The Portage Resources (POTG.pk) scam question of the day: What rhymes with pump?

Answer: Dump.

You never know when a criminal scam such as the one being run by the scumbag Paul Luna Belfiore is going to flip the switch and turn the pump into the dump, but as Portage Resources (POTG.pk) passed $1 today the chances were getting higher. Sure enough, Luna decided he'd pushed it as far as possible and is now dumping part of his 75% holding on the unwary and unsuspecting. 

Freakin SEC should have closed this stock down already, where are you guys?

The Portage Resources (POTG.pk) scam: So waddya get for $471m these days?

Some scams are more subtle and some are easier to spot, so let's make sure we understand each other on today's post before we get started. Portage Resources (POTG.pk) is in Category Two and one of the most blatant rip-offs I've seen in 2011

I've been watching with amusement the pump and dump scam that is running around Portage Resources (POTG.pk) this last week, with plenty of bullshit in the paid tout press and it seems there's more than enough money left in the supposedly cash-strapped America to see this company move to frankly ridiculous valuations.

POTG.pk now quotes at 74c a pop and when we recall that the company has 637 million shares outstanding (yeah dudes I shit thee not, and to make matters worse 75% of those shares are in the hands of the delinquent piece of toadcrap and company CEO Paul Luna) this means that the company is being valued at $471m right now. So what do you get for your money, folks? You get:

A letter of intent (i.e. not even a real asset and not even a contract to option in on a real asset, but a piece of paper that says the company intends to do a deal...nothing else) on a property in the politically impossible-to-mine North reaches of Peru.


A bullshit resource that has nothing to do with reality of 58m oz silver, but even if it had you're now valuing those ounces at $9 each, a mile above anything in the serious market, even amongst companies that are producing silver today.

A CEO who really is a piece of shit lying scumbag, of that be in no doubt.

A company with five hundred and thirty-three dollars in the treasury as per its last quarterly report. Doesn't that strike you as a little thin for a junior that the market is valuing at half a billion (with a B)?

The incessant pumping of boilerhouse scumbags who have a track record of separating the naive from their wedge. Have a look here and here for more.

The problem is that it's really difficult so far to get a lend on this thing and short it. If you can, do so, because it's the easiest money you'll make this year. Be clear that POTG.pk is being run to benefit insiders only, they're screwing thousands of people over right now and will leave the arena with your money in their pockets if you're daft enough to invest in this scam.

East West Petroleum (EW.v): Give David Sidoo credit, at least he's consistent

For your general edification and entertainment, let's catch up on how the Marin Katusa / Casey Research led scam pump East West Resources (EW.v) has been doing. We've featured it on a number of occasions at this humble corner of cyberspace (here and here tend to be ongoing popular posts) but today we're homing in on Executive Chairman David Sidoo's contribution to the cause...which so far has basically been throwing his own money down the Katusa Krush™ black hole:

(click to enlarge with sharper focus too)

It's incredible to think that installing a failed restauranteur as head guy of an Oil & Gas junior hasn't paid off so far...can't think why that should be. Hey David, you know this old joke?

Q: What the best way to make a small fortune in the stock market?

A: Start with a large fortune, then.....

Portage Resources (POTG.pk): Good to know the SEC is looking into this scam

IKN gets a fun visitor today, who used "potg scam" as their keyword search on Google and ended up at this post:

Domain Name		(Unknown)
IP Address		162.138.2.# (U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission)
ISP		U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission
Location		Continent  :  North America Country  :  United States  (Facts) State  :  District of Columbia City  :  Washington Lat/Long  :  38.8933, -77.0146 (Map) Distance  :  3,849 miles
Language		English (U.S.) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinXP
Browser		Firefox Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110420 Firefox/3.6.17 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Javascript		version 1.5
Monitor		Resolution  :  1280 x 800 Color Depth  :  24 bits
Time of Visit		Jun 22 2011 1:06:53 pm
Last Page View		Jun 22 2011 1:06:53 pm
Visit Length		0 seconds
Page Views		1
Referring URL		http://www.google.co...TaTm-2_qCiF9yMcFogwQ
Search Engine		google.com
Search Words		potg scam
Visit Entry Page		http://incakolanews....k-pump-and-dump.html
Visit Exit Page		http://incakolanews....k-pump-and-dump.html
Out Click
Time Zone		UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time		Jun 22 2011 2:06:53 pm

Hey Belfiore, ready for the nice men and women of the SEC to come visit you in Lima?

I uncovered my short on ECU.to again yesterday

Why so? Because Bill Murphy of GATA is a liar about ECU Silver (ECU.to) and doesn't have the first clue about what he's pumping to you. And that arrogant bully known to an undeserving world as Wistar Holt is so close to outright fraud in his non-stop pumping of ECU.to that you can hardly slide a sheet of paper between the gap.

But the numbers? They don't lie.

 

And before the ranks of Kool-Aid drinkers who actually fall for this scam start writing in, do us all a favour and don't bother until you can actually understand what the numerical information held in those charts actually signifies, because life is too short to read your banalities otherwise. Oh, and another number for you is $455,702, the all-cash salary of head scamster Michel Roy in 2010. He's laughing at you, sheep.

By the way, I just love how ECU.to has "lost" over $10m in asset value due to the new IFRS accounting rules but just can't be bothered to tell you about it...or why. Over $300m market cap for a company that generates revenues of $5m a qtr, pays all its excess to the loan runners and can't return a net profit to save its sorry ass, even in the current price levels for silver and gold? Gimme a freakin' break, dumbasses. DYODD, dude.

And now I'm off shopping with my mother. Catch you later.

Allied American Steel (AAST.ob) is a scam and today hired scumball criminal geologist Richard Tschauder as chief pumper

Here's the latest in a long line of scams that have the scamster John Myers at the centre of the promo. Allied American Steel (AAST.ob) is the name and the modus operandi being used to pump this worthless hulk of crap is uncannily similar to the way John Myers pumped American Power (AMPW.ob) back in January. Then it was coal that Rio Tinto was going to buy, now with AAST.ob it's iron ore that BHP is going to buy.

It's a complete and utter scam, ladies and gentlemen, and as AAST.ob is currently trading at $1.70 a share, there's an awful lot of room for shorters to move in and make a pile on the back of any idiots that decide to buy into this bullshit. I'd catalog it all, but fortunately Len Boselovic of Pittsburg's Post-Gazette has already done a great job of exposing the main points of the scam in his report out yesterday Sunday. Entitled "Reports of takeovers may be greatly exaggerated", it's a very good report and recommended reading. Go now.

However, this morning we had a further development at AAST.ob that's worthy of special note, because Allied American Steel has decided to employ a corrupt and criminal geologist as its expert in all matters mineral. Here's the link to this morning's NR that talks in glowing terms about the appointment of Richard Tschauder as Senior Geologist and here's a few excerpts from the purple prose:

Allied American Steel Corp is pleased to announce the appointment of Senior Geologist, Richard Tschauder, to the Company's management team. 

Mr. Tschauder is a senior geologist with over thirty years of experience in the mineral exploration and mining industry. Since 1996, he has drawn on that experience while acting as an independent consultant, concentrating on the identification and exploration of mining projects....

For 15 years, Rick was chief geologist for Hecla Mining Company...

Rick has over 25 publications in mining and economic geology... 

His technical and field work experience will prove vital to Allied American...

"Rick is the perfect addition to our management team at this point of our development," commented Jes Black, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of Allied American.... 

All very nice I'm sure, but what AAST.ob misses out about Richard Tschauder is that he doesn't have 25 publications about geology, but at least 26. That's because there's this little publication on the dude that comes from class action and documents his deep involvement in a previous criminal scam. Here we go with the relevant passages, 7 and 8, of the full Class Action complaint linked here and your humble scribe highlights the moneylines:

7. Contrary to their pubic representations, the Atlas Defendants knew that the halloysite at the Dragon Mine was not of the quality represented. Prior to making these public representations, Atlas was aware of reputable reports regarding the quality of halloysite at the Dragon Mine, which reports noted significant impurities (including alunite and iron minerals) and contaminants in the Dragon Mine that would prevent the halloysite from being used in high-end production. To perpetrate fraud on its shareholders, Atlas retained Richard Tschauder to publish findings contrary to these reports. Mr. Tschauder’s findings were false and were tainted with conflicts as he was not independent and had a financial stake in providing misleading information concerning the Dragon Mine’s prospects.
 

8. While touting the quality and quantity of the halloysite purportedly in its possession based on the conflict-tainted findings of Tschauder, Atlas fraudulently represented to the market that it was already selling halloysite to customers and had bright prospects of selling even more halloysite. In a January 19, 2005 press release, Atlas first claimed to have sold halloysite to a customer, NaturalNano, Inc. This purported sale never occurred and Atlas’ public representations were the result of collusion between Atlas and NaturalNano. Specifically, for no valid business purpose other than NaturalNano’s cooperation in creating the appearance that NaturalNano was purchasing halloysite from Atlas, and for no consideration, Atlas issued warrants to NaturalNano to acquire 750,000 shares of Atlas stock at $0.40 a share. As of August 9, 2006, those warrants were sold for $562,500 yielding to NaturalNano stockholders net cash proceeds after legal fees of $506,250.00, at the expense of Atlas shareholders. Tschauder, who authored the false reports for Atlas, was a shareholder of NaturalNano.

In other words, professional scam runner, scumball and general piece of shit Richard Tschauder was hired by another scam runner, paid off with shares and then lied about the geological attributes of the deposit in order to push the share price up and cash in. That's the type of geologist this pump and dump scam run by another total shit bag called Jes Black, chairman of AAST.ob, thinks is "perfect" to employ, ladies and gentlemen readers of this humble corner of cyberspace. DYODD.

FYI, the next Casey Research pump and dump scam is using PC Gold (PKL.to)

Lobito James reco'd PKL.to to his A-List clients on Friday, so it's odds on that they'll get to sell to the larger International Speculator subs list when Lobito pumps this dog to them next month.

The day the scamrunning scumballs at Casey Research are closed down and their immoral practices stopped will be a good day for market transparency. DYODD.

How Casey Research fakes its track record, part two

We've already noted one of the slimeball techniques used by the unaccountable Casey Research to bullshit itself and fake its track record in this previous post, now here comes another example of their lies and deception. The following mail was recently received from reader "R", who wishes to remain anonymous being a subscriber of Casey Research's  'International Speculator' (IS) service.

In the following mail, R explains just how Casey's IS editor and liar in chief Louis James fakes his track record. At this point, it's best to make clear that I have edited R's original mail in order to strip it of any source of IS and brushed up the script a tad. I then passed the edited version of R's mail back and have received permission from R to post it as seen. In other words what you're about to read is 100% the message in R's mail.  Read on.

Hi Otto,

I don´t necessarily have a negative stance towards Casey, being an International Speculator (IS) subscriber for a year or so now. I'm a newbie everywhere in mining world and can´t judge. But here´s something that makes me angry. For a few weeks I lost track a bit of their recommends and so just recently I noticed a new IS recommendation for Pretium Resources, PVG.to. So I checked it out on the Casey site:

"First Recommended 2011-01-05  at $6.20"

So I went to the January 2011 edition of IS but found nothing. On further checking of my reports I found that it's only featured in the February 2011 IS. Here's what was written in the Feb 2011 edition:

"Bob has leapt back onto the stage, buying these gold assets from SSO and putting them into a new gold company: Pretium.

We spoke with Bob about this last month, after the January issue of IS was already out the door, and became convinced that Pretium is going to add a lot of value in the coming months and going forward. So we put out the word to our alert subscribers, who were able to take advantage of the recent fluctuation down to almost C$6.00. If this bothers you, by all means, take a pass, but note that with gold still showing weakness, it’s possible you could get filled at similar prices if you set your sights on them and wait for the market to come to you."

That stinks in various ways. First, they would have liked to reco it to IS subs but unfortunately the letter was already sent out. Subs can't be notified by email can they? So, sorry sorry had to reco it only to the alert subs.

Second, their latest scheme is: oh boo hoo if you don't like buying after alert subs have bought you can always pass on that pick

But thirdly and that ´s what causes my anger: These buggers have the nerve to list the pick as recommended first in Jan 2011 at $6.20! That's the info in my IS account and it's not true because I was reco'd in Feb 2011. The Feb IS came out on Feb 7th and Pretium was lowest 8 CAD and generally 8.50 CAD

So later they claim a performance that has not at all happened for IS subscribers. According to them, PVG.to today at $8.80 is a 42% gain calculating with start price of 6.20 CAD, while actually it has a gain of 10% at best from $8.00 and virtually nothing from $8.50.

Here is where I feel ridiculed. And sure, Casey will be all "sorry for the error" if it gets revealed. I might write to Casey but honestly, their communication politics is a bit like you never get an answer. I appreciate that you provide market transparency and track dubious behavior so I send it to you, please respect my anonymity.

Kind regards,

R

IKN Back. Personally, I think R is being far too kind and forgiving to Lobito and his band of swindlers and one of these fine days they're going to get a well-deserved lawsuit slapped on their lying asses. But that's just me. DYODD, dudettes and dudes.

Got something to hide, Marin?

Looks like Casey Research is into cyberburial of criticisms. Your list of instructions:

1. Check out the December 2010 IKN post "Marin Katusa's Modus Operandi and East West Petroleum (EW.v)" on the link.
2. Go to the photoshow at the bottom of the page.
3. Mouse over the links provided to the biographies of the scummy, self-serving threesome that make up KBH Capital, namely Marin Katusa, Marc Bustin and Joe Hung. You'll note as you mouse over (without clicking) if you look in the bottom left of your screen that the url's originally provided did indeed go to the correct places.
4. Now click through the three biog links provided. The links now go to completely separate places in the Casey Research website and feature people that don't even work for the shop any more. The internal links have clearly been swapped by Casey people to send people to the wrong places.

Isn't this fun? It's almost as if Marin and his pally pals have something to hide, isn't it?

ECU Silver (ECU.to): Checking in on Wistar Holt's market prowess

Hey dudettes and dudes, anyone remember back in November 2010 when your author got mails from Wistar Holt, the scumball scamster that shows GATA for what it really is? Well if you don't recall, let's just remind you of a couple of the phrases used by Wistar in his missives:

I swear to God that if I ever come across you in person, I will rip you apart.

Got it? 

But of course, you won't ever show up, cause you are a coward!

Isn't this guy just the cutest ever? Anyway, the subject was, of course, his non-stop pumping of ECU Silver (ECU.to) and the way ECU.to had just made spurt in the market. Poor little lost boy Wistar couldn't contain his excitement and just had to blurt out how wonderful he was at the time. So let's see how ECU.to has done since your humble scribe's exchange with Wister Holt:

Hmm...and let's remind people of the wider context of ECU.to and Wistar, too:

 

And by some bizarre coincidence, since the continued demise of ECU.to, even in the face of the amazing run in silver, Wistar Holt seems to have ....

DYODD

another day's mailbag

You guys keep me amused via my mailbox, and for that I thank you. Here's an example from "regular reader" this morning:

Just in case you are tempted to partake in a bit of self-flagellation on this Easter weekend, I recommend you listen to this instead.

http://www.financialsense.com/financial-sense-newshour/guest-expert/2011/04/21/marin-katusa/americas-looming-energy-disaster

It should do the trick...

Thanks for that, RR (you know who you are).

Meanwhile, we note that Marin's dead horse energy play Ram Power (RPG.to) got flogged today:

Inquiring minds wonder if there two occurrences are related? And said minds also wonder if CBM Asia (TCF.v) got its own pumperooney from the morally bereft p&d scamster? Doubt that, cos it's just sooooo 2010, innit Marin?

UPDATE: Stunningly good feedback from reader TK:

I got a chuckle when I tried to open the Katusa link RR sent you in RealPlayer, and this message popped up (I’m not kidding!): “This clip cannot be played. It contains unexpected data and may be corrupt.”

 

Even RealPlayer has figured Katusa out…?

How Casey Research fakes its track record

One of the ways it does it like this:

1) Recommend hundreds of stocks
2) Never sell the losers
3) Boast about the amazing track record of closed trades.

Here's an example: Remember last year when we looked at Marin Katusa's bullshit about CBM Asia (TCF.v), the stock he pumped no end before it started sinking in classic Katusa Krush style*? Well at the time he decided to give up on the stock he put a "sell at 30c" call on it, thus avoiding the embarrassment of selling at half that price when his initial recommend was up there at 80c. He justified his bullshit sell-that-isn't-a-sell call by saying that "..[i]t may take some time to sell our stock, but with patience, the merits of the property should allow us an opportunity to exit the stock at or above C$0.30."

So let's see if patience has paid off since those words of Katusa's back in late July 2010:

Hmmm...more of that patience medicine needed, yeah Marin?

This is the Casey Research modus operandi and how it manages to fool so many people into believing its totally unaudited propaganda about unbeatable returns. What's more the above is one example of the many because this happens all the time. So, dear reader, why not start your own unaudited research house yourself? Remember, all you need to do is:

1) Pick a boatload of stocks

2) Take profits on the winners

3) Ignore the losers and never sell them by putting stupid "sell at" calls on them

4) Boast about closed trades.

You'll get 'em flocking to your door, too. Then with the money you make you can leverage yourself into the private placement world and scam them both sides....just like our hero Marin.

*by the way, the similarity between the TCF.v chart and that of EW.v is remarkable. I wonder why? And the RPG.to chart, come to think of it. Anyone else spot a common denominator between those three?

Mercer Gold (MRGP.ob) does what all scams do in the end

The typical junior mining scam such as Mercer Gold (MRGP.ob) that's pumped by paid newsletter tripe suddenly swandives and dumps out on no apparent newsflow. This is because the scum behind it, in this case previously convicted securities fraudster Gordon Brent Pierce, decide to pull the plug and get out with whatever's left over. Meanwhile the poor bagholder innocent are left wondering WTF is going on.

and don't say we didn't warn you about this stupid, obvious junior mining BS play headed up  on paper at least by the unspeakable Rahim Jivraj. Because we did. Over and over and over again.

Calling BS on Pacific Rubiales (PRE.to)

Setty does it again with a top post on Pacific Rubiales (PRE.to), Colombia's biggest private oil company and purveyor of bullshit numbers to the market. You just have to read the whole thing over there cos there are dynamite facts and snippets all through the article, but here's a section to whet your appetite for the corporate Shenanigans as exposed.

"...reading through the last few weeks’ news, I don’t see anyone saying publicly the three things that were most completely screwed up about this situation. 

1. The company giving 220,000 barrels a day as their figure for year-end oil output as late as February, even though they should have known a month earlier that the number was fiction.

2. Board members front-ran the bad news with millions of dollars in stock sales, during a period when they should have known about the bad news to come.

3. Executives are refusing to buck up and accept responsibility for missing on oil output and reserves replacement.

So go read "Pacific Rubiales (PRE.to): like Alange, but bigger" right now. Super Sunday fare and kudos to the Settydude.