This is a warning to all publicly trading executives 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, and what they have done over the years to be an established firm, where they are located, But asking for references is a mistake considering they have employees acting as they are or were clients in the past so they will have a history. This is how the scam starts.
Our company got a phone call recently by a firm out of Florida called WLSL Investments. They asked if they could raise us money by selling stock in our company, or if we where engaged with an IR and several other questions before telling us their story. I must say they sounded very convincing. We spoke with the owner of the company Steven Lazerus who sold boats a year or two prior as we found out more about this gentleman due to further due dilligence. He new nothing about the market or even how to raise money. He explained to us his program of how he would sell blocks of stock for us as he does other companys to investors, was unclear how concidering they were acting as an unregistered broker dealer. Which you know is against the law. He told me he could sell free trading and restricted in blocks of our company to these investors. We had a third party investor looking to sell some shares so the investor sold them his stock but when given the stock he never paid for it and robbed him.
Mr. Hamilton explained that he arranges these types of transactions for WLSL Investments where he finds high net worth investors with money to speculate on high risk investments and guarantees them 40% or more return on there money and then in concert with the company he is working with, a presentation is put on for the the investor thats being coned and steels there money. What appealed to us was that these guys from WLSL Investments would be purchasing restricted shares of stock! But as the deal went on and the stock kept moving higher to notice the inflated prices of the securities there selling and then the stock droped to pennys. They sold all the shares right into the market and hurt the company and its finance deal they were set to do with a banking firm. It was like a bad dream.
Mr. Hamilton bragged about how he regularly raises millions for the companies that he is invovled with. He talks about how he use to run the desk at Canter fitzgerald. That's what raised red flags with us because he seemed very uneducated in regards to the market place. We became a bit concerned, we then asked what licenses he and the company held and he told us they were not broker-dealers and we would have to compensate them based on a 'hand shake agreement or some sort or a one page document which when it was faxed over was literally a joke. Our BIG mistake was not hanging up the phone.
When discussed with our attorneys we desided to just report this to the athorities which we did. We would never sell any thing to these guys let alone shares in our company. That's when the trouble began. The SAME DAY that the shares were transferred into there account from the share holder of our company we noticed a large jump in our daily volume which was almost all selling into the bid. We could not reach Mr. Hamilton or Mr. Lazerus by phone and he did not return our phone calls.
The selling continued throught the day and our stock price declined by about 50%. The share holder of our company was taken advantage of and we formally appoligized to him and his family for the introduction to WLSL INV.
When we finally got him on the phone Mr. Hamilton he was short of words and then hung up the phone on us.
After doing some research we determined it was in fact him selling our stock. We were taken in by a professional con artist!
If you are a public company please beware of this person and company. Our investigations revealed the following has accounts at several brokerage houses but does most of his business at Capital Growth Financial
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.
Upset ceo
Offices in several US cities, Florida
U.S.A.
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