Category: Stocks

Yesterday the SEC sued four promoters for manipulative trading in marijuana stocks and the Department of Justice joined the fun with a criminal case against three of the four. First I address the more serious criminal charges (see DoJ press release). The criminal charges relate to only one stock: ISM International (ISML).

 Three men who allegedly manipulated penny stocks, and then laundered the proceeds by purchasing precious metals, were charged today in U.S. District Court in Tacoma with conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, announced U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan.  MIKHAIL GALAS, 24, of Vancouver, Washington was arrested in Long Beach, California after he arrived on a flight from Portland, Oregon.  He will make his initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.  CHRISTOPHER MROWCA, 24, was arrested in Bradenton, Florida and will make his initial appearance in Tampa.  ALEXANDER HAWATMEH, 23, of Salem, Oregon is incarcerated in Oregon on an unrelated charge and will appear in federal court at a later date.  In addition to the arrests, searches were conducted in Vancouver, Washington, Bradenton, Florida, Salem, Oregon and Boulder, Colorado.

 

Below is the criminal complaint against those three individuals:

USA v. Mrowca Et Al Doc 1 Filed 01 Aug 14 by Shannon Coleman

Of note: Christopher Mrowca controls Money Runners Group LLC, a scummy and generally ineffective stock promoter. Money Runners has their own InvestorsHub messageboard and website. Alexander Hawatmeh is a former member of Worthmore Investments LLC, the company that runs the StockHaven stock promotion and stock chat website (at least according to statements on the Stockhaven website). [Edited 2017-7-25: removed dead links to Stockhaven website (which has been defunct for years) and removed the names of others who were involved with Stockhaven who were not named in the above complaint. Also, I should note that Stockhaven/Worthmore were not mentioned in the SEC or criminal complaints.]

The SEC complaint includes five stocks, including PHOT and HEMP from early this year. It also includes a fourth individual, Tovy Pustovit:

Defendant Pustovit, age 20, is a resident of Vancouver, Washington. Pustovit was
5 the registered owner of a stock promotion website called “Explosive Alerts” from August 2012,
6 when the site was created, until August 2013.

 

Excerpt from SEC press release:

The SEC’s complaint filed in federal court in Tacoma, Wash., charges the following individuals:

• Mikhail Galas, a stock promoter who lives in Vancouver, Wash.
• Alexander Hawatmeh, a member of Worthmore Investments LLC, which owns a stock promotion website called stockhaven.com.  He formerly lived in Vancouver and currently resides in Lincoln City, Oregon.
• Christopher Mrowca, a stock promoter who operates Money Runners Group LLC, which has an affiliated stock promotion website called MoneyRunnersGroup.com.  He lives in Bradenton, Fla.
• Tovy Pustovit, who owns a stock promotion website called Explosive Alerts.  He also lives in Vancouver.

 

See the SEC complaint (PDF).  The most profitable of all the stocks mentioned in the suits is RVDO:

142. On March 5, 2014, there was a promotion of RVDO over the Internet claiming
6 that RVDO would trade at $2 per share. The closing price of RVDO on March 4, 2014 was $.06
7 per share. This claim was misleading because there was no business development at RVDO that
8 would justify such a rise in price.
9 143. A. Hawatmeh had prior knowledge of the RVDO promotion and its timing.
10 144. Between 9:30 AM and 09:52 AM Eastern Time on March 5, 2014, A. Hawatmeh
11 sold approximately 3.23 million shares of RVDO common stock at prices ranging from $.28 per
12 share to $.90 per share.
13 145. A. Hawatmeh’s average selling price per share on March 5, 2014 was
14 approximately $.4375 per share, almost an eightfold increase over his average purchase price per
15 share.
16 146. A. Hawatmeh’s gross profits from trading RVDO between February 7, 2014 and
17 March 5, 2014 were over $1.23 million.

Perhaps the most interesting of all the promotions though are HEMP and PHOT, because they were very liquid during the period the accused were actively trading the stock. First, the details of PHOT:

Trading in PHOT
90. From January 9 to January 14, 2014, there was an Internet promotion of PHOT as part of a broader promotion of several marijuana-related stocks.
91. During that promotion, Mrowca and Galas traded approximately 6.4 million shares of PHOT common stock, and during and leading up to the promotion engaged in manipulative trading designed to increase the price and volume of PHOT common stock.
92. From January 2, 2014 through January 14, 2014, Mrowca engaged in wash trades of PHOT common stock and also engaged in matched orders of PHOT common stock with Galas

It is important to note that the defendants bought HEMP after it had already had its first run up to a high of just over $0.08 from under $0.02 at the beginning of 2014 — they started buying on January 23rd when the price was about $0.05. Even if they had not allegedly engaged in manipulative trading they likely would have made a lot of money.

Trading in HEMP
117. A. Hawatmeh, Galas and Mrowca began accumulating HEMP common stock
through market purchases on January 23, 2014. Between January 23, 2014 and February 12,
2014, A. Hawatmeh, Galas, and Mrowca bought and sold approximately 41.7 million shares of
HEMP common stock.
118. During the period from January 24 through February 12, 2014, HEMP was actively promoted on the Internet.
119. For example, on February 6, 2014, one Internet tout claimed that HEMP could reach “a REAL Possible Gain of OVER 2900%.”
120. During the promotion, A. Hawatmeh, Mrowca and Galas engaged in manipulative wash trades and matched orders of HEMP common stock.
121. The total trading volume for HEMP common stock in the A. Hawatmeh, Mrowca,and Galas accounts during this period was approximately 83 million shares.

 

 

Disclaimer: I have no position in any stock mentioned above. I have no relationship with any parties mentioned above. This blog has a terms of use that is incorporated by reference into this post; you can find all my disclaimers and disclosures there as well.

Again this is a late post. This happened on July 14th. This story received a lot of attention because one of the men charged criminally, AJ Discala, is famous. See the Dealbook article about the case.

SEC press release
SEC complaint
Department of Justice press release

A ten-count indictment was unsealed this morning in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, against seven defendants, Abraxas J. Discala, also known as “AJ Discala,” the Chief Executive Officer of OmniView Capital Advisors LLC (“OmniView”); Marc Wexler, the Managing Director of OmniView; Ira Shapiro, the Chief Executive Officer of CodeSmart Holdings, Inc. (“CodeSmart”), a publicly traded company; Matthew Bell, a registered broker and investment adviser representative; Craig Josephberg, a registered broker; Kyleen Cane, an attorney; and Victor Azrak, the Vice President and Director of Excel Corp., a publicly traded company. The charges include securities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud, mail fraud and wire fraud in connection with the fraudulent market manipulation of four publicly traded companies—CodeSmart, trading under the ticker symbol ITEN; Cubed, Inc. (“Cubed”), trading under the ticker symbol CRPT; StarStream Entertainment Inc. (“StarStream”), trading under the ticker symbol SSET; and The Staffing Group, Ltd. (“Staffing Group”), trading under the ticker symbol TSGL. In addition, the government restrained Discala’s residence in Norwalk, Connecticut, worth over $1 million, and seized a dozen bank and brokerage accounts containing criminal proceeds.

…

As alleged in the indictment and other court filings, between October 2012 and July 2014, the defendants, together with others, agreed to defraud investors and potential investors in four public companies: CodeSmart, Cubed, StarStream and Staffing Group (collectively, the “Manipulated Public Companies”) by artificially controlling the price and volume of traded shares in the Manipulated Public Companies through, among other things: (a) false and misleading press releases; (b) false and misleading SEC filings; (c) fraudulent concealment of the defendants’ and their co-conspirators’ ownership interests; (d) engineering price movements and trading volume in the stocks; and (e) unauthorized purchases of stock in accounts of unwitting investors.

Here is the chart of one of the allegedly manipulated stocks, Codesmart:

See the criminal complaint:

USA v. Discala Et Al Doc 1 Filed 15 Jul 14 by Shannon Coleman

Disclaimer: I have no position in any stock mentioned above. I have no relationship with any parties mentioned above. This blog has a terms of use that is incorporated by reference into this post; you can find all my disclaimers and disclosures there as well.

2014 continues to be a banner year not just for the SEC but for criminal prosecutions of stock promoters for market manipulation. This case was filed almost a month ago so I apologize for the delay but wanted to make sure I posted it on this blog. See the SEC’s press release about its lawsuit and as well as the Department of Justice’s press release about the arrests.

Excerpt from DOJ PR:

The criminal cases charged the following individuals with conspiracy to commit securities fraud: Andrew J. Affa, 30, of Huntington Station, N.Y.; Michael A. Affa, 34, of Toms River, N.J.; Mitchell H. Brown, 48, of Long Branch, N.J.; Christopher R. Putnam, 37, of Charleston, S.C.; and Christopher G. Nix, 34, of Charleston, S.C. Andrew Affa, Michael Affa and Brown were also charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The SEC suit, likewise, charges all five individuals with securities fraud.

Andrew Affa, Michael Affa, and Brown are scheduled to appear in federal court in Boston on July 15 and Putnam and Nix are scheduled to appear on July 31.

It is alleged that in January and February 2014, the defendants attempted manipulation of Amogear’s stock was caught in real-time by a federal undercover operation. The SEC suspended trading in the securities of Amogear on Feb. 10, 2014, as the attempted manipulation of its stock was underway. According to the criminal and SEC charges, prior to the suspension of trading in the stock, the defendants planned and implemented a scheme to create a false appearance of an active market in the stock, followed by a false media campaign designed to increase the price of the stock, knowing that Amogear was a shell company without any real operations. The defendants allegedly planned to sell the stock into the market at artificially inflated prices from which they would profit. What the parties did not know was that Amogear was controlled by the FBI and used by the FBI as a vehicle to obtain evidence of their attempt to manipulate the market.

One of the most interesting things about this case is that the FBI’s confidential informant (CI) controlled the stock that was the subject of the alleged conspiracy. From the SEC complaint:

2. Amogear is a Nevada corporation based in Boston, Massachusetts. Amogear’s
stock is quoted under the ticker symbol “AMOG.” Amogear was listed and could trade
nationally on the over-the-counter (“OTC”) securities markets. Amogear was acquired and
controlled by the CI, who then worked in conjunction with the FBI in the undercover
investigation. Amogear only existed as a shell company, which is a company that can serve as a
vehicle for business transactions by other related companies or entities without itself having any
real assets or operations.

Christopher “Gabe” Nix’s Global Marketing Media LLC ran a number of websites and they generally one-day promotions so their pumps were always good to short. See the Promotion Stock Secrets article on Global Marketing Media. Some of the websites of Global Marketing Media LLC:

Pennystockpros.net
Pennystockplayers.net
TheStockScout.com
PennyStockClub.net
PennyStockCircle.com
123StockAlerts.com

Andrew Affa owned Pennypickalerts.com (it has since been sold to another promoter).

Disclaimer: I have no position in any stock mentioned above. I have no relationship with any parties mentioned above. This blog has a terms of use that is incorporated by reference into this post; you can find all my disclaimers and disclosures there as well.