http://www.canadianbusiness.com/markets/stocks/article.jsp?content=20070326_85369_85369&page=1 Excerpt: As further evidence of Contogouris's link to the "Enterprise," Fairfax co-counsel Bowe points to a sworn deposition Contogouris made in December 2005. In it, Contogouris states he was employed by Exis Capital and Third Point â funds that are both named as defendants. (Contogouris's lawyer Joe Tacopina earlier stated that his client denies all allegations. After Contogouris was indicted for wire fraud in an unrelated case on March 14, Tacopina did not return calls for further comment. Bernstein was not reachable for comment.) FBI spokespersons will not confirm whether Contogouris ever worked with the agency, as is standard procedure. But interestingly, the Fairfax complaint claims it has records of a call Contogouris made to the company to tell management it would be receiving an SEC subpoena the day before the company actually received one, in September 2005
Hmmmmm...........I noticed how a certain hedge fund titan failed to maintain his earnings trajectory last year. Interesting to see what scrutiny can render.
I've never heard of the FBI tipping their hand before. I'm thinking some very big names are very frightened tonight. Their friends at the SEC won't be able to help them anymore. FBI turns to New York in fraud fight By Brooke Masters in New York Financial Times Updated: 1:12 a.m. ET May 2, 2007 The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice department are largely abandoning a brief experiment with farming out complex white-collar fraud investigations to offices across the country and steering them to New York and a few other large jurisdictions. New York has always been a top location for white collar crime cases because it is the US's financial capital. But when officials in Washington have to make a choice between jurisdictions, New York is now receiving more assignments, said Teresa Carlson, the assistant special agent in charge of white-collar and cybercrime in the New York field office. "We have more people working white-collar crime than any other criminal violation," she told the Financial Times. "The personnel and the expertise are here." The shift back to New York follows appeals court reversals of convictions in Kansas City and Houston and the acquittal in Birmingham, Alabama, of HealthSouth founder Richard Sc_rushy, who had been ac_cused of involvement in an attempt to inflate the company's earnings. The office is taking the lead in examining crime problems that could be posed by institutional in_vestors. "We try to look at what the future crime problem is," Ms Carlson said. "We do threat assessments and right now [the top threat] seems to be hedge funds." About 170 of the nearly 1,000 FBI agents in New York work on white-collar crime, including many of the bureau's experts on financial documents and accounting. New York also has the advantage of having two prosecutors' offices: the southern and eastern districts. The southern district has long been the nation's pre-eminent office for securities and corporate fraud cases â it prosecuted Michael Milken, Bernard Ebbers and Martha Stewart. The eastern district recently brought one of the first cases to arise from stock options backdating. "The criminal division of the FBI in New York is the big league, especially in white-collar crime" said Andrew Arena, who hired Ms Carlson into her current position and now heads the FBI's Detroit office. Ms Carlson, 42, moved to New York in 2005 after heading up white-collar crime in the FBI's Birmingham, Alabama, office where she worked on the ill-fated HealthSouth investigation. Though her squads uncovered evidence that helped win guilty pleas from five former HealthSouth finance chiefs, a jury acquitted Mr Scrushy. White-collar crime has recently gained more attention from FBI headquarters because of concerns that terrorist organisations could use telemarketing and internet fraud to fund their operations, Ms Carlson said. © The Financial Times Ltd 2007. "FT" and "Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times.Copyright The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18424665/
Herb is out this morning in the WSJ on KKD and OVTI. I'm not going to do it for you, but go to Marketwatch, look at his last few columns and check them against the SHO list. That's what I'd do if I was an investigator. What an amazing correlation. Anybody following Overstock vs. Gradiant can see the game; short sellers uncover some dirt, start taking a postion, call in hacks, research guys and classaction lawyers. The stocks tank, never having a chance (after all, with neg rebates going to 100% on OSTK, you have to have it move in a hurry) and you guys say they are garbage companies. That is true at times. But you also kill GROW, CROX, NYX, NMX, BRLC, SDNA, and how many biotech companies that were in need of money. Start thinking. I'll be looking at KKD and OVTI Monday. Something must be coming that they are afraid of, so they call out this hack.
Maybe he is writing about them because there might be something wrong with the fundamentals of the company. And the companies might be on the SHO list because everyone wants to short them. The simplest explanation is most of the time the correct one.
To quote a phrase from Shawshank Redemption: "Are you being deliberately obtuse?" You're so invested in disparaging any allusion to the proposition that big-time stock manipulation is going on, you come off as an evangelist toasting invisible marshmallows at the burning bush. I sometimes wonder about you, and why you respond so viscerally to ideas not of your liking. You can't possibly be someone who works on the street, if you had, even for a day, you would have had that fierce sense of 'I know it all', knocked right out of you. Unless of course, you were privy to inside information on a regular basis. Yeah genius, we all know about Occam's razor and that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, that those methods of drawing a conclusion are the soundest in some situations, and then there are times when they're not. That would be when all evidence points to the contrary.
I am just looking at things from a rational point of view. If anyone is doing any preaching on this matter, it is mainly flytiger (and a little by yourself). In order to believe what flytiger posts one has to make a leap of faith since the evidence presented is not even close to proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Since you seem so willing to believe, maybe you should be asking yourself why do you believe in this idea so much? You are implying that rational thinking about this topic makes me a "know it all." I would say just believing in what flytiger posts without a shred of evidence would make me an idiot. What I do know is that I can think for myself and that most of the theories proposed by flytiger have not been backed by evidence, especially his latest rant against Greenberg. What evidence? And one last point I would like to make is that just the very tone of your posts shows that you aren't willing to even contemplate dissenters to your opinion. You are more willing to disparage me than actually respond to my criticisms. Anytime people attack others for reasonable and rational objections to things that they believe, red flags should be popping up - it crosses the border into irrational group-think.