Porter Stansberry: selected mail to this site on Agora Inc's & Pirate's investment tipster
Reports at this website arising from inquiries by Brian Deer during his Sunday Times of London investigation of VaxGen and its "world's first Aids vaccine", published in October 1999, brought the spotlight on small cap stock hypester Porter Stansberry, who made unwarranted claims about the company's prospects even as it headed for disaster in February 2003. Examples of Porter Stansberry's material can be seen here and here. Below are some of the responses from visitors to this website.
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VAXGEN: 24 February 2003
Great articles !
Do you know of any groups of "organized peasants" that are sueing Stansbury ?
I would like to join them.
Regards.
Ralph B.
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VAXGEN: Monday 24 Feb
I fell for the Stansberry story and would be interested in any possible recourse action you are considering.
Thank you,
Steve H.
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PORKER SCAMSBERRY: 25 February 2003
Brian,
Thanks for posting on yahoo the link to the latest on the "Porker Scamsberry" exchange. I have followed Vaxgen and Aidsvax for years as an interested scientist in another biomedical field. I first got drawn into the Yahoo message list after reading a PR from Vaxgen that was perilously close to or maybe even over the edge of hype. I started following the "it works in chimps" litany that has pervaded the company's message for years and I have been shocked at their fast and loose approach to Investor Information.
In the process of reading both science and journalism I came across you piece on the Vaxgen Experiment. It was a remarkable piece of work that has stood up well. I have visited your site and find your stories to be a terrific blend of investigation, explication and entertainment. Congratulations.
I think this is my first fan email to a journalist. Keep up the good work.
Don C. Newport, Oregon
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VAXGEN: 26 February 2003
Brian:
Have you checked the Stansbury website at www.pirateinvestor.com?
Click on the Due Dilegence special report on Vaxgen that came out in 2000.
It states " Currently , Aidsvax works against two of the most common strains of HIV-1: the B strain, common in North and South America; and E Strain, common in Southeast Asia."
The next paragraph will really make you gag:
" Don Francis is a veritable saint, the only person you'll ever meet who is a candidate for both the Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel Prize for medicine."
If you want to get into the protected archives use my username: xxxxx and password: xxxxxxxx
I suggest you check out the archives of Porter's " The Blast"
Last but not least: Do you know of any good litigation attorneys ?
Regards:
Ralph B.
a working class peasant in Houston Texas that is $ 20,000 poorer
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PORTER STANSBERRY: 28 February 2003
Dear Sir:
I am a retired physician who received the promotional adds on the aids vaccine from Mr. Porter's website and immediately saw the true purpose of the unsolicited letter. Since then, he has been included in one of my paying financial services.Of course I routinely bypass his letter.
I briefly visited your website and I am very impressed with the work you and your staff do. Please continue your excellent work. I will become one of your most avid readers
J.A.T., MD.
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HAVE I EVER? 9 Mar 2003
lost $4100...am losing my house, and this was supposed to be my savior. I really thought they'd do it.
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AIDSVAX: 11 April 2003
Dear Brian,
I was one of those small investor's who fell for Porter's hype. In his email responses to you he said that he touted Vaxgen at a $5 range and warned investor's to risk only 1% of their portfolio. I joined his newletter in January of 2003 and all I ever got were the newsletters hyping to purchase the stock before the Phase III report came out or I'd miss the price increase. I was convinced by his newsletter and bought the stock at $20 per share and then was further incouraged to buy the put options. I invested just about everything I was planning to invest in the market into that stock and those options. After, the stock lost it's value, I emailed him about my situation and got his reply that he advised investors to limit their investments in Vaxgen. I obviously started receiving his newsletters to late to get the warnings and the lower entry price. But I was new to personal investing and new to this type of hype and fell for his stories about how thoroughly he investigated the company and the aids vaccine. I still own the stock and have seen it fall almost everyday. I was encouraged to hold onto the stock after the outcome of the trials were released with news that as soon as the media found out about the future of the vaccine, that the price would sour. Later, I was encouraged to hold on to the stock for the April meeting annoucements and for sure at least until the late fall report of the Asian Phase III trial.
After reading Porter's newletter, I actually thought I was buying into a company that had soundly and successfully found a vaccine against aids.
As I said, this was my foray into the world of personally controlling my stock trading and I planned to spread my money over about a dozen stocks and monitor them for success. When I got Porter's newsletter, I fell for the hype and invested it in just one stock with promises of multiplying my investment almost immediately. The worst part of all of this is that I even talked my father into investing some of his retirement money into the stock also. Now, I'm hurt by trusting him both financially and trust in financial advisors AND am feeling really bad about what I've done to my own father. It's bad enough that I was fooled, but I dragged my dad into this. When my dad called his broker, his broker warned him against putting alot of money into Vaxgen, but my dad listened to my enthusiasm over what I read in Porter's newsletter and bought the stock anyway.
Now I read your emails and I feel sick. His replys are overly defensive and his original advise on price and percentages may have been delivered early but they were not consistant and often. He was still hyping and pushing the stock at $20 and above, something he does not refer to in his responses to you.
thanks for your insights,
Rick
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PIRATE INVESTOR - PORTER STANSBERRY: 25 June 2003
Dear Brian,
I found your correspondence with ps this afternoon after typing his name in google search. I'd read an interesting promo for his newsletter and thought I'd see if there was any info. I thought it was pretty obvious that,at least concerning AidsVax, he was not someone to trust for investment decisions.
Imagine my surprise when I went to pirateinvestor website and am reading the promo for his newsletter and it USES HIS LETTER FROM MARCH 2002 PROMOTING THAT
COMPANY as a sample letter. I wish you'd check it out. I wonder if it's just been there a long time and they forgot to remove it, or am I crazy, or do they just figure enough people will not know about the scandal?
I enjoyed your correspondence with ps,and I have to admire his ability to get people to buy his newsletter if in fact they do. You could probably make a mint writing a newsletter exposing (or maybe rating) newsletter writers.
Do you know much about Agora? I don't like that they let lots of apparent hucksters advertise on their newsletters, but I enjoy their writing in Daily Reckonning, Sovereign Society and International Living. Many of their predictions of two years ago have come true and some of their advice would have made money had I followed it.
What do you think of them?
Charles C. Austin, Texas
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STANSBERRY'S INVESTMENT ADVISORY: 8 July 2003
Dear Mr. Deer,
In today's mail I received a solicitation written by David Lashmet to subscribe to Porter Stanberry's Investment Advisory. I found the solicitation so compelling (Lashmet is very persuasive and logical in a low key way---that style always kind of gets to me) that I thought about subscribing and I decided to go on the Internet to see what I could find out about Porter and his Advisory.
There I ran into a whole bunch of stuff about VaxGen with e-mails back and forth between yourself and Stansberry. After reading a lot of it I found that I didn't really understand whether either of you was able to convince the other that he was substantially correct. I didn't understand what the "outcome" of all that was.
So I am basically writing this e-mail to ask you whether, when all is said and done, you feel that Stansberry made an honest and reasonable mistake (happens to everyone) or whether you feel that he intentionally mislead his subscribers, or mislead them without conducting skilled "due diligence" regarding what he advised. If he deliberately mislead people, or even mislead lackadaisically, why would he have done so unless he was going to profit in some way as a result (has it been established that he had no connection to the company, as an investor or otherwise?)
I realize you may not have strict proof of your opinion but I just wanted your gut feeling as I respect the logic of many of your assertions---was Stansberry able to convince you that he was substantially justified in his advice, even though mistaken (by the way, I have absolutely no relationship with the Advisory, Stansberry or anyone associated with him---I merely received the solicitation in today's mail---I'm a retired lawyer and xxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxx.)
Thank you.
Larry K. Florida
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VAXGEN AND P STANSBERRY: 16 July 2003
Brian,
After having read a couple investment emails from Porter Stansberry, I decided to do a google search on him and see what I could come up with.
BRAVO ! Your website has given me alot of information.
FYI, HIV is not yet proven to cause anything, let alone AIDS. The HIV/AIDS hypothesis of Dr. Robert Gallo was fraudulent and he was duly sued by the US Government for presenting fraudulent data. ( This did not stop the AIDS industry however from marketing this hypothesis as "science", with the US Government's seal of approval. )
If Porter Stansberry was so smart, he would have realized that the FDA is unlikely to approve any drug that cures or prevents "AIDS". The R&D game is where the money is... not in cures. When it comes to the FDA...follow the money. There are plenty of cures for diseases tucked away on the shelves ;>
mark j l
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VAXGEN: 28 July 2003
Dear Mr Deer,
As a VaxGen shareholder, I was aware of the February 2003 results of the AIDVAX clinical trials and was waiting for the August results. Fortunately, I didn t go to their Website for information about the August trials but rather entered the words VaxGen in Google. This took me directly to your site. I began investing for the first time in June 1999. At the time, I had a total of $20,000 in savings (10 years of work) and was ready to start investing. Since I knew absolutely nothing about investing, I decided to take out three subscriptions, all of which were about $190 per year:
Porter Stansberry s PirateInvestor
Oxford Club
Sovereign Society
All of these companies are linked.
All of the tech stocks he recommended would rise dramatically about two weeks before I received his newsletter and plunge about two weeks after I bought the shares. The culmination in loss took place when the Nasdaq crashed in January 2000. I lost about $10,000 but I m still holding onto a few shares, one of which is VaxGen. The fact that the companies actually existed and were involved in technology that existed prompted me to invest.
The investments that I made from Oxford Club recommendations met similar fates with roughly the same patterns. I always seemed to be jumping onto the bandwagon too late. The worst case happened with their recommendation that I buy Argentinian government treasury bonds. This was about a year before the Argentinian government defaulted on its foreign debts. I lost another $10,000 in that deal but, since I still own the bonds, I may recover my money in 2008. Or maybe I will not.
Another ill-fated investment had to do with California s energy crisis about a year ago. Porter predicted it would happen a year in advance and it did. The problem was that the stock price of the company he recommended (Calpine) did not react at all the way he had predicted. And I lost money. So he was completely right about the technology he described in the newsletters but completely wrong about the investment advice.
As a direct result of this experience, I will never invest my money ever again. It has taken me five years to save up $10,000 and I have the sneaking suspicion that by hyping up a bunch of small investors, the big investors in the Pirate Investor/Oxford Club/Sovereign Society group benefit from the hike in share price. Then, when they sell to pocket their gains, the small investors lose. In addition, with all of the money from subscriptions, investment seminars, CDs from the investment seminars, etc., they continue to get plenty of money to use for investments.
I invite you to take a closer look at the Agora group. Right now, I am on holiday but as soon as I get back (September), I can give you more details about the stock advisors and the subscriptions that I took out with them (and subsequently canceled).
Best regards,
Randall J.
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VAXGEN AND PORTER STANSBERRY: 2 August 2003
I was one of the unfortunate ones along with my wife, who fell for this guys line of crap. If there is anyway I can assist in putting this son of a bitch behind bars or worse, please let me know.
Do you know if this ####### ever actually bought any shares himself or not?
Thanks,
Mark S.
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SEC STANSBERRY 7 OXFORD CLUB: 3 August 2003
Read your 'back & forth' with Stansbury, & about the SEC suit against him and Agora Publishing. Thought about getting his newsletter. Investigated his tip about "Proteosome Technology". Found he didn't get some details right. Which I wondered about since am a retired Ph. D. biochemist type. So I'll away stay from him. Question? Have you any info about the Oxford Club? Since it has that same MD address, I'm wondering.
Tom D. Texas
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You can contact contact Brian Deer at this address. Read Porter Stansberry tip. Read Porter Stansberry email.
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Porter Stansberry's VaxGen tip | brian deer |
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