SEC:
'His messages moved the markets'
From his
SI
profile:
Occupation/Title:
'The Great One'
Favorite
Stocks: 'You have to pay for this information'
Personal
Quote: 'Lebed just laid the smack down on that piece of
trailer park trash'
Hey guys,...
Don't get ahead of me here. 15 year old John Lebed isn't our
Fool of the Week, those Fools who bought shares of companies
he pumped with his vapid posts, are!
John
has no expertise in valuing companies. He's a spammer... obviously
a good one. Note that his company, eprolutions.com
(Promotion Solutions), sells bulk e-mail marketing services
(SPAM), not stock picks.
I'll just
quote from the news stories:
'Working
up to six hours a day on a computer in his suburban New Jersey
bedroom, Lebed sent out hundreds of phony postings on the Internet,
extolling stocks he bought through brokerage accounts his parents
began setting up for him when he was 12.'
'Because
he used aliases, the SEC said, there was no way that other Internet
surfers in search of a promising tip could know they were being
manipulated by his exciting pronouncements. And because he used
"sell limit orders," which automatically sold the stock when
it reached a certain level, he often was in school when he made
his biggest profits, the SEC said.'
'After buying
18,000 shares of Man Sang Holdings Inc. for $2 or less on Jan.
5, for example, he claimed in a posting on a Yahoo message board
that it was "the most undervalued stock in history" and would
probably soon be trading at $20. That touched off a frenzy on
Jan. 6, when the volume of trading shot up from a little less
than 61,000 shares to more than a million shares. The price
rose to more than $4.'
'The SEC
originally sought to bring charges against Lebed involving 27
trades. In settling the case, the agency focused on only 11,
he said. That means Lebed can keep the profits from all the
other trades the SEC was investigating, Marino said, and that
"was substantially more" than the amount Lebed has agreed to
pay back.'
'I'm feeling
great today,' Lebed said in the telephone interview. 'I have
nothing to worry about.'
