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SEC Lifts Ax For Minnesota Stock-Price Spammer
thejuggler writes "A call to Samuel Meltzer's St. Paul home is greeted with the message that he doesn't want to be bothered by solicitations. But, this story in a Minneapolis newspaper tells how the Feds and SEC claim he is a huge spammer. They claim he sends out spam spreading false and misleading information about various penny stocks. So far he has made at least $159,600 in stock and cash from 1998-2001 for spreading this false information. In a brief interview Tuesday, Meltzer (The evil spammer), 37, said he hadn't seen the complaint. "This is a surprise," he added."
(1) You (and I) get too much spam.
(2) Your e-mail system administrator (and mine) need to keep beefing up the servers because the sheer volume of e-mail is growing so quickly.
To a first approximations, filters solve (1) but not (2), and black hole lists solve (2).
whirlycott summarizes the problem with (2) in two words: "collateral damage." How much of the e-mail network do we need to destroy in order to save it?
We need to move past first approximations. We need systems that work at the server level, but that somehow address the problems of collateral damage and false positives.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. Any network messaging medium is vulnerable to abuse by spammers. The problem started with Netnews, it continued with e-mail, it's happening now with instant messaging. We need at least high level solution that helps solve the problem regardless of prototcol.
I wish I had one.
Slashdot 's editors are dickheads
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*
Yes, his name was Jonathan Lebed. See this article here He was never convicted, but did reach an agreement with the SEC and was fined about $285 K. The article states that his total profit from his dealings were over $800 K, so he did get to keep a huge chunk of his profits. Nice work if you can get it.
Here is the record of nanae discussions involving him. Here he is on ROKSO, the spamhaus.org register of known spam operations. The long-running pump-n-dump spammer. He finally got nailed, eh? Good! And we've already done Ralsky. Now for the diploma guy...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
if someone were to link to documents that have his address in them.
r Re lief.pdf
http://www.wa.gov/ago/pubs/ChippynetComplaintfo
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I've been on the more pleasant side (if there is one) of SEC investigations, and one thing they do which is kind of cool is investigate everyone around the person first - particularly in insider trading.....then when they've compiled the data, they contact the potential guilty party - for example, I work in Mergers & Acquisitions and we represented a public company in a sale. SEC investigated some trades right around the announcement - and first asked for a list of people at my company that knew about the deal...they then sent us lists of people - ie, do you know any of these people...without any other info.
So maybe this guy will still get it. These guys piss me off - primarily because they are capitalizing on ignornace - it's no different then a cheap con.