Image Courtesy Of ComicVine.com
Unless this is April 1st, grab a beverage and then sit back to enjoy the story of Lambros Ballas, a registered representative of New York stock brokerage firm Global Arena Capital Corporation, who just got nailed by the SEC for what I can only call the dumbest stock manipulation of all time.
Like many stock manipulators, he used stock discussion forums to point to fake press releases that he had created. That is where similarities to other stock manipulators ends. Why? Stock manipulators typically pump press releases about deals between unknown micro-cap companies (ACME Ammo signs $100,000,000 Purchase Agreement With Wiley Coyote) that are nearly impossible to verify and always manage to attract some suckers.
Nope, good old Lambros swung for the fences by including the likes of Microsoft , Google, IMAX and Disney! No joke. His schemes were hugely successful for about 7 minutes until they started showing up on StockTwits Desktop and a million other monitoring services. Clearly, Lambros is clueless about the real-time web.
Here are the excerpts. You just can’t make this stuff up. The best pump was the last one.
* Ballas issued a phony press release the evening of Sept. 29, 2009, announcing that Pennsylvania biotech company Discovery Laboratories had obtained approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a drug under development. Ballas then posted a message on a stock message board with a link to what he described as the company’s “official press release.†In his post, Ballas claimed to have called his “personal broker†who “says it’s been confirmed.†The next morning, Discovery Laboratories shares opened significantly higher.
* The next day, Ballas issued another press release falsely claiming that IMAX Corporation had been acquired by Disney. Once again, he followed up by posting links to the phony release on a stock message board, telling other potential investors that he had bought 10,000 IMAX shares and that his broker “just called me to tell me at the crack of dawn.
* Ballas continued his scheme on October 1, issuing a phony press release stating that California search engine company Local.com was being acquired by Microsoft. Ballas again followed up by posting messages and links to the Local.com release on stock message boards. In one posting he stated: “Local just bought out by Microsoft, at $12.50 per share including patent ownership.†In after-market trading, Local.com’s stock price rose nearly 80 percent.
* Later that night, Local.com issued a corrective release saying that the Microsoft release had been false — there was no Microsoft acquisition. Undeterred (Gotta love this guy), the next day Ballas issued another phony release, this time stating that it was Google, and not Microsoft, that was acquiring the company.
Anybody disagree that Lambros is clearly the dumbest stock manipulator of all time?
And before I hear any Greek jokes, remember that we still have Harry Markopolos to more than make up for Lambros.
Regards,
George
George,
Perhaps you aren’t aware that the SEC court motions for today were thrown out and not signed by the judge.
Perhaps you aren’t aware of the extreme amount of mistakes, misrepresentations, lack of justifiable evidence, and most importantly, completely inaccurate numbers in the SEC Brief. Time answers all questions. Perhaps you should remember in america people are innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around.