IHUB's FATT MATT BROWNS's School paper<-He got a 100/A+!!!!!!
We are all very proud of him, Matt tells it like it is !!
Matt gets religion as well after touting Go Call, Inc which featured penny stock securities recidivist and murderer Edward Williamson. Even after I had told him about Willians Matt continued to tout Go Call.
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Fatt Matt
Period 4
10/5/99
The Unethical Side of the Stock Market
Thesis - In this paper, I will use examples and explanations to shine some light on the unethical side of the stock market and expose the market in a way that most people would have never thought existed.
Back in the 1800?s, the stock market was started in order to make a profit on growing companies. People would buy shares in a company to hold and sell later for more money than they originally paid. This was a simple plan that made many people rich and gave companies a chance to grow wildly. Many great companies are around today because of the stock market and many fortunes have been amassed from it. A great example would be the richest man in the world, Bill Gates of Microsoft. He started the company in the late seventies and went public soon after. The stock market provided him with the money to grow his company into the monolith it is today. Many people have gotten rich as a result of investing in the company, too. This type of buy and hold worked for a while, until people began to use the system for bad things. . . . this led to what I call the Dark Side of the Stock Market. . . . .
There is a side of the market that most people don?t know about. Just like there are people that try to sell you things that don?t even exist, like insurance plans and ?phone giveaways? there are people in the stock market that try to make people believe in things that do not really exist. A great example of selling people on something that doesn?t exist would be the Uniprime Capital Acceptance Scam (UPCA). This was a Nevada-based company that came out with a Press Release (PR) stating that they had acquired a 80% interest in a company called New Technologies and Concepts. The company was led by Alfred Flores. In the PR, Mr. Flores claimed to be an honor graduate of Colorado State University. He claimed to have found the ?cure for AIDS.? A man has found the cure for AIDS, but yet isn?t even a doctor? Interesting. This was the first PR. The market didn?t even see this. For a month, the stock had no action. Then, apparently, the company felt they would take a second stab at the situation to prop the stock up so they could sell for substantial gains. So, UPCA released a second PR stating basically, the same thing, but in a little more attractive fashion. They said that they had proof for these claims. Flores said that he had tested rats back in Spain and he had live patients with documentation of what had been done to them, when it was done, and quotes from the patients praising Flores? work. Immediately after hearing this, NASDAQ Short-Seller, Anthony Elgindy knew this was a scam. Anthony was a biomedical student at the University of North Carolina. Anthony immediately picked up on a flaw in the research--rats can?t get AIDS. AIDS is a primates-only disease. If this guy really was going to find the cure for AIDS, he would have known this. The stock was called a scam, information was sent to the SEC, and the operation was shut down. Alfred Flores and his gang was sent to jail for stock fraud. Come to find out, Flores was also a criminal and a murderer!! Millions of dollars were pumped into the scam on the huge run up in the price of the stock. When the stock was shut down, investors were left with absolutely nothing. They had invested in a pure scam and got burned. That is pure unethical. (Elgindy Interview)
For another stomach-churning story of stock market crime, refer to none other than Edward Williamson. In an MSNBC news release, Ed Williamson was titled a "two-time loser." Ed is in his middle 50?s and has been convicted of many federal crimes, but is still roaming the streets. He owns a company called Fifth Avenue Communications. This is a promotional company that is paid to promote various companies on a fee basis. There is nothing wrong with promoting companies....as long as they are real. Ed Williamson, through many years of manipulation and fraud, had gathered together several ?shell companies,? or companies with little or no value, except that they were public entities. Ed gathered these companies together and was signing deals amongst them. He was literally signing deals with himself. Almost like talking to yourself! Amongst his group of companies, he had a corporation that claimed to have an island in the Bahamas, a full airplane company, and a Internet company. The companies looked great from a Press Release, but if you dug down deep into what was really there, you would have been very surprised to see what you would find. At the heart of his companies was one thing--nothing. The hotel company owned not much more than few acres in a small town and was producing no revenues. The airplane company had one plane that it used, but it was rented. This is probably a business plane used for private use, after it all boils down to it. The Internet company was nothing more than a page put on the Internet to have a ?web presence.? None of his companies did anything more than trade on the stock market from fake news release to fake news release! (Ross msnbc.com
Eventually, it all came back to haunt him. An Internet poster, "floydie", and a reporter from MSNBC both came out with reports related to the scammy operations that Ed Williamson was running. It exposed him as a fake, a criminal, and a murderer. In 1996 he was charged with federal securities fraud, but released on bail. Ed was using the promotional company to shadow his real image. The promotional company was "visually" based out of New York City, the financial hub of the world, while, in reality, he was running everything out of his home in Kansas. Very unethical and quite a story... (Schneider Interview)
Wherever there is something going on, there is a way to make money off of it. If a company is doing well, you buy the stock and hold it. If a company appears to be a scam, you can make money off of it too! There is a process called shorting. Shorting is where you bet that a stock will go down. In shorting, you sell the stock and try to buy back at a lower price later on. If you do, then the difference in the two prices is your profit. In the case of scams and fraud, if the stock gets shut down, you never have to buy the stock back and however much you shorted is total profit. This is a way to combat the dark side of the stock market. (Morgenson nytimes.com
The market is obviously full of criminals. Whenever there are criminals, there must be a way to control and limit them, just like in a community. The stock market police is called the SEC. They are constantly hearing new stories of fraud and unethical practices. To help fight this, they are continually coming out with new laws. One of the most recent laws and one of the most profound and effective is the law against accepting money and/or shares to promote a company. Fraudulent companies and some decent companies that trade on the Over The Counter market are often times unknown to the financial community. (http://www.financialweb.com/stockdetective/secshow.asp) The officers of these companies need a way to make their stock known and make it rise in value. These people sometimes turn to stock promoters. They will compensate the promoters with stock or cash to talk about their company on message boards or other public venues. Often, they will send out mass emails trying to convince investors to buy the stock. The SEC is passing a law to make this illegal. If you violate the rule, you will go to jail for a long, long time. This law is being enforced because of how many investors are losing money. Millions was lost in the UPCA scam and the SEC is taking measures to prevent such devistating losses to so many people. Getting rid of highly unethical and evil stock promoters is a step in the right direction. (Gips securitymanagement.com
The Bible is very clear on its position in this matter. The Bible says: "Money is the root of all evil." This is exactly what each and every example has been about--a quest for money no matter what the consequences might be. Not surprisingly, each example led to some form of destruction because of the evil that the money caused. The Bible also states: "Be not a deceiver of man..." This verse is the whole center of this paper. It says it all. All scams and stock fraud happen because of deception. The manipulators and scammers trick people into buying something that does not really exist. The Bible does not make a clear reference to the stock market, but it does continuously talk about how money can corrupt one?s mind. By reading the Bible and looking at examples of stock crimes, you can see just how off-base and Satanic the stock market and our society really is. The Bible also talks about spreading the gospel. This can easily be tied into the stock market. There is obviously a large pool of people out there that need to come to know Jesus. Through the stock market and online message boards, one can reach out and show people the real way and show them that the love of money is not the real answer to one?s problems, but Jesus is. The stock market be used for many different reasons--ethical and unethical.
It is very clear and simple to see that the stock market does have a side to it that most do not even know about. This is how so many investors get burnt every year--they just don?t know. This is why online characters such as Anthony Elgindy and Floyd Schneider exist--they are out to expose the scams, frauds, and manipulation that goes on every single trading day. It would literally take years to read through and analyze all of the filings in the SEC archives. They are full of examples of how unethical and down-right dirty people can be and what the love of money can make people do. It is a very sad situation today and depressing to think about how much the stock market has degenerated from what it originally was to the unethical crime pit that it is today.
(Elgindy and Schneider Interviews)
---Bibliography follows..
Disclaimer - This report was made for a school project. It is for educational purposes only. The companies in this report are proven fraud by the SEC. This report was only made public by demand. So don't take it out of context to make you think I am bashing a company or promoting somebody!! I had to write about something and this looked like fun!!! --FM
Sites to check out - investorshub.com (FM's latest venture)
anthonypacific.com (AP's private site)
thetruthseeker.com (Flodyie's private site) |
