I follow stock promotions (pump and dumps) closely and have traded them (mostly short, sometimes long) for over a decade now. But there are many pumps that I ignore or never notice in the first place — the promotion (such as boiler-room cold calls) is nothing I can observe and the volume is too low for me to find it while scanning for stocks to trade. A great example of this is the boiler-room pump and dump of Axiom Holdings, which took place between December 2015 and July 2017.
According to the SEC complaint (pdf) against Eric P. Lesak and his two companies, Global Research LLC (New York) and Global Research LLC (Pennsylvania), he used cold calls to get over 100 people to buy Axiom stock worth $2.8 million:
Lesak and Global pitched Axiom stock to more than 100 investors who bought Axiom stock between December 15, 2015 and June 20, 2017. These investors purchased more than 1.9 million shares of stock for approximately $2.8 million, which led to losses of more than $2.3 million by the time trading in Axiom was suspended by the Commission in June 2017.
In this case Lesak was being paid by a stock promotion firm (that was not named in court documents). According to court documents, “Between December 2015 and June 2017, pursuant to the Consulting Agreements, Defendants were paid a total of $767,115 to induce investors to purchase Axiom Stock. ”
Axiom Holdings daily stock chart (click to enlarge)
Yesterday on November 8, 2018, the court issued a default judgment (pdf) against Lesak. See the SEC’s press release about the judgment. The full case docket can be found on CourtListener.
The judgment against Lesak and his companies:
the defendants to pay, jointly and severally, disgorgement of $767,115 plus interest of $46,644. The judgment also orders Lesak to pay a civil monetary penalty in the amount of $184,767, Global to pay a civil monetary penalty in the amount of $923,831, and prohibits Lesak from participating in any offering of penny stock for twenty-five years.
Even with much fewer big money pump and dumps than there were years ago, a lot of little pumps add up and the gullible still lose lots of money on pump and dump scams.
Disclaimer. No position in any stocks mentioned and I have no relationship with anyone mentioned in this post. 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.