Throw Jasper Knabb's Ass in Jail

Where are the Customer's Yachts?

The SEC yesterday published a fraud complaint against Jasper (Jay) Knabb et.al. as regards to manipulation of the stock of the now bankrupt Pegasus Wireless.

Good on the SEC, except it was four years after the fact, and nine years after the fact of Knabb's never mentioned and never punished BIFS Technologies fraud in 2000-2001.

As detailed in the SEC complaint, Knabb, his criminal wifey Tammy, and his partner Stephen Durland stole untold millions of dollars from the public from the illegal sales of the hyped Pegasus, which at one point made it onto the Naz National Market listings. The complaint details the friends, relatives, and mistress Knabb et. al. used to hide the illegal sales of the shares of the company, which at one point had a market capitalization of $1.5 billion and change.

Never ones to hide their lights under a basket, Knabb, Tammy-poo, and Durland were living large.

Jay-boy was featured in a fawning article with his yacht. Durland bought exotic cars, and Tammy-poo picked up a $1.5 million cabin outside of Anchorage AK. (hat tip to Seth Jayson for the boat and cars links, and to the Anchorage Daily News for the property report).

I'll just make a SWAG here, and say that Jay et. al., his crooked attorneys, and his paid promoters stole north of $100 million, not the paltry $30 million cited in the SEC complaint. And they are facing fucking CIVIL charges likely to be settled without admitting or denying guilt and fines that will never be paid? Maybe that pesky class action suit will cause them some problems. The document is long, but well worth the read if you are interested in a decade long history of corporate crime and regulatory coma.

Then there is the back story; had the SEC gotten off of their lethargic ass in 2000 when Knabb made his first-known foray into fraud, Pegasus might never have happened.

That story involved BIFS Technologies, an OTC-BB company shell headed by Alpha Keyser, still comfortably dwelling in his Longboat Key, Sarasota condo. BIFS (Biofiltration Systems) was a dormant shell whose business aspirations were to make it big in detoxing de-icing fluid at airports. Or something.

Taking a page from the Vertical Computer Systems playbook, Keyser conducted a 100/1 forward split of the company shares to lower the quoted price to pennies, and hired Orville Baldridge, a convicted Florida sex offender to "get this thing moving".

Enter Jasper, stage left, selling BIFS Beach Access, a small Myrtle Beach ISP, and promising the rights to SWOMI (Seamless Wireles Omnidirectional Internet), a revolutionary new wireless Internet technology that he claimed to have developed.

Hyped by this improbable claim, BIFS stock soared from pennies to over $2.00 per share, with both Alpha and Knabb happily selling into the surge. Although their relationship soured when it turned out that Jay-boy didn't actually own Beach Access and he was fired from his "executive" position, he nevertheless retained the twenty million shares paid to him for the acquisition. The revolutionary wireless technology turned out to be 811.a Wi-Fi. The SEC took no action, nor did they bother to investigate Knabb in his subsequent pump and dump scams, all of which were eerie clones of BIFS, and all of which made the lame claim of "naked shorting" for the poor performance of the companyies.

Enough, already. This gonif is a career criminal who has left a wasteland of investor losses in his wake. Maybe, just maybe the DOJ could take some time away from chasing phony terrorist threats, prosecute Jasper et. ux., and send them on vacation to Club Fed.

If they can find them. They seem to have gone missing.

ADVFN Comes a Cropper

ADVFN Comes a Cropper

Well, we finally heard from Clem of the mighty ADVFN, and what we got was...crickets.

No prob, according to Clem. Matt Brown, head of IHub indicted on criminal charges? Hey:

Just as in TV and Film , the public face of our products, be they in the US, the UK, Brazil, Italy or otherwise, get a disproportionate amount of attention, in the same way as a news presenter or a talk show host does on a TV channel. These profiles are all part of the product offering but they are not a pivotal business continuity issue. iHub is a community of smart, seasoned stock speculators that we feel is big enough to sit back and await the outcome of this situation without pre-judgement.

No prob, clem. Just because the head of your property has been scamming for years, and conspiring with others to do so using your IHub property, and finally got indicted, it's not to worry.

Yeah. Crickets.

IHub

Where are the Rest of the Bad Guys

By now any penny stock sleuth who hasn't spent the past few days in an Internet free zone is aware of the civil and criminal charges brought against, among others, Matt Brown, founder and chief moderator of the Investors Hub message boards. With one exception all named defendants have been arrested and released on bail ranging from $50,000 to $500,000. Polish national Pawel P. Dynkowski, named as key in the scheme cannot be located, and it is rumored that he has fled the country.

IHub has set up a message board for discussion of the event, and that board accounted for over 90% of total IHub messages over the long weekend. Not many of the posts were Brown-friendly.

Amazingly, ADVFN, the UK financial services company that purchased IHub in September of 2006,-well within the time that the DOJ and others allege that Brown et. al. were engaged in their criminal behavior- has made no public statement, and Brown still seems to retain his position. Somebody needs to tell the Brits how do deal with an existential threat to one of their properties.

This is an onion story that will have its layers peeled back at the speed of law. However, there are fairly obvious omissions from both the SEC and DOJ named defendants.

In the SEC complaint the scheme is described as follows:

...Defendant Pawel Dynkowski and his accomplices agreed to sell large blocks of shares for penny stock companies (or "issuers") in exchange for a portion of the proceeds. The issuers put these shares in nominee accounts that Dynkowski controlled. Dynkowski and his accomplices then pumped the market price ofthe stocks through wash sales, matched orders, and other manipulative trading, to give the market the false impression that there was real demand for these securities. They often timed this manipulative trading to coincide with false, misleading, and touting press releases from the issuers, which Dynkowski at times prepared himself. After artificially inflating the price of the stocks, Dynkowski and his accomplices then sold the shares they obtained from the issuers to the unsuspecting market. Dynkowski, his accomplices, and the issuers shared the illicit profits.

Although the investigation is described as continuing, rather obvious omissions from the first round of named miscreants are the penny stock companies themselves.

The four companies named gave stock to Dynkowski, Brown et. al. who manipulated the price and volume through wash trades, false and misleading press releases, and favorable posts on IHub message boards. The stock was then sold to the now-drooling suckers, and the proceeds split in some ratio with the issuers.

Hello. What is missing from this picture. Issuers actively participated in the alleged (but well-documented) scheme and shared in the illicit profits. Are they playing nice with the Federales to help build the case against Brown and friends? Will they get to keep their share of profits from the scheme (if they haven't blown them yet, as penny stock "CEO's" are wont to do)? Or are the SEC folks just too damn busy going after a geriatric stock manipulator's small time (and stupid) scheme to try and recover his $40,000 lost nest-egg? Time will tell, one supposes.

On a parenthetic note, I would be very, very conservative if I were stealing the $6 million that we know about. Matt and the Boyz, on the other hand, styled themselves like Medellin Cartel members out on the town in South Beach. Their choice was a lost weekend in Vegas in 2006 partying like rock stars. Matt's pictures of that trip posted on IHub have mysteriously disappeared.

More as developments unfold.

Matt Brown: Felon

THROW THE LITTLE FUCK IN GAOL

There are lots of scammers in the world, and sadly that's the damned truth.

Investors Hub is riddled with pump and dump artists, from rawnoc to tmstocks. It reeks of fraud.

And now Matt "we are a neutral forum" Brown, founder of the scam site has been named in multiple criminal indictments for using Investor's Hub to run pump and dump schemes in conjunction with his boy-toy and possibly the Mafia.

He and his boyz "only" stole six million or so, so what's the big deal?

Oh, gosh, violation of public trust, gross hypocrisy, and common theft leap to mind.

Amazingly, ADVFN, parent company of IHub has been silent, and Brown seems to retain his position at IHub. The boy-toy has gone missing, although a money laundering bust did force him to leave the LAMBO behind. We ache for his loss.

Word has it that mattie poo, named in a separate indictment, is singing his little heart out. Maybe the little fuckface can bargain his sentence down to five years. At thirty one when it ends he will have plenty of time to scam again.

And he will.

If you want all the gory details, they are here.