The "Media Credit fraud" was supposed to result in

The "Media Credit fraud" was supposed to result in disgorgement of $millions in ill-gotten gains, if I'm not mistaken, and it was settled for mere fines (and no disgorgement) that were far, far less. Many people have wondered out loud (myself included) how much money the SEC spent pursuing that farce of a case, compared to the fines it collected. Yes, it was a farce, because it was always highly unlikely that anyone invested in the company and its potential based solely (or even marginally) on the value of the media credits. To try and use that as proof positive that PTOI should be taken to court now for fraud is simply misguided (if you were genuinely concerned for those who lost money here, you would be encouraging them to sue the SEC for their reckless public treatment of the company, which had a severe adverse effect on the company's stock price during that time period).

The standard for fraud cannot simply be that some investors lost money trading the stock (by buying without reading and considering the risk factors involved in a development stage company side by side with forward looking statements from the company, and by selling without understanding the same); if the bar is set that low, then every publicly traded company should be taken to court for fraud (I honestly lost count of the number of ambulance-chasing lawfirms that announced that they were going to go after JBII - did you count them? Whatever became of all those "inquiries"?), because there will always be investors who lose money trading stocks. As much as the "fairness" crusaders would like investing to be a win-win proposition, they will never be able to do it through legal action....nor should they.

Caveat Emptor applies as much to investing in OTC stocks as it does to all other sectors of the economy - it is a high risk, high reward arena.