Glad you asked. What did I mean by my years of experience with frauds and scam artists?
I have been involved in the small cap end of the stock market since before most of the posters here were born. My first Wall Street job was in 1965, a time when Mr. Oshinsky was doing to his diapers what he is now attempting to do to gullible investors. My first job was helping out on an OTC trading desk (this was before there was a NASDAQ or even stock symbols for stocks not on the NYSE or AMEX). I have been on Wall Street, and then a retired private investor, ever since. I have always done my own research, and have met with thousands of company managements over the years. I have seen hundreds and hundreds of scams in these smaller companies, and in some big ones too.
I have worked with the SEC exposing a number of them, and have been instrumental in closing down several. I have had my share of death threats and other harassment as a result. I do it anyway because it is the right thing to do.
For example, check out the DHMG thread starting in July 1997. This is a public company whose books, I determined, were totally cooked. The stock was in the the upper single digits to low double digits when I began my investigation. It now trades under $1 and is under formal SEC investigation. I expect civil sanctions and possibly a criminal case against the management.
My working assumption here is that DCHT is not a fraud, although that press release the other day bothers me. I would feel better if there was some evidence that Antaeus Corp. really exists and is plausibly capable of sending $1,000,000 in business DCHT's way.
Mr. Oshinsky has already done and said (or, concerning some elements, neglected to say) enough to get himself in hot water with the SEC. I would rather they spend their limited time and resources on bigger targets, but he is certainly tempting me to change my mind on that.
One thing I have learned over the years is that pie in the sky dreams are exciting, but how much cash a company has in the till usually determines its fate. Scam artists prefer investors to focus on the former, and neglect to mention the latter. In every online fraud that I have seen exposed, either by me or others, the scam artists and their innocent dupes try to make the issue of the scambusters' motivation the central focus, creating a smokescreen so people forget about the content of the critical posts. Thank goodness DCHT doesn't sell at a higher price, or I would certainly be accused of being part of a nefarious short selling conspiracy against the company.
Once again, I urge people to look at and critique (I am quite open to being proven wrong) my analysis of DCHT's financials. Besides the lack of money, how do you feel about a company that claims that its total cost of goods sold is less than what it claims the material costs alone are of its products? That is impossible - DCHT's income statement, as presented on its website, absolutely MUST be false.
Why does it have a false income statement? Only two possibilities - 1) The numbers are phony, made up out of thin air, and the company is committing a fraud, or 2) The company is honest, but ignorant of even the most basic accounting.
There is no third possibility that I can think of. So DCHT is being run by people who are knaves or fools. Which is it? Like I said above, I think they are fools, not crooks. Paying $5,000 per month to a so called investment banker who gets kicked off an online service for writing obscenities and making threats, when there isn't enough cash to pay engineers and scientists, isn't the sign of bright management, IMO.
Can a company accomplish much if it doesn't know how to do proper accounting? That is something to think about. |
