Message Boards

MESSAGE BOARDS AND CHAT ROOMS

AN EXCLUSIVE REPORT

THIS IS PART I OF A THREE PART SERIES DEALING WITH MESSAGE BOARDS AND HOW THEY ARE USED BY COMPANIES, THE MEDIA, INVESTORS, AND CRIMINALS, TO MANIPULATE STOCK PRICES. THIS IS NOT FICTION, IT IS A REALITY.

There are a variety of financial message boards and chat rooms available on the internet. The most popular of these boards are Yahoo, Silicon Investor, and Raging Bull. Pick out a trading symbol, almost any trading symbol and you should be able to find an appropriate message board or chat room. When you find the right board you may find everything from professional pump and dump artists to criminals that have [naked] shorted the stock you have selected (remember shorting a stock is not illegal, but naked shorting is!). Profound statements such as THIS STOCK WILL SOON BE HALTED to NEW SALES ARE GOING TO PUSH THIS STOCK PRICE THRU THE ROOF, will be found posted on many of these message board sites. Some of the posters are sincere investors and others are outright criminals. Most posters use screen names or aliases to protect their true identity. As you search through the various message boards you will find such aliases as PUMPANDDUMP, MMMARY, iamgumby,tidewaters, janiceshell, janice456, scion, stockwizzard, truthseeker, scambuster, mamabear, pluvia, observer, backman, 200mph, tooldude, ripalips, riplipz, pilapir (ripalip backwards), and the list goes on and on. In many cases, the same poster may have an unlimited number of aliases and can often be found on message boards, posting and answering messages to themselves under various aliases. It is also common to share passwords with associates, allowing for numerous individuals to post under a "common" screen name. They would like you to believe that their motivation for posting on the boards is to either steer you towards a great investment, or alert you to a scam. The reality is that "most" have a self interest for posting and in most cases that self interest can be measured in monetary terms. Many of these posters are even compensated to post on the boards by individuals, market makers and companies attempting to manipulate certain stocks.
The boards are monitored by a variety of governmental and quasi-governmental agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We ourselves, generally will have investigators monitoring various message boards and chat rooms, at any given time. Our investigators get to know people by surfing and reading a history of their posts. We are assisted in this effort by certain resources provided by various message boards. The primary concern in monitoring these message boards, is to protect the interests of our clients. In addition, monitoring of the boards is often times a source of information utilized in conducting our investigations.

Never believe what is posted on public message boards, do your own due diligence. The reason for this is that there is no pre-verification process for information posted on these message boards and it is a fact that many of the posters are fraudsters, stock manipulators, convicted felons, vindictive ex-employees, people who have lost money on a certain stock and outright criminals. Basically they can post whatever they like, with little or no recourse. Most posters will hide behind the First Ammendment of the Constitution. Others plead ignorance, which in many cases is very applicable!

Control over what is posted on public message boards is governed by First Amendment Rights and the general right to freedom of expression. There have been a number of lawsuits initiated against message board posters and those suits have generally been decided in favor of the posters (Defendants). Often times you will find posters claiming to have been libeled, although the courts have held that an anonymous poster can not be legally libeled.

Our general opinion of message board posting is that in many instances the postings tend to victimize the company or harm sincere investors. The negative aspects certainly appear to outweigh the positive. Because of recent criminal cases, there has been more attention directed to message board postings, by certain enforcement agencies. Also, new computer technology both in the governmental and private sectors has allowed for the shield of anonymity to fade away on many message board posters. The value in identifying message board posters is that when and if they cross the line between freedom of expression and criminal activity, they can appropriately be dealt with. Many posters fall in the category of being outright criminals. These are the ones that feel hurting a company or investors is nothing more than a financial game, until they cross the line and feel the long arm of the law and the rath of corporate entities that fight back. In our opinion, public message boards are one of the most flagrant facilitators for stock manipulation.

Copyright 2003 Asiavest Investigative Services. All Rights Reserved.