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Pastimes : Investment Chat Board Lawsuits -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StockDung who wrote (4040)	1/13/2003 1:39:18 PM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12465

Re: 12/26/02 and 1/3/03 - thestreet.com: "Pump Up the Pressure on Pump-and-Dumpers"; "Regulators Have a Pump-and-Dump Double Standard" "Pump Up the Pressure on Pump-and-Dumpers" By James J. Cramer 12/26/2002 02:40 PM EST Federal prosecutors better be careful not to miss the forest for the trees. As each of the big-time former executives seems to slip through the cracks of prosecution, it is becoming painfully obvious that the easiest of cases, the pump and dump, is being ignored. That's just plain dumb on the prosecutors' parts. Here's why. The prosecutors seem genuinely stuck on a process that says that you build one case against a top dog and you hope that the top dog rolls over on other top dogs. Think about it, that's the case with Sullivan at Worldcon and with Fastow at Enron. But these top dogs are showing the same kind of outrageous loyalty that we expect of the Mafia to their overseers. And who can blame them? They are going down anyway, so why bother to save their skins by making themselves dishonorable in the eyes of the even-more powerful? Why roll over on a Jeffrey Skilling when you are going down anyway? At least you can go down with your honor intact, which is pretty much all that these indicted bad guys have left anyway. Instead, the prosecutors should bring pump-and-dump cases against these top dogs simply using the incredibly incriminating words from CNBC tapes and from emails that show they were selling into their own hype and profiting from it. What's amazing to me is that before the big frauds, the feds regularly either brought these cases or thought to bring them. They brought them against tons of little people who made comments online about stocks. They brought them without hesitation. Right now, potential scammers and fraudsters must be thinking to themselves that the government no longer cares about pump and dump if it won't bring such cases against the Skillings and the Lays. That's a terrible legacy. More important, if these cases were ever to go to juries, no jury would ever acquit. Too many people know too many people who lost money in Enron or Worldcom or any of the other colossal frauds. Victories could produce some disgorgements and some prison times that would make people feel that there is some justice. But no, the prosecutors seem to overlook these cases in favor of hoping to get iron-clad rollovers from people whom juries won't trust anyway. Seems all wrong to me. The cases are right in the faces of these prosecutors and the potential bad guys who are waiting for a green light to start pumping and dumping again. Makes you feel bad for Tokyo Mex or Jonathan Lebed, two that the feds went after with a zeal that Skilling, Lay and Ebbers look like they will never face. " thestreet.com ===== Regulators Have a Pump-and-Dump Double Standard By James J. Cramer 01/03/2003 11:30 AM EST Memo to federal prosecutors: Please, just please, try to bring a pump-and-dump case against someone, anyone. Think about the example you set when you decided that Gary Winnick from Global Crossing could sell $700 million worth of stock and get away without so much of an accusation of pumping and dumping. Think about the insider sales at Tyco (TYC:NYSE - news - commentary - research - analysis) after all of the chicanery that went on, obfuscating the Securities and Exchange Commission and people like Herb Greenberg and Peter Eavis, who were wise anyway to what was going on. Think about all of that stock the muckety-mucks at Enron let go after going on CNBC and telling us that everything was great, even as they knew it wasn't. What does your inaction tell us? What does it tell us when you go after Tokyo Mex and Jonathan Lebed, two small-time online players who hyped stocks, but don't pursue the big fish? To me it says: If you're rich, you can get away with pumping and dumping all you want. But if you are a small-time pump-and-dumper, the government is all over you like a cheap suit. Sometimes I wonder how these prosecutors can live with themselves, turning the other way even as they have tapes, actual CNBC tapes, showing massive hype when they were selling. Shameful, just shameful. And it makes a sham of the whole process of prosecution for something that I know our readers care passionately about: the pumping up of stocks by execs who should know better, and the dumping of stock onto a clueless public. Either bring some suits or issue a new set of directives that reflects the reality of your prosecution: You can say whatever you want about a stock and sell it without any qualms, because there is no such thing as pumping and dumping. That, by the way, would be more fair and equitable than the world we now find ourselves in. thestreet.com