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According to PinkSheets, their address is:

355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042 USA
801-765-4999 phone
801-765-1313 fax


This matches the address listed on their website. No luck on his home address (with my lame ass google-fu)

Yep - abbreviated to SCOX .. as in..

http://www.pinksheets.com/pink/quote/quote.jsp?symbol=SCOXQ#getQuote

SCO is a penny stock now. Somewhere between $0.17 and $0.20 a share. Market cap is $4.3 million.

How many of you would contribute $50 to take a controlling interest in this festering pimple of an "IP" company? If the next ~80,000 /. regulars that read this were willing the company could be taken over and put down, permanently.

Create a non-profit (name it SLASHX, perhaps) or some other legal entity, raise funds and buy shares. The percent of ownership remaining appears on a sidebar with a link to some collection agency. Make Stallman or some other credible figure chairman and just keep buying shares till "we" hold 51%.

I'm no financial guru. Perhaps the idea is naive. However, you can damn well bet I'd contribute.

SCO is listed on Pinksheets.

SCO is listed on Pinksheets.

In the US, the stock is traded as NTDOY (on Yahoo, it's NTDOY.PK http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=NTDOY.PK). It's on the "Pink Sheets http://www.pinksheets.com/about/index.jsp," as an OTC (over-the-counter) traded stock.

NTDOY stock represents 1/8 of a share of Nintendo stock traded on the Tokyo stock exchange, NTDOF represents one share. Most people trade the NTDOY, which is currently trading at 45.85.

2) most of these stocks are what they call pink slip or OTC (over the counter) stocks not traded on exchages like the NYSE or CME, thus not falling under the SEC (i think, please correct me here im no stock expert)

You're referring to the pink sheets which is *not* a stock exchange. The SEC won't bother investigating any pink sheets stock. Many of the stocks pumped by these scammers trade on the pink sheets because the companies don't meet the listing standards of the Nasdaq, NYSE, or even the American stock exchange.

most of these stocks are what they call pink slip or OTC (over the counter) stocks not traded on exchages like the NYSE or CME, thus not falling under the SEC (i think, please correct me here im no stock expert)

A "pink slip" is a notice telling someone they're fired. You mean these are "pink sheet" stocks - namely, OTC stocks traded on The Pink Sheets, which is a quotation service making it easier to trade stocks that don't qualify to be listed on the real exchanges. The NASDAQ OTCBB is a competing service in the same business. Usually a stock will be on The Pink Sheets because it's a small company with a very low stock price (a penny stock); sometimes it may be the last remnant of a formerly great company. Kind of like "small gods" in Terry Pratchett's book of the same name. I believe The Pink Sheets is called that because at one time, it was a newspaper-ish publication printed on pink paper; now it's electronic.

Absolutely ALL stocks in the USA are heavily regulated by the SEC, including pink sheet stocks. That's the point of the SEC.

I'm also not sure that the companies subjected to pump-n-dump scams are so often innocent. If you go look up their SEC filings, pretty often they look shady as heck. (e.g. they were in some business, it failed, they were bought out entirely by foreign investors who purportedly changed the company to some completely different business but didn't change its name; main office, address of incorporation, and residences of the company president each in a different country...) My own suspicion is that the company itself is usually very much involved in the scam - but finding out whether that's true or not is yet another reason it would be nice to have some serious SEC investigations of the scams.

They recently put out this announcement saying that they have nothing to do with the email spammers

P&D operators always put out such statements on the web sites. It's done for two reasons:

1. SEC is going to investigate them in about 2-3 weeks after the dump. They need a cover
2. Some naive people might believe the statement and keep buying into the scam

SEC investigates because it has to. I don't think SEC really expects to catch anyone. If P&D is done right, SEC cannot prove anything and won't persecute.

the way this scam works is that the scammers buy a bunch of worthless stock

No, that's not how the scam works. Some free trading stock can be bought on the market by the scam operators, but it's a minor portion of it. It's called "stock cleaning". The majority of FT stock is obtained through 504D, 144, SB-2, and S-8 (google it), then multiplied by a stock split. The management/principals of the company are almost always in the deal. There are usually three parties involved: (1) company proprietors (sometimes they are also the managers, but usually the management is totally bogus), (2) promoters who hire spammers to send out pump e-mail, (3) market makers. It's the case in like 95+% of P&D scams. Look at NAUC, WWEG, OCTL, BZCN.

Look at the dates of phya news releases. Only extremely naive people may believe that the flurry of press releases just coincided with the spam run.

However, there's other bad stuff. "GTX Global" is traded in the Pink Sheets. And they claim to have made these SEC filings. But those filings aren't showing up in the SEC database.

Looking at what they claim is their balance sheet, all the activity seems to center around Dish TV type operations.

At least they're on NASDAQ. Another "snake oil" company seems content in pink-sheets territory.

The "10-K" is the backup data behind a company's annual report. It's the single most important disclosure of a company's financial status. The SEC allows 3 months after the close of the fiscal year for a 10-K filing. SCO's year closed at the end of October, and their 10-K was due at the end of January. Late filing of a 10-K or 10-Q (the quarterly report) is considered a major red flag for a stock. When I was following dying dot-coms, a late 10-K or 10-Q was a strong indicator of trouble. Nobody files late because they have unexpectedly good numbers.

SCO filed an NT-12K form with the SEC, asking for a 15-day extension. "The Company currently anticipates that the Form 10-K will be filed by no later than the fifteenth calendar day following the date on which the Form 10-K was due." They missed that date, too.

There has to be something really embarassing in the compensation plan. Really embarassing, if they're willing to risk delisting from the NASDAQ.

Delisting kicks a stock down to the pink sheets. That's where the penny stocks favored by spammers and scammers live.

While it's nice to see the "don't bug us, we're woefully underpaid and overworked" SEC finally going after one of these parasites, it's too bad they have to get geeked out about the whole spam bit to do so. That's only the tip of the iceberg on these pink sheet company abuses.

I got taken by a pink sheet bulletin board stock deal in the mid-90s. We put a good company and $15 million of local investor capital into what's called a dormant shell - a publically trading company that perhaps didn't make it in a former life, got kicked off of NASDAQ (or never made it), is probably late on SEC filings, and is operationally dormant. You can buy these things for a quarter million or so in Nevada, apparently.

The whole pitch is "you can go public for much less than an IPO, and get a publically trading stock which is much more liquid for your investors and allows you to get more investing money for less equity." The reality is that the shell's broker gets a credible asset in the shell to use for pump & dump.

The only problem is that every single one of them I've come across has had a controlling parasite "broker" in the middle - as was the one we encountered. The broker broke all the merger terms by refusing to hand over control of the company. He illegally siezed the company and the millions invested and looted it all. Ficticious board resolutions were used to change who could sign on the company bank accounts, etc. Offshore Bermuda accounts were used to funnel things to Swiss accounts - sounds hollywood, but it was very effective.

By the time the courts caught up with it all, the company was absent any cash or assets. The SEC's response? "Sorry - We have too many people doing this to be able to help you. Call your congressperson and ask them to increase our funding." Seriously.

Two years ago, I thought I found a company that had this background that wasn't a scam. WaveRider, a manufacturer of near-line of sight 900 MHz proprietary fixed wireless gear. Then I found the parasite, the Bermuda angle and the Swiss angle. It has since gone from $1/share to around $0.12. Like the best of these deals, the parasite retains competent management that really truly believes it has a chance. But they never do - not when legal control of the company is closely held by the parasite.

So... before you invest in a bulletin board stock, look for the parasite. Late on SEC filings? Run. See a Bermuda/Swiss connection? Run. Nevada corporation? Be very nervous. Read that 10K and 10Qs very, very closely.

Oh, and what ever happened to our parasite? He's still pushing his stocks and has avoided SEC and IRS enforcement for years. He's grown rather confident that he's untouchable and is probably right...

*scoove*