading between one and two cents, grossing $415,878, the indictment stated.
Then, in November, 2006, he and Mr. Dynkowski started a promotion that they expected would push the stock to 10 cents per share, prosecutors said. In a series of communications over the America Online instant messaging service, Mr. D'Amaro told Mr. Dynkowski that he would buy over 1.7 million of Playstar's shares. He also said he had spoken with an officer of the company, who would have a "firm" in Florida buy eight million shares. They expected that the buying, combined with an anticipated news release, would push the stock to 10 cents.
In the ensuing days, the stock reached a 52-week high of 14.5 cents. Mr. D'Amaro sold the 1.7 million shares that he had bought, grossing $133,710, the indictment stated. During that entire month, accounts that Mr. D'Amaro controlled sold 7.2 million shares, grossing $622,362, prosecutors claimed.
While the indictment only detailed the manipulations of Playstar and Inca, it contained excepts of communications between Mr. Dynkowski and Mr. D'Amaro which indicated that they were involved in other deals at the same time. In one series of messages, Mr. D'Amaro stated, "mikey buying wwng bill talking on it now." Mr. Dynkowski replied, "wwng we need ihub spammed with more posts than jusr 3 come on now blitzkrieg STOX style." In a later communication, Mr. Dynkowski said, "I love how in the shottiest mkt in history we can get a [expletive] to trade $100k of stock on no news."
Later communications contained in the indictment, from 2008, had information on the Inca manipulation. These were mostly between Mr. Dynkowski and an unidentified trader. Mr. Dynkowski told the trader that he had set up several nominee accounts to manipulate the stock. The accounts were in the names of farmers living in a non-English speaking country, which would be impossible for authorities to trace, he said.
In the conversations, Mr. Dynkowski described measures to keep his communications secret. Among other things, he bought cellphones using an alias and he used wireless Internet signals from other residents in his building, avoiding setting up his own Internet. In one example, Mr. Dynkowski told the trader: "I'm invisible, I told you ... Stealth baby stealth. Dude, I got three phones that's why you hear them all beeping cause I can't even [expletive] charge them all at once. And I recycle them - I recycle two of the three every [expletive] two weeks."
Later conversations referred to trading and promoting the stock. In an AOL message on July 22, 2008, Mr. Dynkowski told the trader that he had wired money to a nominee brokerage account, and the trader was to use the money to trade Inca. He further explained that he had hired five people to post messages promoting the company on Internet discussion forums.
The indictment did not state how much money, if any, Mr. D'Amaro and Mr. Dynkowski made during the Inca Designs manipulation. The stock, which had a high of 91 cents in June, 2008, fell to under a penny within a month.
Mr. D'Amaro is the first of the men indicted in the investigation to be sentenced. The case remains outstanding against Mr. Dynkowski, who has not yet entered a plea. Other co-conspirators, who were separately indicted for manipulating stocks through Investors Hub, were Joseph Mangiapane, 43, of California; Marc Riviello, 50, of California; Jacob Canceli, 50, of California; and Angelo "Bill" Panetta, 48, of California. They have all pleaded not guilty, with the exception of Mr. Riviello. On May 19, 2010, he agreed to plead guilty to a charge of unlawfully transporting money, and awaits sentencing.
SEC case
In addition to the criminal charges, the men face a civil suit from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC claims that they netted $6.2-million pumping and dumping Playstar and three other stocks with misleading news and posts on Investors Hub. The other companies were GH3 International Inc., Asia Global Holdings Inc. and Xtreme Motorsports of California Inc.
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Well I must say that the top regulator in the Americas has once again done a bang up job. Lots of people rounded up and doing serious time. Being a former shareholder time, I was introduced to the deal while visiting Toronto at the four seasons hotel. The two guys met aren't named, one was the president of the company named Stuart ( whom I recall reading before did issue false and misleading news), the other man was named Mark. He was supposed to be the largest shareholder ( via nominee accounts in Curacao), as he also is banned from trading. If anyone can tell me why these two gents seem to be invisible, I would be delighted to read it. These guys fleeced my group for a few hundred grand. Subsequently, I avoid Toronto like the plague. But I don't understand how a guy that did time in Germany and Florida and is banned from trading is actively practicing his craft and leaving casualties like me by the dozens. I am told that he drives a brand new porsche and laughs at all the punters who believe his stories.
Posted by toby heart at 2010-09-22 16:41
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