I’ve written about the new sheriff in town Melissa Davis & TheStreetSweeper.org several times:
Talking about Charles’ Payne’s penny stock promotions
Shaq is involved in a penny stock pump & dump
…but as their Investimonials Review Page points out (c’mon and show your appreciation for Melissa’s hard work by reviewing her website on Investimonials):
For someone who’s only been covering micro-cap fraud for less than 6 months, Ms. Davis has already achieved the incisive expertise more seasoned journalists such as Dow Jones’ Carol Remond, The Vancouver Sun’s David Baines, and Stockwatch’s Mike Caswell possess. Her latest expose story on Dublin, CA based stock promoter Jarett Wollstein is a must read, a perfect 10.
Below is half of the great article Melissa wrote this morning on AENY…read the whole things with tons of links HERE…going far byond the Dow Jones Newswire report on these same scumbags
Full disclosure for the retards at the SEC (how they can not be stopping this blatant manipulation I have no idea), I am short 1,500 Americas Energy Company (AENY) at $4.27ish (TIMalert subscribers were alerted within seconds of my trade this morning) for many of the reasons listed below….I expect this stock to tank 50%+ in the coming weeks as their blatant shadiness gets exposed and even those who are dumb enough to buy based on paid-for-advertising mailers start to get a whiff of this carcass.
AENY: The Dirty Truth behind the Pretty Coal Stock
by Melissa Davis – 1/19/2010 7:49:31 AM
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Last fall, around the same time that British Columbian regulators issued a cease-trading order for Americas Energy Company (AENY.OB) stock, U.S. investors began fielding bullish emails urging them to buy the company’s shares.
The Intelligent Investor Report, a promotional newsletter published by Jarret Wollstein, highlighted AENY (then trading under the ticker symbol TRET) as his top coal pick of 2009 and predicted that the company would be producing more than $100 million worth of coal annually by the end of next year. He portrayed AENY – a shell company with limited operations — as a likely “10-bagger” for fast-acting investors willing to buy the shares early and then hold onto them for the long term.
If investors read the report closely, however, they would have learned that it was nothing more than a paid advertisement financed by an obscure firm (calling itself Bistro Ltd.) with 1 million shares of AENY stock that could be “publicly traded (sold) at any time.” They would have also seen that Wollstein himself personally collected $10,000 for writing the bullish report.
Since then, Wollstein has followed up with yet another – even rosier – AENY report financed by the mysterious Bistro. This time, Bistro paid a whopping $700,000 for distribution of the newsletter. In the new report, Wollstein abandoned his previous $11 price target for AENY’s stock and replaced it with a $20 projection that he characterized as conservative in nature.
At one point, in fact, Wollstein claimed that AENY could be sitting on coal resources worth more than an eye-popping $700 a share.
“Even aggressively discounting that by 90%, that still puts $70.37 of coal into every share of AENY,” Wollstein proclaimed. “Even if you have to pay $5 a share for AENY, you’re getting a bargain of a buy with huge remaining profit potential.
“Buy AENY immediately,” he concluded, because “the sooner you load up on AENY, the better.”
Wollstein did not respond to a request seeking an interview for this story.
AENY did clear the $5 mark after Wollstein’s latest report, peaking at $5.59 earlier this month. The stock has since taken a hit, however, and now trades for $4.50 a share.
Still, that price looks incredibly generous to some. Based on the company’s latest regulatory filings, which show 20.5 million shares outstanding, AENY currently sports a market value of $90 million. Yet based on a paid analyst report featured on the company’s own website – which pegs the total share count at both 32 million and 37 million – AENY actually boasts a market value of $140 million or $160 million instead.
Either way, skeptics say, AENY enjoys a remarkably high valuation for a Vancouver shell company with no money in the bank and a dismal track record of success.
Shell Game?
To be fair, investors have assigned that value to another company (also named Americas Energy) that AENY has promised to acquire.
That privately held company, headquartered in Knoxville, portrays itself as an operating coal-mining venture led by a man named Christopher Headrick. Before joining AENY in late 2008, Headrick reportedly ran another Tennessee-based coal-mining operation called PPG, Inc. Those initials stand for Patriot Products Group, government records indicate, a corporation dissolved by Tennessee officials just days before AENY inked its formal merger deal.
Headrick failed to answer a list of emailed questions for this story.
Meanwhile, last week, Dow Jones noted that Headrick’s background appears to be in real estate rather than coal mining. It also identified Headrick’s sidekick, Vice President Jimmy Dunn, as a former mortgage broker who pleaded guilty last year to tax evasion and could face prison time and hefty fines for his crimes.
From the start, AENY investors have nevertheless seemed thrilled by the prospect of purchasing Headrick’s company. AENY (formerly known as Trend Technology) began working on the deal in mid-2009, around the same time that Wollstein first “discovered” the stock, and has already adopted the Americas Energy name as its own. Despite that name change, however, AENY has yet to officially close the deal.
Originally, AENY said that it would complete the merger after raising $1 million to finance the company’s future mining activities. Once AENY raised the necessary capital, however, the company announced a new fundraising target – requiring another $8 million – that must be achieved for the deal to close instead.
Meanwhile, in press releases issued under the shell company’s stock symbol but touting the private company’s operations, AENY keeps mentioning that unfinished merger as a potential risk factor. Critics believe that those news releases have misled investors by tricking them into purchasing stock in a shell company when they think they are buying shares in a legitimate mining operation instead.
Losing Record
Without the merger, AENY itself appears to be worth little. On its own, regulatory filings show, AENY has never achieved any real measure of success.
In its latest quarterly report, AENY lists only three significant “milestones” recorded by the company since its inception. It raised $160,000 in capital, including $60,000 generated through a private placement carried out more than four years ago. It completed two phases of an exploration project that was later abandoned due to lack of successful results. And it finished one phase of another exploration project that has since been deserted for similar reasons.
A major AENY shareholder, Vancouver securities attorney Gerald Tuskey, gave up on the company shortly before it began pursuing its big merger deal. In June, Tuskey sold all 6 million of his AENY shares – a stake representing more than one-fourth of the entire company – for a fraction of a penny apiece. He pocketed just $40,000 for his stock, which would now be worth $27 million at today’s lofty prices.
“The securities were acquired for investment purposes,” a regulatory filing explains. And “Mr. Tuskey wishes to employ this capital elsewhere.”
AENY’s current CEO, Leonard MacMillan, had spent more than two years running the company by the time that giant shareholder fled. MacMillan also served as an officer and director at Lexaria (LXRP.OB), a former $6 stock that now fetches just 12 cents a share, until his sudden resignation from the company last year. He has managed corporate communications for Max Resource (MXROF.OB), yet another low-priced penny stock, as well.
Based on his official bio, MacMillan appears to have no formal experience in the energy industry. Although he technically serves as co-CEO of AENY, sharing his duties with Headrick, MacMillan alone still signs off on the company’s official regulatory filings.
TheStreetSweeper could not locate MacMillan to ask him questions for this story.
With MacMillan formally in charge, regulatory filings show, AENY managed to raise $850,000 of the $1 million required to complete its merger (with the funds coming from an unnamed third party) by the end of November. As previously noted, the company has since gone on to raise the entire $1 million but still failed to close the deal.
Read the whole article HERE, there’s a whole ‘nother section on Jayhawk Energy, Inc. (JYHW) of which I have 194 share short (leftover from getting squeezed a few days ago)
Posted in Manipulation