"of course the sec aids and abets re: they illegal
Post# of 43064
but in particular *shells*"
Only in penny stocks do investors delude themselves to such a point to where they blame the SEC of wrongdoing for suing their particular penny stock scam for fraud actually committed by the penny stock. The Ontario Securities Commission, which also sued PTOI and Mr. Bordynuik was also dragged through the mud by these faithful investors.
For anyone who doesn't know the story, several years ago Mr. Bordynuik, who founded and was the CEO of PTOI, contracted to buy 'media credits' from another company in exchange for 1,000,000 shares of common stock which was then trading at $1.00/share. The media credits were supposed to allow a certain amount of advertising. Even without any impairment, the media credits should have been booked at $1 million, the value of the shares traded. As it were, the media credits were actually worthless. Mr. Bordynuik listed the media credits as an asset worth nearly $10M and used that fake valuation to woo investors.
Why didn't the auditor catch that 'mistake' you ask?? Well, Mr. Bordynuik shopped for an auditor which the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board put on their 'naughty' list and then, since that accountant was in jail for violation of probation and felony DUI, Mr. Bordynuik paid for the accountant's criminal defense. It's not exactly a surprise that the accountant signed off on PTOI's financials and *missed* that egregious accounting "error."
Ultimately the SEC, and later the OSC, charged PTOI and Mr. Bordynuik with fraud for misrepresenting the value of the media credits. Even without the investigation, it's very clear that PTOI had cooked its books with the media credits. One of PTOI's answers to the fraud suit was that the SEC had exaggerated by saying $10M when, in fact, PTOI *only* booked them at $9,997,134.
But some victims stick to the belief that PTOI is a good guy and no amount of dishonesty nor outright fraud from PTOI will convince those investors that they've been swindled. With that belief, the world must be turned upside down and everyone else must the bad guys while PTOI must be the one being unjustly persecuted. That's why you see victims still lashing out at the SEC for its fraud suit against PTOI. It's strictly delusion.