This is a warning to all CEOs, CFOs and anyone involved with a publicly trading company. If you get a phone call from someone offering you an infusion of capital and/or investor relations/promotional services ask a lot of questions first. Find out the names of the principals of the company, where they are located and ask for references.
Our company got such a phone call recently by a firm out of Florida called MWC Group. They asked if we needed working capital, which we did, if we were currently engaged with an IR and several other questions before telling us their story. I must they they sounded very convincing. We spoke with the owner of the company Jeff Galpern. He explained to us his program of Trade Mission Funding.
Mr. Galpern explained that he arranges these Trade Missions where he flies high net worth investors to a resort or hotel and then in concert with the company he is working with, a presentation is put on for the group. What appealed to us was that these investors would be purchasing restricted shares of stock. This was important to us because we have been burned many times with offers to help in exchange for free trading shares that were inevitably and very quickly sold into the open market which hurt our stock price.
Mr. Galpern bragged about how he regularly raises 1 to 3 million for the companies that he "helps". We became a bit concerned when we asked what licenses he and the company help and he told us they were not broker-dealers and we would have to compensate them based on a "hand shake" agreement. Our BIG mistake was not hanging up the phone when he presented his hook. He told us that these high net worth investors he flies in always ask him if he is an investor in the company and he must of course reply with a yes.
I told him I could sell him restricted shares at a discount to the market immediately so he could get started. Then he told me that it took between 60 and 90 days to do the work involved before the Trade Mission could take place and he would be out of pocket several thousand dollars before the program began and insisted we provided him with free trading shares at a discount to offset his risk.
I discussed the entire thing with my board and we decided to proceed. We sold MWC Group a sizeable block of shares. That's when the trouble began. The SAME DAY that the shares were transferred into his account we noticed a large jump in our daily volume which was almost all selling into the bid. We could not reach Mr. Galpern by phone and he did not return our phone calls.
The selling continued throught the day and our stock price declined by about 30%. Since we were tied into a contract that stated that the price paid my MWC would be based on the closing bid on the day that shares were transferred into their account, we received substantially less than were anticipating.
When we finally got him on the phone Mr. Galpern sounded very concerned and actually accused us of depressing the stock price! He unequivocally denied he did any selling whatsover.
After doing some research we determined it was in fact him selling our stock. We were taken in by a professional con artist! Further research and investigation shows that he is involved in numerous lawsuits, complaints and investigations.
If you are a public company please beware of this person and company. Our investigations revealed the following account numbers:
Oppenheimer & Co brokerage account: Jeffrey Galpern ending in 4253
Oppenheimer & Co brokerage account: MWC Group LLC ending in 3693
Regions Bank account: MWC Group LLC ending in 9108 and Consolidated Diversified Investments LLC ending in 2901
There could be other companies he uses to work his scam. A search of Florida Division of Corporations website revealed a number of corporations in his name.
Please don't get fooled like we did, check out anyone offering stock related services thoroughly before agreeing to anything.
0 comments