Post by Ethan / JRyan on Sept 12, 2018 19:52:39 GMT -5
I was alerted to something I am still trying to come to grips with..
WOW! LINK to file here!
If true what does it mean?
GoogleFoo needed....
Wait a minute, Yahoo boards......Hmmm?
D, Dick Goziony, Dick Gozinya <===> Hmmm , all coming together now........ how about this site? Starting to look familar?
Bagholder Quotes that D is always using!
She has used many ids to accomplish what she is after.....I am in shock at what is being said here: Why Zion Oil then?
Deep Capture
This one, yeah I saw it but did not think anything of it. From the article in the Statesmen the other night..
Former Texas regulator is out as CEO at biblically oriented oil firm
Doesn't seem so bad what I am finding. She catches some bad guys. There it is... affinity fraud...we have been hearing that a lot here lately. What, double standard is this? Wait, this was not Zion Oil? What?
Pitching Alaska crude, Polar Petroleum may have run 'pump and dump' scheme
This doesn't seem so bad, I am confused. Zion in not on the OTC. What would she be after Zion for unless she thinks it an affinity scam? I have been saying for months that it does not fit the bill as they DRILLED and SO DID SHE? Wait, this makes no sense? She works with the SEC, or for them or something? This is less than a month old?
MORE RECOGNITION OF OTC MARKETS’ FIGHT AGAINST PUMP & DUMPS
Wow she has been doing this a long time. Bear Stearns? Lehman Brothers? What? Her own fund? Wait a minute...She was sued? For what? She went after the donut company? Why Zion oil? This makes NO sense.
Newcastle woman demands attention in her gadfly role
Ok now this makes sense, she wanted the SEC post? Huh? Well I guess if she is doing what they can not but this was BEFORE the crash.
Web sleuth wants SEC post
Wait a minute, she fights shorting? So why would she do what Panda did? This makes no sense.
Subject: File No. S7-08-09 From: Yolanda Holtzee
She did want the SEC post? Wow. Seemed like she had the connections at least some at least. However that was a long time ago. So again, why Zion oil? Why would she care about it?
Oh my goodness, I am not liking what I am reading here: This looks very bad, yeah it was years ago but this is BEFORE she wanted the SEC Spot. This is not adding up. Some of what is below is down right scary. Who is this woman really? 10 years ago bad , now the SEC likes her? What is going on?
www.deepcapture.com/?s=Yolanda+Holtzee&x=27&y=10
DEEP CAPTURE TAG YOLANDA HOLTZEE
WOW! LINK to file here!
If true what does it mean?
GoogleFoo needed....
Wait a minute, Yahoo boards......Hmmm?
D, Dick Goziony, Dick Gozinya <===> Hmmm , all coming together now........ how about this site? Starting to look familar?
Bagholder Quotes that D is always using!
She has used many ids to accomplish what she is after.....I am in shock at what is being said here: Why Zion Oil then?
Deep Capture
This one, yeah I saw it but did not think anything of it. From the article in the Statesmen the other night..
Yolanda Holtzee, who lives in Seattle, told the Statesman she reported the company to the SEC because she suspected it of affinity fraud, which involves calling on a class of investors that have a similar ethnic, religious or other background.
“I don’t like to see naive investors get fleeced,” said Holtzee, who said she has not invested in Zion and described herself as a religious person. “On and off 10 years, I’ve tried to make the SEC aware of what’s going on. Innocent until proven guilty, but — whether it’s Jesus, Hashem, Buddha, Muhammad — I don’t like to see God’s name evoked this way.”
“I don’t like to see naive investors get fleeced,” said Holtzee, who said she has not invested in Zion and described herself as a religious person. “On and off 10 years, I’ve tried to make the SEC aware of what’s going on. Innocent until proven guilty, but — whether it’s Jesus, Hashem, Buddha, Muhammad — I don’t like to see God’s name evoked this way.”
Former Texas regulator is out as CEO at biblically oriented oil firm
Doesn't seem so bad what I am finding. She catches some bad guys. There it is... affinity fraud...we have been hearing that a lot here lately. What, double standard is this? Wait, this was not Zion Oil? What?
"This is an exploration company. Wouldn't that money be better used doing a little drilling?" Holtzee asked.
This doesn't seem so bad, I am confused. Zion in not on the OTC. What would she be after Zion for unless she thinks it an affinity scam? I have been saying for months that it does not fit the bill as they DRILLED and SO DID SHE? Wait, this makes no sense? She works with the SEC, or for them or something? This is less than a month old?
MORE RECOGNITION OF OTC MARKETS’ FIGHT AGAINST PUMP & DUMPS
Posted on August 14, 2018
A new article in S&P Global Market Intelligence by Declan Harty discusses “How OTC Markets fights stock fraud enabled by ‘fake news’.”
The article highlights how technology has made it easier for fraudsters to implement “pump and dumps” of OTC stock, listed securities, crypto currencies, and more.
“Technology certainly transformed the stock promotion business,” said John Reed Stark, a cybersecurity consultant who founded and led the SEC’s Office of Internet Enforcement from 1998 to 2009, in an interview. “You can instantaneously create a 1980s boiler room in your basement without any of the start-up costs.”
Many credit OTC Markets Group CEO, Cromwell Coulson, with revolutionizing over-the-counter trading by increasing the quality and transparency of over-the-counter securities.
In March, OTC Markets Group has introduced Stock Promotion & Shell Risk Flags to enable investors to easily identify securities that are the subject of current promotional activity or might be a ‘shell company.’
The new flags followed 2017 initiatives to clarify the responsibility of reputable public companies and publish a monthly list of companies that were added to the Caveat Emptor designation or downgraded in OTC tiers.
“They’ve really come a long, long way,” said Yolanda Holtzee, who has been a whistleblower in seven successful cases with the SEC, in an interview. “[OTC Markets] has done a really good job of making promoted issuers transparent.”
Posted on August 14, 2018
A new article in S&P Global Market Intelligence by Declan Harty discusses “How OTC Markets fights stock fraud enabled by ‘fake news’.”
The article highlights how technology has made it easier for fraudsters to implement “pump and dumps” of OTC stock, listed securities, crypto currencies, and more.
“Technology certainly transformed the stock promotion business,” said John Reed Stark, a cybersecurity consultant who founded and led the SEC’s Office of Internet Enforcement from 1998 to 2009, in an interview. “You can instantaneously create a 1980s boiler room in your basement without any of the start-up costs.”
Many credit OTC Markets Group CEO, Cromwell Coulson, with revolutionizing over-the-counter trading by increasing the quality and transparency of over-the-counter securities.
In March, OTC Markets Group has introduced Stock Promotion & Shell Risk Flags to enable investors to easily identify securities that are the subject of current promotional activity or might be a ‘shell company.’
The new flags followed 2017 initiatives to clarify the responsibility of reputable public companies and publish a monthly list of companies that were added to the Caveat Emptor designation or downgraded in OTC tiers.
“They’ve really come a long, long way,” said Yolanda Holtzee, who has been a whistleblower in seven successful cases with the SEC, in an interview. “[OTC Markets] has done a really good job of making promoted issuers transparent.”
Wow she has been doing this a long time. Bear Stearns? Lehman Brothers? What? Her own fund? Wait a minute...She was sued? For what? She went after the donut company? Why Zion oil? This makes NO sense.
In 2001, software company Microstrategy sued Holtzee after she posted a "negative research report" on a Yahoo! chat board.The suit was dismissed and Holtzee signed an agreement that she would not discuss it. Microstrategy declined to comment.
To: JaseG who wrote (97458)
4/2/2007
Newcastle woman demands attention in her gadfly role
By2:14:10 PM From: StockDung 98951 of 121836
The Wall Street Journal
Yolanda Holtzee
In 2004, months before Krispy Kreme Doughnuts stock tanked amid an accounting scandal, securities regulators were hearing about the company from a Seattle-area woman who collects stuffed animals and uses the e-mail handle LoveLEHGirl.
Yolanda Holtzee, 50, of Newcastle spends her days writing to the country's top stock cops and corporate executives. A money manager by trade, she devours news and surfs Internet chat rooms befriending stockbrokers and middle managers. She digs for dirt, passing on some of the tidbits she gets to regulators and journalists, sometimes well before they become public information.
Last year, acting on a tip about suspicious stock trading from Holtzee, the Securities and Exchange Commission brought charges against an Estonian financial firm that the regulator alleged was trading on material information it had stolen from a secure Web site.
In 2004, working chat rooms, she helped regulators track down mutual-fund market timers. She writes like an insider, plays favorites with certain firms and individuals and pummels regulators.
"I wish I were a securities regulator sometimes. I would very much enjoy levying fines on StanLEH Morgan and making Gary Lynch cry like a baby!" she wrote in a March e-mail to a number of SEC officials.
Morgan Stanley has recently drawn regulatory fire for its inability to produce documents in a number of cases, a subject Holtzee has focused on. Lynch is Morgan Stanley's chief legal officer and a former regulator.
Self-styled investigator
Wall Street is full of corporate gadflies, many agitating for corporate-governance reform or focus on arcane bylaw changes.
Holtzee, a self-styled Internet investigator in sweat pants, focuses on exposing out-of-bounds behavior and catching bad guys. And after pointing regulators in the right direction more than once, Holtzee has achieved two things every gadfly craves: attention from those she targets — and action.
"I think people take her seriously because she has good instincts and actually produces cases," says former senior SEC official Ari Gabinet, now with the Vanguard Group, the fund-management giant. "If I could have hired her, we would have had an endless stream of cases."
Holtzee swaps notes with regulators, including the enforcement chiefs at both the SEC and another Wall Street regulator, the National Association of Securities Dealers, according to people familiar with the matter.
The SEC and NASD review her e-mails. Earlier this year, when Mary Schapiro was appointed to head the NASD, the Wall Street self-regulatory group gave Holtzee an early heads-up, according to people familiar with the matter. She has been called by the SEC to testify in Washington, D.C.
"Investment club"
On her Yahoo! user profile, she lists her hobbies as: "Making $$$ for my clients" and for Bear Stearns Cos., Lehman Brothers Holdings and Jefferies, three of her favorite stocks.
Holtzee was born in Wisconsin and says she has a graduate degree from the University of Southern California in operations management.
She has held a number of management jobs in the packaging industry, working for such companies as Alcan Aluminum and Ball. In 1998, hoping to make more cash, she began managing money, she says, for a handful of wealthy individuals.
She says she stopped taking in new investors in 2000 and won't disclose her firm's assets under management or its performance.
Holtzee refers to her company, Alcap, as an "investment club" and says she employs two traders in Connecticut and a compliance officer.
She works out of her house, which she shares with a friend. Her home is littered with cat paraphernalia, including a cat night light, kettle and cookie jar, and she has six cats, including two named Star and Buck, to keep her company.
Her trading is focused on a handful of sectors: beer and beverages, metals and financial services.
She tends not to send e-mails on companies she owns and says she discloses her interest when she does. Despite her slashing e-mails, she is reserved in person. She seldom phones the people she corresponds with, and few have met her.
Early riser
She starts her day at 2 a.m., reads newspapers online over a bagel and coffee, and combs the Net for tidbits. One favorite place to hunt: the raucous Yahoo.com chat rooms.
She sends out an average of 20 e-mails a day, many of them addressed to a number of recipients, before taking a two-hour nap in the afternoon, usually after the markets close.
She started e-mailing regulators in 2001, about the time New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer began his campaign to reduce conflicts of interest on Wall Street.
Soon, she had the e-mail addresses of dozens of regulators, journalists and executives. She says "sheer boredom" and a sense of fair play have her at the keyboard at all hours.
Her nickname, which includes the stock-market symbol for Lehman, comes from her affinity both for that firm and for Mark Lehman, Bear Stearns' former general counsel.
"We need to put this AR Baron mess to bed," she wrote in an e-mail to Mark Lehman in 1998, when the firm was facing allegations it ignored signs of fraud at A.R. Baron & Co., a securities firm for which it cleared trades.
Bear eventually settled the SEC charges without admitting or denying them. After an e-mail exchange, Lehman invited Holtzee to phone him. She did and liked what she heard. Not long afterward, she incorporated his name in her e-mail name. In an interview, Lehman said he was unaware that she had done that. He declined to comment further.
Aiming at Krispy Kreme
In late 2001, Krispy Kreme opened a store in Issaquah, its first in the Seattle area.
Holtzee noticed that initially, the place was packed, and she felt the company was overhyped. Then the crowds fell back. In 2003, she sold the stock short, meaning she would profit if it declined, and began asking around about the doughnut maker on Internet chat rooms.
She exchanged notes with an investment banker she knew only by the name Tom who did business with Krispy Kreme.
He told her the business had poor internal controls, and she passed his notes along to the Dallas-Fort Worth SEC office, including several to Harold Degenhardt, former head of that office and now a private attorney. "She focused on certain perceived problems at Krispy Kreme very early," Degenhardt says.
Krispy Kreme is still dealing with lawsuits and criminal and civil investigations stemming from its accounting misstep. And its stock, once trading near $50 a share in 2003, closed Friday at $8.69.
In May last year, she tipped the SEC to some suspicious trading volume in a Philadelphia biotech company she was interested in. Former SEC official Gabinet says the tip led investigators to look at an Estonian investment bank that happened to be trading in that stock and a number of others.
The SEC later accused the investment bank of repeatedly stealing information about press releases on U.S. companies from distribution service Business Wire before public release.
In 2001, software company Microstrategy sued Holtzee after she posted a "negative research report" on a Yahoo! chat board.
The suit was dismissed and Holtzee signed an agreement that she would not discuss it. Microstrategy declined to comment.
And in 2004, she found out from America Online that the SEC had subpoenaed the Internet provider for her name and address, thinking she might have information on a probe into the trading of a top Lehman Brothers analyst. She didn't.
And she was livid, saying several people at the SEC already knew who she was.
"A simple 'Dear LoveLEHGirl, who are you? I have some questions for you' would have worked."
Seattle Times Business desk editor Bill Kossen contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
4/2/2007
Newcastle woman demands attention in her gadfly role
By2:14:10 PM From: StockDung 98951 of 121836
The Wall Street Journal
Yolanda Holtzee
In 2004, months before Krispy Kreme Doughnuts stock tanked amid an accounting scandal, securities regulators were hearing about the company from a Seattle-area woman who collects stuffed animals and uses the e-mail handle LoveLEHGirl.
Yolanda Holtzee, 50, of Newcastle spends her days writing to the country's top stock cops and corporate executives. A money manager by trade, she devours news and surfs Internet chat rooms befriending stockbrokers and middle managers. She digs for dirt, passing on some of the tidbits she gets to regulators and journalists, sometimes well before they become public information.
Last year, acting on a tip about suspicious stock trading from Holtzee, the Securities and Exchange Commission brought charges against an Estonian financial firm that the regulator alleged was trading on material information it had stolen from a secure Web site.
In 2004, working chat rooms, she helped regulators track down mutual-fund market timers. She writes like an insider, plays favorites with certain firms and individuals and pummels regulators.
"I wish I were a securities regulator sometimes. I would very much enjoy levying fines on StanLEH Morgan and making Gary Lynch cry like a baby!" she wrote in a March e-mail to a number of SEC officials.
Morgan Stanley has recently drawn regulatory fire for its inability to produce documents in a number of cases, a subject Holtzee has focused on. Lynch is Morgan Stanley's chief legal officer and a former regulator.
Self-styled investigator
Wall Street is full of corporate gadflies, many agitating for corporate-governance reform or focus on arcane bylaw changes.
Holtzee, a self-styled Internet investigator in sweat pants, focuses on exposing out-of-bounds behavior and catching bad guys. And after pointing regulators in the right direction more than once, Holtzee has achieved two things every gadfly craves: attention from those she targets — and action.
"I think people take her seriously because she has good instincts and actually produces cases," says former senior SEC official Ari Gabinet, now with the Vanguard Group, the fund-management giant. "If I could have hired her, we would have had an endless stream of cases."
Holtzee swaps notes with regulators, including the enforcement chiefs at both the SEC and another Wall Street regulator, the National Association of Securities Dealers, according to people familiar with the matter.
The SEC and NASD review her e-mails. Earlier this year, when Mary Schapiro was appointed to head the NASD, the Wall Street self-regulatory group gave Holtzee an early heads-up, according to people familiar with the matter. She has been called by the SEC to testify in Washington, D.C.
"Investment club"
On her Yahoo! user profile, she lists her hobbies as: "Making $$$ for my clients" and for Bear Stearns Cos., Lehman Brothers Holdings and Jefferies, three of her favorite stocks.
Holtzee was born in Wisconsin and says she has a graduate degree from the University of Southern California in operations management.
She has held a number of management jobs in the packaging industry, working for such companies as Alcan Aluminum and Ball. In 1998, hoping to make more cash, she began managing money, she says, for a handful of wealthy individuals.
She says she stopped taking in new investors in 2000 and won't disclose her firm's assets under management or its performance.
Holtzee refers to her company, Alcap, as an "investment club" and says she employs two traders in Connecticut and a compliance officer.
She works out of her house, which she shares with a friend. Her home is littered with cat paraphernalia, including a cat night light, kettle and cookie jar, and she has six cats, including two named Star and Buck, to keep her company.
Her trading is focused on a handful of sectors: beer and beverages, metals and financial services.
She tends not to send e-mails on companies she owns and says she discloses her interest when she does. Despite her slashing e-mails, she is reserved in person. She seldom phones the people she corresponds with, and few have met her.
Early riser
She starts her day at 2 a.m., reads newspapers online over a bagel and coffee, and combs the Net for tidbits. One favorite place to hunt: the raucous Yahoo.com chat rooms.
She sends out an average of 20 e-mails a day, many of them addressed to a number of recipients, before taking a two-hour nap in the afternoon, usually after the markets close.
She started e-mailing regulators in 2001, about the time New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer began his campaign to reduce conflicts of interest on Wall Street.
Soon, she had the e-mail addresses of dozens of regulators, journalists and executives. She says "sheer boredom" and a sense of fair play have her at the keyboard at all hours.
Her nickname, which includes the stock-market symbol for Lehman, comes from her affinity both for that firm and for Mark Lehman, Bear Stearns' former general counsel.
"We need to put this AR Baron mess to bed," she wrote in an e-mail to Mark Lehman in 1998, when the firm was facing allegations it ignored signs of fraud at A.R. Baron & Co., a securities firm for which it cleared trades.
Bear eventually settled the SEC charges without admitting or denying them. After an e-mail exchange, Lehman invited Holtzee to phone him. She did and liked what she heard. Not long afterward, she incorporated his name in her e-mail name. In an interview, Lehman said he was unaware that she had done that. He declined to comment further.
Aiming at Krispy Kreme
In late 2001, Krispy Kreme opened a store in Issaquah, its first in the Seattle area.
Holtzee noticed that initially, the place was packed, and she felt the company was overhyped. Then the crowds fell back. In 2003, she sold the stock short, meaning she would profit if it declined, and began asking around about the doughnut maker on Internet chat rooms.
She exchanged notes with an investment banker she knew only by the name Tom who did business with Krispy Kreme.
He told her the business had poor internal controls, and she passed his notes along to the Dallas-Fort Worth SEC office, including several to Harold Degenhardt, former head of that office and now a private attorney. "She focused on certain perceived problems at Krispy Kreme very early," Degenhardt says.
Krispy Kreme is still dealing with lawsuits and criminal and civil investigations stemming from its accounting misstep. And its stock, once trading near $50 a share in 2003, closed Friday at $8.69.
In May last year, she tipped the SEC to some suspicious trading volume in a Philadelphia biotech company she was interested in. Former SEC official Gabinet says the tip led investigators to look at an Estonian investment bank that happened to be trading in that stock and a number of others.
The SEC later accused the investment bank of repeatedly stealing information about press releases on U.S. companies from distribution service Business Wire before public release.
In 2001, software company Microstrategy sued Holtzee after she posted a "negative research report" on a Yahoo! chat board.
The suit was dismissed and Holtzee signed an agreement that she would not discuss it. Microstrategy declined to comment.
And in 2004, she found out from America Online that the SEC had subpoenaed the Internet provider for her name and address, thinking she might have information on a probe into the trading of a top Lehman Brothers analyst. She didn't.
And she was livid, saying several people at the SEC already knew who she was.
"A simple 'Dear LoveLEHGirl, who are you? I have some questions for you' would have worked."
Seattle Times Business desk editor Bill Kossen contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
Ok now this makes sense, she wanted the SEC post? Huh? Well I guess if she is doing what they can not but this was BEFORE the crash.
Web sleuth wants SEC post
Jan 29, 2007 @ 12:01 am
By Kathie O’Donnell
BOSTON — Look out Christopher Cox. Yolanda Holtzee, who runs a “private investment club” from her Seattle home, is gunning for your job as Securities and Exchange Commission chairman.
Ms. Holtzee, 50, whose Internet sleuthing has helped the SEC in the past, has provided tips that she said led to a probe of Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. (KKD) and charges against an Estonian financial firm. Now she is looking to run the SEC.
She has been urged to seek appointment as SEC chairman in 2009, Ms. Holtzee said in an e-mail, adding that she “decided it’s in the best interests of the American public and global capital markets, as well.”
Ms. Holtzee, who was profiled by The Wall Street Journal in an April article, searches chat rooms and online documents looking for corporate impropriety. When something smells rotten, she e-mails regulators and journalists.
Why does Ms. Holtzee do it?
“Partially boredom, and also because I think that the playing field is not level,” she said.
The more help regulators get, the more efficient they can be and the more level the securities market playing field becomes, Ms. Holtzee said.
“It helps everybody — not just the large money manager. [It helps] the average retail investor — Mom and Pop,” Ms. Holtzee said.
The name of her investment club is ALCAP LLP, which she said isn’t a hedge fund. Ms. Holtzee declined to say how much money she oversees or give details about investment returns.
Although the Wisconsin native spends much of her workday in casual attire such as sweatpants, dressing up for Washington won’t be a problem, she said.
“I look good in a suit,” said Ms. Holtzee, who said she earned a graduate degree from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “I could pass for a Yalie.”
SEC spokesman John Nester declined to comment on Ms. Holtzee’s aspirations.
Jan 29, 2007 @ 12:01 am
By Kathie O’Donnell
BOSTON — Look out Christopher Cox. Yolanda Holtzee, who runs a “private investment club” from her Seattle home, is gunning for your job as Securities and Exchange Commission chairman.
Ms. Holtzee, 50, whose Internet sleuthing has helped the SEC in the past, has provided tips that she said led to a probe of Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. (KKD) and charges against an Estonian financial firm. Now she is looking to run the SEC.
She has been urged to seek appointment as SEC chairman in 2009, Ms. Holtzee said in an e-mail, adding that she “decided it’s in the best interests of the American public and global capital markets, as well.”
Ms. Holtzee, who was profiled by The Wall Street Journal in an April article, searches chat rooms and online documents looking for corporate impropriety. When something smells rotten, she e-mails regulators and journalists.
Why does Ms. Holtzee do it?
“Partially boredom, and also because I think that the playing field is not level,” she said.
The more help regulators get, the more efficient they can be and the more level the securities market playing field becomes, Ms. Holtzee said.
“It helps everybody — not just the large money manager. [It helps] the average retail investor — Mom and Pop,” Ms. Holtzee said.
The name of her investment club is ALCAP LLP, which she said isn’t a hedge fund. Ms. Holtzee declined to say how much money she oversees or give details about investment returns.
Although the Wisconsin native spends much of her workday in casual attire such as sweatpants, dressing up for Washington won’t be a problem, she said.
“I look good in a suit,” said Ms. Holtzee, who said she earned a graduate degree from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “I could pass for a Yalie.”
SEC spokesman John Nester declined to comment on Ms. Holtzee’s aspirations.
Wait a minute, she fights shorting? So why would she do what Panda did? This makes no sense.
Subject: File No. S7-08-09
From: Yolanda Holtzee
April 11, 2009
Most Esteemed Commissioners and Madame Chairwoman:
I believe there is much abuse by both short sellers and long market participants which creates excessive volatility and strains the resources of the already undermanned enforcement staff. I thus, prefer the exchanges monitoring this activity themselves via trading curbs as are done on several foreign exchanges to include Russia, Japan, and India.
My proposal is simple:
1 day trading halt immediately put in place and not lifted until issuer is able to schedule an open conference call and/or issues an SEC compliant 8-K to explain why there was unusual share price movement with the following criteria:
7.5% max PUMP/DUMP in pps on issuers with market caps exceeding $50 BILLION
10% max P/D for issuers with market caps between $5 BILLION and $50 BILLION
12.5% P/D for between $500 MILLION and $5 BILLION market cap issuers
15% P/D for between $50 MILLION and $500 MILLION m/c issuers
17.5% P/D for between $5 MILLION and $50 MILLION m/c issuers
20% P/D limits on issuers with market caps below $5 MILLION
Curbs to kick in when the above is met as long as average daily trading volume is also exceeded. The above would be too onerous for 3rd tier boiler room/bucket shop market makers in micro-cap issuers to comply with on thinly traded issuers otherwise.
In addition, I am also proposing a moratorium on ANY kind of short selling for 2 years on newly taken public issuers. This would give them a chance to prove they're worthy of being publicly listed/traded as well as give them an opportunity to raise capital a few more times via SPO or PIPE. As we all know, short seller abuse with issuers like this is often the SPO/PIPE purchasers shorting ahead of yet another "dilution solution" capital raising event.
Banning short selling of any type for a period of 2 years gives original investors in the IPO a fighting chance and also permits insiders or venture capitalists to unload at a higher price if they decide that's what they wish to do. Often they're restricted from selling until the issuer has been publicly listed for 6 months or longer. No one bothers to read a prospectus to see what the restrictions are so this moratorium would be beneficial to IPO investors as well.
Reinstatement of the uptick rule, in my opinion, would not be as effective and would also create an additional burden upon the enforcement staff to assure it's being complied with.
Thank you all very much for permitting me to express my opinion(s) on this matter.
From: Yolanda Holtzee
April 11, 2009
Most Esteemed Commissioners and Madame Chairwoman:
I believe there is much abuse by both short sellers and long market participants which creates excessive volatility and strains the resources of the already undermanned enforcement staff. I thus, prefer the exchanges monitoring this activity themselves via trading curbs as are done on several foreign exchanges to include Russia, Japan, and India.
My proposal is simple:
1 day trading halt immediately put in place and not lifted until issuer is able to schedule an open conference call and/or issues an SEC compliant 8-K to explain why there was unusual share price movement with the following criteria:
7.5% max PUMP/DUMP in pps on issuers with market caps exceeding $50 BILLION
10% max P/D for issuers with market caps between $5 BILLION and $50 BILLION
12.5% P/D for between $500 MILLION and $5 BILLION market cap issuers
15% P/D for between $50 MILLION and $500 MILLION m/c issuers
17.5% P/D for between $5 MILLION and $50 MILLION m/c issuers
20% P/D limits on issuers with market caps below $5 MILLION
Curbs to kick in when the above is met as long as average daily trading volume is also exceeded. The above would be too onerous for 3rd tier boiler room/bucket shop market makers in micro-cap issuers to comply with on thinly traded issuers otherwise.
In addition, I am also proposing a moratorium on ANY kind of short selling for 2 years on newly taken public issuers. This would give them a chance to prove they're worthy of being publicly listed/traded as well as give them an opportunity to raise capital a few more times via SPO or PIPE. As we all know, short seller abuse with issuers like this is often the SPO/PIPE purchasers shorting ahead of yet another "dilution solution" capital raising event.
Banning short selling of any type for a period of 2 years gives original investors in the IPO a fighting chance and also permits insiders or venture capitalists to unload at a higher price if they decide that's what they wish to do. Often they're restricted from selling until the issuer has been publicly listed for 6 months or longer. No one bothers to read a prospectus to see what the restrictions are so this moratorium would be beneficial to IPO investors as well.
Reinstatement of the uptick rule, in my opinion, would not be as effective and would also create an additional burden upon the enforcement staff to assure it's being complied with.
Thank you all very much for permitting me to express my opinion(s) on this matter.
Subject: File No. S7-08-09 From: Yolanda Holtzee
She did want the SEC post? Wow. Seemed like she had the connections at least some at least. However that was a long time ago. So again, why Zion oil? Why would she care about it?
ON DEC. 30, 2006, more than a dozen SEC commissioners and employees received a lengthy email from a woman referring to herself as Miss SEC 2006.
Kristen French | Jan 31, 2007
ON DEC. 30, 2006, more than a dozen SEC commissioners and employees received a lengthy email from a woman referring to herself as Miss SEC 2006. “Most Esteemed Colleagues and soon to be employees of mine (SEC staff),” the email began. “I have been urged to run for SEC Chairman in 2008.”
The author of that email was Yolanda Holtzee, a 50-year-old money manager, whistleblower, industry gossip and wanna-be cop who lives in a three-story house in Seattle, Wash., with a roommate and six cats, collects stuffed animals and occasionally visits a shooting range for pistol practice. Her name is familiar to many securities industry regulators, lawyers, money managers, investors, brokers, executives and press. After all, by her own account, she sends 10 to 25 emails a day to people in the industry (often under the email handle LoveLEHgirl and often at three or four in the morning) — many of which are then forwarded on to reporters who are urged to follow up on her “hot” tips. Indeed, her stream of emails on a wide range of regulatory subjects is such a torrent that one sometimes wonders how she finds the time to trade stocks. She's also prolific on industry message boards, including Registered Rep.'s advisor forums (http://forums.registeredrep.com), where you can spot her handiwork under the alias ymh_ymh_ymh.
Holtzee has not been shy about courting journalists and, last April 18, a profile of her appeared on the front page of The Wall Street Journal. The piece described her efforts to help regulators uncover fraud and catch criminals — some of which have been quite successful. It also captured the colorful language she uses in emails: “baby” brokers, regulatory “spankings,” “butt kissers” and “sissies” are favorites. Shortly after that story ran, a blog called underthecounter.net penned an entry about the two contenders for Miss SEC 2006: “It's gonna be a close call between Insider Trading hottie Sonja Anticevic and the Seattle Sleuth Yolanda Holtzee,” the blogger wrote. Yolanda seems to like the attention: She included a Miss SEC 2006 reference and a link to the entry in her Dec. 30 email to SEC staff.
Is Holtzee serious about the SEC chairmanship? She says absolutely, yes. “It's not that I think that I'm that great. But [current SEC Chairman] Chris Cox was less qualified when he was nominated and confirmed than I am even right now, in terms of knowledge of the capital markets and relationships with regulators and Wall Street firms,” she says in a telephone conversation. Cox is a graduate of Harvard business school and Harvard law school (he received the two degrees simultaneously), he was a member of Congress for 17 years and he served in a leadership capacity as a senior member of every Congressional committee that has jurisdiction over investor protection and U.S. capital markets. Before he began his career in Congress, he worked his way up to partner at Lathan & Watkins, one of the premier defense law firms in the world. “He's a bright man. I'm not putting him down,” Holtzee says. “But I think changes are needed.”
Specifically, Holtzee thinks that the SEC is soft on crime (she's not the only one), and she blames what she says is a clubby atmosphere, a willingness to look the other way when other members of that club cause trouble, as well as pay levels that are too low to attract or retain talented staff. In that Dec. 30 email — the first of her “campaign,” she says — Yolanda pledged to accomplish 10 things as chairman of the SEC, including: “Pay raises for everyone deemed ‘man’ enough to serve in 2009 and 2010”; the lowest turnover of district administrators and directors; and the highest number of enforcement cases ever brought — past, present or future.
ADVERTISING, MOUSE OVER FOR AUDIO
Yolanda says she would push for better funding to foot the bill for those pay increases. She also wants to develop a better working relationship between the SEC, state securities regulators and the Department of Justice, which have been recently trying to coordinate their efforts to stamp out fraud. And she thinks that unethical broker/dealer branch managers and executives need to be dealt with more severely — too many of them scapegoat brokers, she says, whenever they get into trouble, and too many of them harass and discriminate against women and minorities.
She may be eccentric, and it may be wildly improbable, but there are some respectable industry players who are going to bat for her. A handful of former regulators, money managers and plaintiffs' lawyers say she's got a nose for hunting down criminals and a passion for rooting out injustice and crime. And they say she might shake things up at an organization that has, in recent years, been accused of focusing too much on the little stuff — whether firms are crossing their t's and dotting their i's on disclosure forms, for example — and missing some of the biggest cases of fraud (Enron, Worldcom) until after the harm has been done. In the meantime, Yolanda has been digging up insider trading, pump-and-dump schemes and market manipulation by simply snooping around chat rooms and investor Web sites.
“In my opinion, the answer is yes, she would make a good commissioner, because the SEC commissioner has to care about and be passionate about shareholder protection,” says Lewis Kahn, managing partner at securities fraud class-action firm Kahn Gauthier Swick. “There are a lot of them who may believe that they care, but how hard do you work, how zealous are you about prosecuting fraud? The SEC is very weak on enforcement. I know Yolanda lives and breathes this.”
WHO IS YOLANDA?
Yolanda's resume is quite different from that of Mr. Cox: She got a degree in physics and chemistry with a minor in business administration in night school at Troy State University in Alabama while she was in the Army. She later earned a masters in operations management from the University of South Carolina. After seven years in the Army, she went to work for the Miller Brewing Company and held various sales and management positions in packaging, aluminum and steel and beer beverage companies for the next 15 years. But she eventually got bored with corporate America, she says, and began managing money for a handful of wealthy investors. Although Holtzee uses some hedge fund investment strategies, the portfolio she manages is technically a pooled private investment club, not a hedge fund, she says. As for her strategy, she says 18 months is the longest she will hold a short or long bias in any particular position. She is not a registered investment advisor, and she won't offer any performance information. The only asset figure she will provide is “under $1 billion.”
Perhaps, more important — for her current aspirations anyway — over the past five years she has gotten to know a lot of regulators and attorneys. She sends them tips about insider trading, penny-stock pump-and-dump schemes, accounting fraud and market manipulation; some of them email her back. Indeed, a number of those tips have led to cases against the companies and individuals involved — all together, some 20 cases, she says. (An SEC spokesman said he doesn't deny this number but can't confirm it either.) She began emailing regulators in 2002, and Mary Schapiro was her first victim. “It was sarcastic, not nice,” Holtzee says. “I cold emailed her about a situation with Prudential in Chicago: ‘Are you aware of this, are you aware of that, hut two three four.’ And she replied back in a nice way. After that there wasn't ever any more sarcasm directed at her,” she says.
These days, Yolanda has usually showered, eaten breakfast and drunk her coffee by 5 a.m., and is “operating at 100 percent efficiency.” She spends much of her day trolling the Web, looking at penny-stock and daytrading Web sites, reading chat boards, looking at price charts and googling up connections when something seems fishy. “It's wonderful. It's not so much a skill; you almost have to have an innate sixth sense,” she says. Then she emails her findings to regulators or lawyers if she thinks they are worth following up. For example, in July of last year, she let the SEC know about a company named FrontHaul Group, which was issuing fraudulent press releases with Lehman Brothers' name on them in a pump-and-dump scam. FrontHaul later merged with Conversion Solutions Holding, which has since been charged with securities fraud by the Atlanta Securities Division. (The SEC couldn't confirm that Holtzee was instrumental in the case.)
More recently, she began working with the SEC on an insider-trading case involving a small-cap company that was taken private by a private-equity firm. (She can't provide any more specifics because it's still under investigation.) In early January, she had a 45-minute conference call with the SEC folks in Miami regarding some pump-and-dump scams they're investigating. “I could probably bring one or two [cases] a week if I could get someone interested in them,” she says. Since The Wall Street Journal article, other whistleblowers have begun sending their own tips to her, because they suspect she will be able to get things done with regulators faster.
Yolanda also knows scores of reps and financial advisors (and sometimes their clients), and seems to have a skill for getting the latest dope on when and why branch managers are leaving what firm. She also collects gossip on how ethical such-and-such an executive or branch manager is with his crew, how well he treats his brokers, whether he's a drinker and a womanizer, whether he discriminates and who else is involved. She is friendly with Hydie Sumner, who sued Merrill Lynch successfully in 2004 for sexual discrimination and now works at Wachovia, for example. And brokers often email Yolanda with questions or frustrations, thinking she has the connections to find things out or make something happen.
LET'S GET SERIOUS
Without a doubt, Yolanda is taken very seriously as a whistleblower. “I know generally that her emails are paid attention to by our staff,” says SEC Commissioner Roel Campos in an email. “I read them and find them informative. I pass her emails to members of our enforcement team for follow-up. I know that her tips have resulted in some cases being brought.”
But as a potential SEC chairman? That's a lot less clear. In early January, Yolanda began asking friends, acquaintances and email buddies (about 75 in all) to endorse her and to contact their state senators and representatives. The president appoints SEC chairmen, but members of Congress can offer potential nominations. A number of individual retail investors (“Joe and Jill Sixpack types, not traders, but investors,” she says), as well as fellow money managers, former colleagues, plaintiffs' lawyers and broker friends have told her they're on it. In fact, Registered Rep. spoke to several individuals who said they have contacted their state senators. But it's going to take a lot more than that.
Thus far, no one has ever “run” for SEC chairman, says Stanley Sporkin, who worked for the SEC from 1961 to 1981 and directed the Division of Enforcement for seven years. “I don't know how you campaign for the job. I don't know anyone who has done that successfully. It's strictly a political appointment,” says Sporkin, who says he has never heard of Yolanda Holtzee. “But if she got Congressional support, and support from other people in the industry, that could be very helpful. Someone who is anxious to do the right thing and protect investors could be good in that position,” he says.
Kenneth Vianale, a Florida-based class-action securities lawyer who served as Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s, says he has agreed to talk to his senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), whom he knows well, on Yolanda's behalf. And he thinks she actually has a shot at the SEC chairmanship if a Democrat wins the next presidential election. “I mean, if you really want it enough, you put yourself in front of the right people, who make the decisions,” he says. Yolanda is a registered Republican who is liberal on social issues, conservative on fiscal policy and tough on all kinds of crime — she believes in the death penalty. But, she is seeking the support of potential Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. “I've contacted Hillary, Obama and people that they know,” she says. She hasn't yet heard back.
“There's no question in my mind that she would be a very good cop. And I think that what that position needs is a good cop,” says Vianale, who has been emailing with Yolanda for about three years and has worked with his share of cops. As Assistant United States Attorney, Vianale worked extensively in the Securities Fraud Unit and held the executive position of deputy chief of the Criminal Division in 1995. “She has a very good nose for fraud in the financial markets. And she seems to me to be a very tough-minded person,” he adds.
Tom Ajamie, a well-connected plaintiffs' lawyer with Ajamie LLP in Houston, who often receives emails from Yolanda but has never met her, says he would love to have someone like Yolanda in the top securities watchdog spot. “She's clearly an investor advocate, and definitely an advocate of brokers, by the way. She feels there's dirtiness in the industry and she's trying to clean it out. I think from her perspective, where she sees injustice in the industry she attacks it.”
But she would have to polish her approach, he says, and that would take strategy and planning. “Does she have a chance? I don't know. She could, but she'd need to cultivate broader appeal. She'd have to make the right political connections,” he says. “We would have to get her one or two consultants, help her develop a political image, put her in shape to get an appointment and give her direction.” Ajamie says he personally would be willing to help out if a group came together to support her from various sectors — including, say, a government prosecutor and a current or former regulator from one of the agencies. In any case, time is on her side, he says.
Vianale says he thinks that some of her personal eccentricities could be a plus for the job, but that it can get to be too much. “She's a little idiosyncratic, and most of us in the industry are not. My thinking is that it's a plus in that she's plain-speaking. On the other hand, she says things that are sometimes a little shocking. That's a good thing in some ways, but you need to learn to tone it down when you're with people in power.”
So far, Yolanda doesn't have many official political endorsements. That's hardly surprising: It's only been a few weeks since she first announced to anyone that she was interested, and only more recently did she begin to inform some of her other contacts about her SEC ambitions. More troubling, perhaps, is the fact that a couple of the individuals she suggested might eventually provide an endorsement, including William Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth, Massachusetts, said they didn't “know her” and couldn't comment for this article. (Yolanda explains that she is currently working with his office on a case, but has not spoken with him directly.) In addition, one of the SEC commissioners with whom she seems to email regularly, and with whom she says she gets along quite well, Paul Atkins, did not return emails or calls seeking comment. SEC Commissioner Campos, who she claims to be in touch with fairly often, would only say that he does read her emails and passes some of them along to enforcement staff.
Part of the problem is that many of the people Yolanda considers supporters are people she has only emailed but never spoken with, much less met. She is not ignorant of this shortcoming. “If I get enough support, and think it's viable, I'll attend some securities regulatory functions, campaign, schmooze, meet people in person,” she says.
And then there's the fact that the position has traditionally been filled by very politically connected people: Yolanda could well be shut out by the very clubbiness she dislikes. “It would be a long shot. To this point, if you look at the history of chairmen, they've either had Wall Street or law-firm ties. This is where Yolanda would have the biggest difficulties,” says Peter Henning, former attorney in the SEC's enforcement division who is currently a professor of law at Wayne State University, began an email correspondence with Yolanda around the time that The Wall Street Journal story was published. “The SEC can be a very clubby place. The former director of enforcement gets hired to conduct internal investigations because all of his phone calls get returned in a minute. And the securities bar is rather clubby because people refer cases to one another. She's certainly not a member of that club.” He concedes, nonetheless, that it might be good to get someone in there who is not a member of the club — to shake things up.
Barry Goldsmith, former head of enforcement for the NASD, who received numerous emails from Yolanda when he was at NASD and had a few brief conversations with her over the phone, was very noncommittal about her chances. “Listen, Jesse Ventura, the professional wrestler, became governor of Minnesota. But, obviously, the SEC chairman requires a very broad skill set and experience,” he says. “But I wouldn't want to handicap or characterize her chances of success.”
It might not be the best time for a zealous investor-advocate and outsider like Holtzee to charge onto the scene: These days, the regulatory tide is turning back. “Easing up is the theme now,” says Sporkin. “I think the increased regulation is over with. That pendulum has swung.” Indeed, Cox is talking about turning back some of the reforms put in place with landmark Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. Then again, maybe that's precisely why the SEC needs someone like Yolanda on top.
www.wealthmanagement.com/securities-law/yolanda-quixote
Kristen French | Jan 31, 2007
ON DEC. 30, 2006, more than a dozen SEC commissioners and employees received a lengthy email from a woman referring to herself as Miss SEC 2006. “Most Esteemed Colleagues and soon to be employees of mine (SEC staff),” the email began. “I have been urged to run for SEC Chairman in 2008.”
The author of that email was Yolanda Holtzee, a 50-year-old money manager, whistleblower, industry gossip and wanna-be cop who lives in a three-story house in Seattle, Wash., with a roommate and six cats, collects stuffed animals and occasionally visits a shooting range for pistol practice. Her name is familiar to many securities industry regulators, lawyers, money managers, investors, brokers, executives and press. After all, by her own account, she sends 10 to 25 emails a day to people in the industry (often under the email handle LoveLEHgirl and often at three or four in the morning) — many of which are then forwarded on to reporters who are urged to follow up on her “hot” tips. Indeed, her stream of emails on a wide range of regulatory subjects is such a torrent that one sometimes wonders how she finds the time to trade stocks. She's also prolific on industry message boards, including Registered Rep.'s advisor forums (http://forums.registeredrep.com), where you can spot her handiwork under the alias ymh_ymh_ymh.
Holtzee has not been shy about courting journalists and, last April 18, a profile of her appeared on the front page of The Wall Street Journal. The piece described her efforts to help regulators uncover fraud and catch criminals — some of which have been quite successful. It also captured the colorful language she uses in emails: “baby” brokers, regulatory “spankings,” “butt kissers” and “sissies” are favorites. Shortly after that story ran, a blog called underthecounter.net penned an entry about the two contenders for Miss SEC 2006: “It's gonna be a close call between Insider Trading hottie Sonja Anticevic and the Seattle Sleuth Yolanda Holtzee,” the blogger wrote. Yolanda seems to like the attention: She included a Miss SEC 2006 reference and a link to the entry in her Dec. 30 email to SEC staff.
Is Holtzee serious about the SEC chairmanship? She says absolutely, yes. “It's not that I think that I'm that great. But [current SEC Chairman] Chris Cox was less qualified when he was nominated and confirmed than I am even right now, in terms of knowledge of the capital markets and relationships with regulators and Wall Street firms,” she says in a telephone conversation. Cox is a graduate of Harvard business school and Harvard law school (he received the two degrees simultaneously), he was a member of Congress for 17 years and he served in a leadership capacity as a senior member of every Congressional committee that has jurisdiction over investor protection and U.S. capital markets. Before he began his career in Congress, he worked his way up to partner at Lathan & Watkins, one of the premier defense law firms in the world. “He's a bright man. I'm not putting him down,” Holtzee says. “But I think changes are needed.”
Specifically, Holtzee thinks that the SEC is soft on crime (she's not the only one), and she blames what she says is a clubby atmosphere, a willingness to look the other way when other members of that club cause trouble, as well as pay levels that are too low to attract or retain talented staff. In that Dec. 30 email — the first of her “campaign,” she says — Yolanda pledged to accomplish 10 things as chairman of the SEC, including: “Pay raises for everyone deemed ‘man’ enough to serve in 2009 and 2010”; the lowest turnover of district administrators and directors; and the highest number of enforcement cases ever brought — past, present or future.
ADVERTISING, MOUSE OVER FOR AUDIO
Yolanda says she would push for better funding to foot the bill for those pay increases. She also wants to develop a better working relationship between the SEC, state securities regulators and the Department of Justice, which have been recently trying to coordinate their efforts to stamp out fraud. And she thinks that unethical broker/dealer branch managers and executives need to be dealt with more severely — too many of them scapegoat brokers, she says, whenever they get into trouble, and too many of them harass and discriminate against women and minorities.
She may be eccentric, and it may be wildly improbable, but there are some respectable industry players who are going to bat for her. A handful of former regulators, money managers and plaintiffs' lawyers say she's got a nose for hunting down criminals and a passion for rooting out injustice and crime. And they say she might shake things up at an organization that has, in recent years, been accused of focusing too much on the little stuff — whether firms are crossing their t's and dotting their i's on disclosure forms, for example — and missing some of the biggest cases of fraud (Enron, Worldcom) until after the harm has been done. In the meantime, Yolanda has been digging up insider trading, pump-and-dump schemes and market manipulation by simply snooping around chat rooms and investor Web sites.
“In my opinion, the answer is yes, she would make a good commissioner, because the SEC commissioner has to care about and be passionate about shareholder protection,” says Lewis Kahn, managing partner at securities fraud class-action firm Kahn Gauthier Swick. “There are a lot of them who may believe that they care, but how hard do you work, how zealous are you about prosecuting fraud? The SEC is very weak on enforcement. I know Yolanda lives and breathes this.”
WHO IS YOLANDA?
Yolanda's resume is quite different from that of Mr. Cox: She got a degree in physics and chemistry with a minor in business administration in night school at Troy State University in Alabama while she was in the Army. She later earned a masters in operations management from the University of South Carolina. After seven years in the Army, she went to work for the Miller Brewing Company and held various sales and management positions in packaging, aluminum and steel and beer beverage companies for the next 15 years. But she eventually got bored with corporate America, she says, and began managing money for a handful of wealthy investors. Although Holtzee uses some hedge fund investment strategies, the portfolio she manages is technically a pooled private investment club, not a hedge fund, she says. As for her strategy, she says 18 months is the longest she will hold a short or long bias in any particular position. She is not a registered investment advisor, and she won't offer any performance information. The only asset figure she will provide is “under $1 billion.”
Perhaps, more important — for her current aspirations anyway — over the past five years she has gotten to know a lot of regulators and attorneys. She sends them tips about insider trading, penny-stock pump-and-dump schemes, accounting fraud and market manipulation; some of them email her back. Indeed, a number of those tips have led to cases against the companies and individuals involved — all together, some 20 cases, she says. (An SEC spokesman said he doesn't deny this number but can't confirm it either.) She began emailing regulators in 2002, and Mary Schapiro was her first victim. “It was sarcastic, not nice,” Holtzee says. “I cold emailed her about a situation with Prudential in Chicago: ‘Are you aware of this, are you aware of that, hut two three four.’ And she replied back in a nice way. After that there wasn't ever any more sarcasm directed at her,” she says.
These days, Yolanda has usually showered, eaten breakfast and drunk her coffee by 5 a.m., and is “operating at 100 percent efficiency.” She spends much of her day trolling the Web, looking at penny-stock and daytrading Web sites, reading chat boards, looking at price charts and googling up connections when something seems fishy. “It's wonderful. It's not so much a skill; you almost have to have an innate sixth sense,” she says. Then she emails her findings to regulators or lawyers if she thinks they are worth following up. For example, in July of last year, she let the SEC know about a company named FrontHaul Group, which was issuing fraudulent press releases with Lehman Brothers' name on them in a pump-and-dump scam. FrontHaul later merged with Conversion Solutions Holding, which has since been charged with securities fraud by the Atlanta Securities Division. (The SEC couldn't confirm that Holtzee was instrumental in the case.)
More recently, she began working with the SEC on an insider-trading case involving a small-cap company that was taken private by a private-equity firm. (She can't provide any more specifics because it's still under investigation.) In early January, she had a 45-minute conference call with the SEC folks in Miami regarding some pump-and-dump scams they're investigating. “I could probably bring one or two [cases] a week if I could get someone interested in them,” she says. Since The Wall Street Journal article, other whistleblowers have begun sending their own tips to her, because they suspect she will be able to get things done with regulators faster.
Yolanda also knows scores of reps and financial advisors (and sometimes their clients), and seems to have a skill for getting the latest dope on when and why branch managers are leaving what firm. She also collects gossip on how ethical such-and-such an executive or branch manager is with his crew, how well he treats his brokers, whether he's a drinker and a womanizer, whether he discriminates and who else is involved. She is friendly with Hydie Sumner, who sued Merrill Lynch successfully in 2004 for sexual discrimination and now works at Wachovia, for example. And brokers often email Yolanda with questions or frustrations, thinking she has the connections to find things out or make something happen.
LET'S GET SERIOUS
Without a doubt, Yolanda is taken very seriously as a whistleblower. “I know generally that her emails are paid attention to by our staff,” says SEC Commissioner Roel Campos in an email. “I read them and find them informative. I pass her emails to members of our enforcement team for follow-up. I know that her tips have resulted in some cases being brought.”
But as a potential SEC chairman? That's a lot less clear. In early January, Yolanda began asking friends, acquaintances and email buddies (about 75 in all) to endorse her and to contact their state senators and representatives. The president appoints SEC chairmen, but members of Congress can offer potential nominations. A number of individual retail investors (“Joe and Jill Sixpack types, not traders, but investors,” she says), as well as fellow money managers, former colleagues, plaintiffs' lawyers and broker friends have told her they're on it. In fact, Registered Rep. spoke to several individuals who said they have contacted their state senators. But it's going to take a lot more than that.
Thus far, no one has ever “run” for SEC chairman, says Stanley Sporkin, who worked for the SEC from 1961 to 1981 and directed the Division of Enforcement for seven years. “I don't know how you campaign for the job. I don't know anyone who has done that successfully. It's strictly a political appointment,” says Sporkin, who says he has never heard of Yolanda Holtzee. “But if she got Congressional support, and support from other people in the industry, that could be very helpful. Someone who is anxious to do the right thing and protect investors could be good in that position,” he says.
Kenneth Vianale, a Florida-based class-action securities lawyer who served as Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s, says he has agreed to talk to his senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), whom he knows well, on Yolanda's behalf. And he thinks she actually has a shot at the SEC chairmanship if a Democrat wins the next presidential election. “I mean, if you really want it enough, you put yourself in front of the right people, who make the decisions,” he says. Yolanda is a registered Republican who is liberal on social issues, conservative on fiscal policy and tough on all kinds of crime — she believes in the death penalty. But, she is seeking the support of potential Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. “I've contacted Hillary, Obama and people that they know,” she says. She hasn't yet heard back.
“There's no question in my mind that she would be a very good cop. And I think that what that position needs is a good cop,” says Vianale, who has been emailing with Yolanda for about three years and has worked with his share of cops. As Assistant United States Attorney, Vianale worked extensively in the Securities Fraud Unit and held the executive position of deputy chief of the Criminal Division in 1995. “She has a very good nose for fraud in the financial markets. And she seems to me to be a very tough-minded person,” he adds.
Tom Ajamie, a well-connected plaintiffs' lawyer with Ajamie LLP in Houston, who often receives emails from Yolanda but has never met her, says he would love to have someone like Yolanda in the top securities watchdog spot. “She's clearly an investor advocate, and definitely an advocate of brokers, by the way. She feels there's dirtiness in the industry and she's trying to clean it out. I think from her perspective, where she sees injustice in the industry she attacks it.”
But she would have to polish her approach, he says, and that would take strategy and planning. “Does she have a chance? I don't know. She could, but she'd need to cultivate broader appeal. She'd have to make the right political connections,” he says. “We would have to get her one or two consultants, help her develop a political image, put her in shape to get an appointment and give her direction.” Ajamie says he personally would be willing to help out if a group came together to support her from various sectors — including, say, a government prosecutor and a current or former regulator from one of the agencies. In any case, time is on her side, he says.
Vianale says he thinks that some of her personal eccentricities could be a plus for the job, but that it can get to be too much. “She's a little idiosyncratic, and most of us in the industry are not. My thinking is that it's a plus in that she's plain-speaking. On the other hand, she says things that are sometimes a little shocking. That's a good thing in some ways, but you need to learn to tone it down when you're with people in power.”
So far, Yolanda doesn't have many official political endorsements. That's hardly surprising: It's only been a few weeks since she first announced to anyone that she was interested, and only more recently did she begin to inform some of her other contacts about her SEC ambitions. More troubling, perhaps, is the fact that a couple of the individuals she suggested might eventually provide an endorsement, including William Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth, Massachusetts, said they didn't “know her” and couldn't comment for this article. (Yolanda explains that she is currently working with his office on a case, but has not spoken with him directly.) In addition, one of the SEC commissioners with whom she seems to email regularly, and with whom she says she gets along quite well, Paul Atkins, did not return emails or calls seeking comment. SEC Commissioner Campos, who she claims to be in touch with fairly often, would only say that he does read her emails and passes some of them along to enforcement staff.
Part of the problem is that many of the people Yolanda considers supporters are people she has only emailed but never spoken with, much less met. She is not ignorant of this shortcoming. “If I get enough support, and think it's viable, I'll attend some securities regulatory functions, campaign, schmooze, meet people in person,” she says.
And then there's the fact that the position has traditionally been filled by very politically connected people: Yolanda could well be shut out by the very clubbiness she dislikes. “It would be a long shot. To this point, if you look at the history of chairmen, they've either had Wall Street or law-firm ties. This is where Yolanda would have the biggest difficulties,” says Peter Henning, former attorney in the SEC's enforcement division who is currently a professor of law at Wayne State University, began an email correspondence with Yolanda around the time that The Wall Street Journal story was published. “The SEC can be a very clubby place. The former director of enforcement gets hired to conduct internal investigations because all of his phone calls get returned in a minute. And the securities bar is rather clubby because people refer cases to one another. She's certainly not a member of that club.” He concedes, nonetheless, that it might be good to get someone in there who is not a member of the club — to shake things up.
Barry Goldsmith, former head of enforcement for the NASD, who received numerous emails from Yolanda when he was at NASD and had a few brief conversations with her over the phone, was very noncommittal about her chances. “Listen, Jesse Ventura, the professional wrestler, became governor of Minnesota. But, obviously, the SEC chairman requires a very broad skill set and experience,” he says. “But I wouldn't want to handicap or characterize her chances of success.”
It might not be the best time for a zealous investor-advocate and outsider like Holtzee to charge onto the scene: These days, the regulatory tide is turning back. “Easing up is the theme now,” says Sporkin. “I think the increased regulation is over with. That pendulum has swung.” Indeed, Cox is talking about turning back some of the reforms put in place with landmark Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. Then again, maybe that's precisely why the SEC needs someone like Yolanda on top.
www.wealthmanagement.com/securities-law/yolanda-quixote
Oh my goodness, I am not liking what I am reading here: This looks very bad, yeah it was years ago but this is BEFORE she wanted the SEC Spot. This is not adding up. Some of what is below is down right scary. Who is this woman really? 10 years ago bad , now the SEC likes her? What is going on?
www.deepcapture.com/?s=Yolanda+Holtzee&x=27&y=10
Yolanda Holtzee Family Tree
There are three levels of confidence assigned online identities believed to belong to Yolanda Holtzee.
Indisputable: These are names that Yolanda has affirmatively claimed as her own. They appear below in yellow boxes. This level of confidence also applies to usernames tied together through use of the Dissembler Sorting Algorithm (DSA). Hence, we know that ymh_ymh_ymh is Yolanda because she says so herself. But thanks to the DSA we also know that proud2beatubs, class_action_lawsuit_time, haimchinkel_malintz_anaynikal, hammerman_sold_at_55, ursa_raises_cayne_all_day, and big_dave_the_bull_is_merry are additional aliases on the same account.
Certain: These are names consistently appearing together as the results of very specific searches for related Yahoo message board content. These appear below in blue boxes. To illustrate an example: of the tens of thousands of posters on Yahoo Finance, only six have included “gillettem@sec.gov” in their posts. Of the six, one is indisputably Yolanda Holtzee (ymh_ymh_ymh), two (ms_mint_green_esq and second_year_law_student) are confirmed by the DSA to belong to the same user, two (roel_campos_4_sec_chairman_2008 and regulators_have_been_notified) consistently produce content nearly identical to aliases claimed by Yolanda. The final of the six (linda_thomsen_is_no_wimp) belongs to a deactivated account and is thus discarded.
Likely: A variety of circumstantial factors leads us to presume that a third group of aliases (appearing below in red) most likely belong to Yolanda Holtzee, though the evidence backing up that presumption is not nearly as rigorous as that used to build the remaining relationships.
There are three levels of confidence assigned online identities believed to belong to Yolanda Holtzee.
Indisputable: These are names that Yolanda has affirmatively claimed as her own. They appear below in yellow boxes. This level of confidence also applies to usernames tied together through use of the Dissembler Sorting Algorithm (DSA). Hence, we know that ymh_ymh_ymh is Yolanda because she says so herself. But thanks to the DSA we also know that proud2beatubs, class_action_lawsuit_time, haimchinkel_malintz_anaynikal, hammerman_sold_at_55, ursa_raises_cayne_all_day, and big_dave_the_bull_is_merry are additional aliases on the same account.
Certain: These are names consistently appearing together as the results of very specific searches for related Yahoo message board content. These appear below in blue boxes. To illustrate an example: of the tens of thousands of posters on Yahoo Finance, only six have included “gillettem@sec.gov” in their posts. Of the six, one is indisputably Yolanda Holtzee (ymh_ymh_ymh), two (ms_mint_green_esq and second_year_law_student) are confirmed by the DSA to belong to the same user, two (roel_campos_4_sec_chairman_2008 and regulators_have_been_notified) consistently produce content nearly identical to aliases claimed by Yolanda. The final of the six (linda_thomsen_is_no_wimp) belongs to a deactivated account and is thus discarded.
Likely: A variety of circumstantial factors leads us to presume that a third group of aliases (appearing below in red) most likely belong to Yolanda Holtzee, though the evidence backing up that presumption is not nearly as rigorous as that used to build the remaining relationships.
Yolanda Holtzee’s House of Mirrors
Posted on 16 April 2008 by Judd Bagley
Tags: Yolanda Holtzee
Before reading what follows, it’s important to know that Yahoo! message board aliases ymh_ymh_ymh, ursa_of_245_park_avenue, ursa_383_madison_avenue, and ursa_minor_245 all belong to Yolanda Holtzee. You can read more on these relationships here.
According to a Wall Street Journal story dated April 18, 2006 (reprinted here, one week later):
In 1998, hoping to make more cash, [Holtzee] began managing money, she says, for a handful of wealthy individuals. She says she stopped taking in new investors in 2000 and won’t disclose her firm’s assets under management or its performance.
Ms. Holtzee refers to her company, Alcap LLC, as an “investment club” and says she employs two traders in Connecticut and a compliance officer.
Holtzee’s first apparent mention of the fund appears to come in January of 2002.
11-Jan-02
Yolanda, as ursa_of_245_park_avenue, first mentions the fund, which she called ALCAP, LLP. Here she explains what that name means.
26-Jan-02
Two weeks later, ursa_of_245_park_avenue hints as to her fund’s performance
Heebner’s returns are not as good as mine by any stretch of the imagination
In a subsequent post, Holtzee continues:
It’s not a hedge fund, per se. It’s a private investment partnership called ALCAP, LLP aka Casino Ursa.
30-Jan-02
Here Yolanda, as ymh_ymh_ymh, offers insights into the holdings of “Casino Ursa aka ALCAP,” also noting:
Ursa does a great job making Marc and his boys much Richer.
14-May-02
Here ymh_ymh_ymh discloses the cost of a new trading account at Casino Ursa (ALCAP, LLP)…or is she promoting trading accounts at Bear Stearns?
…Who’s ready to dump SCH, ET, and AMTD and trade up to my boys and girls at BSC? 500K minimum on a trading account, kids. Casino Ursa ain’t cheap but it’s worth the price.
24-May-02
Following much confusion by her fellow posters over several seemingly contradictory statements by Holtzee about the nature of ALCAP, ymh_ymh_ymh offers this explanation:
It’s a trust fund, LLP type and it is known as the holding company, ALCAP. No listing for it. Small and private.
9-Jun-02
Yet two weeks later, Yolanda, as ursa_383_madison_avenue, goes out of her way to suggest that she actually works for Bear Stearns.
…Yes, my firm, took many dogs public and our clients got those shares at offer price. Our clients sold those dogs in late 1999/2000 for the most part and we shorted the living hell out of them and made some very nice money taking them downhill skiing. Our clients are not naive. Our brokers are the world’s best. My firm’s trading within 10% of an all time high. My firm is the might Bear Stearns (BSC:NYSE)…Our clients are happy. Our brokers are happy. Our price chart is BEAUTIFUL. We are the mighty Bear Stearns (BSC: NYSE). BSC stands for Breakfast of Super Champions. For more on my firm, please view my YHOO profile.
ursa_383_madison_avenue’s user profile, static since May 15, 2002, lists as her profession “Hedge Fund Manager.”
14-Nov-02
Five months later, ymh_ymh_ymh says she’s back in the hedge fund business.
I co-manage a hedge fund called ALCAP. We’re offshore, not registered.
At this point, it’s unclear whether Holtzee’s ALCAP is a hedge fund, a trust fund, or an investment club, and why Bear Stearns continues entering the picture.
But much more interesting is the question of what role billionaire Marc Rich plays in this fund.
Recall the above comment from January 30, 2002, in which Holtzee commented: “Ursa does a great job making Marc and his boys much Richer.”
Now compare that comment with the remnants of a comment made by Yolanda as ursa_minor_245 on a since-deleted thread, dated August 28, 2000, and captured by another poster here a few months later.
by: ursa_minor_245
(F/Zug, Switzerland)
8/28/00 3:16 pm
Msg: 9274 of 11531
…For the record, and the 5th time at least: I don’t work for BSC and I have never worked for BSC. I don’t want to work for BSC or ANY hype house. They don’t pay enough. I serve Marc Rich, the best trader that ever lived, Baar none. You make as much money as you want serving him. No rules…just go for it.
Subsequent comments by Holtzee make it clear that she is in fact referring to fugitive billionaire Marc Rich, who at that point had yet to be pardoned by President Clinton.
If true, this admission of directly engaging in commerce with an expatriate fugitive whose indictment on tax fraud in 1983 was called the “biggest in history” is shocking.
Furthermore, the possibility that the shadowy ALCAP/Casino Ursa/Bear Cub Capital Management, which, depending on when you ask the question, is either a trust or a hedge fund or an investment club organized as an LLC or LLP, that either is or is not affiliated with Bear Stearns, might have served as one of Marc Rich’s notoriously numerous offshore money laundering or campaign finance law-skirting vehicles should be investigated.
This post was written by:
Judd Bagley - who has written 104 posts on Deep Capture.
Contact the author
« Floyd Schneider: a paid stock message board basher unmaskedPaid bashers: cracking the code »
Posted on 16 April 2008 by Judd Bagley
Tags: Yolanda Holtzee
Before reading what follows, it’s important to know that Yahoo! message board aliases ymh_ymh_ymh, ursa_of_245_park_avenue, ursa_383_madison_avenue, and ursa_minor_245 all belong to Yolanda Holtzee. You can read more on these relationships here.
According to a Wall Street Journal story dated April 18, 2006 (reprinted here, one week later):
In 1998, hoping to make more cash, [Holtzee] began managing money, she says, for a handful of wealthy individuals. She says she stopped taking in new investors in 2000 and won’t disclose her firm’s assets under management or its performance.
Ms. Holtzee refers to her company, Alcap LLC, as an “investment club” and says she employs two traders in Connecticut and a compliance officer.
Holtzee’s first apparent mention of the fund appears to come in January of 2002.
11-Jan-02
Yolanda, as ursa_of_245_park_avenue, first mentions the fund, which she called ALCAP, LLP. Here she explains what that name means.
26-Jan-02
Two weeks later, ursa_of_245_park_avenue hints as to her fund’s performance
Heebner’s returns are not as good as mine by any stretch of the imagination
In a subsequent post, Holtzee continues:
It’s not a hedge fund, per se. It’s a private investment partnership called ALCAP, LLP aka Casino Ursa.
30-Jan-02
Here Yolanda, as ymh_ymh_ymh, offers insights into the holdings of “Casino Ursa aka ALCAP,” also noting:
Ursa does a great job making Marc and his boys much Richer.
14-May-02
Here ymh_ymh_ymh discloses the cost of a new trading account at Casino Ursa (ALCAP, LLP)…or is she promoting trading accounts at Bear Stearns?
…Who’s ready to dump SCH, ET, and AMTD and trade up to my boys and girls at BSC? 500K minimum on a trading account, kids. Casino Ursa ain’t cheap but it’s worth the price.
24-May-02
Following much confusion by her fellow posters over several seemingly contradictory statements by Holtzee about the nature of ALCAP, ymh_ymh_ymh offers this explanation:
It’s a trust fund, LLP type and it is known as the holding company, ALCAP. No listing for it. Small and private.
9-Jun-02
Yet two weeks later, Yolanda, as ursa_383_madison_avenue, goes out of her way to suggest that she actually works for Bear Stearns.
…Yes, my firm, took many dogs public and our clients got those shares at offer price. Our clients sold those dogs in late 1999/2000 for the most part and we shorted the living hell out of them and made some very nice money taking them downhill skiing. Our clients are not naive. Our brokers are the world’s best. My firm’s trading within 10% of an all time high. My firm is the might Bear Stearns (BSC:NYSE)…Our clients are happy. Our brokers are happy. Our price chart is BEAUTIFUL. We are the mighty Bear Stearns (BSC: NYSE). BSC stands for Breakfast of Super Champions. For more on my firm, please view my YHOO profile.
ursa_383_madison_avenue’s user profile, static since May 15, 2002, lists as her profession “Hedge Fund Manager.”
14-Nov-02
Five months later, ymh_ymh_ymh says she’s back in the hedge fund business.
I co-manage a hedge fund called ALCAP. We’re offshore, not registered.
At this point, it’s unclear whether Holtzee’s ALCAP is a hedge fund, a trust fund, or an investment club, and why Bear Stearns continues entering the picture.
But much more interesting is the question of what role billionaire Marc Rich plays in this fund.
Recall the above comment from January 30, 2002, in which Holtzee commented: “Ursa does a great job making Marc and his boys much Richer.”
Now compare that comment with the remnants of a comment made by Yolanda as ursa_minor_245 on a since-deleted thread, dated August 28, 2000, and captured by another poster here a few months later.
by: ursa_minor_245
(F/Zug, Switzerland)
8/28/00 3:16 pm
Msg: 9274 of 11531
…For the record, and the 5th time at least: I don’t work for BSC and I have never worked for BSC. I don’t want to work for BSC or ANY hype house. They don’t pay enough. I serve Marc Rich, the best trader that ever lived, Baar none. You make as much money as you want serving him. No rules…just go for it.
Subsequent comments by Holtzee make it clear that she is in fact referring to fugitive billionaire Marc Rich, who at that point had yet to be pardoned by President Clinton.
If true, this admission of directly engaging in commerce with an expatriate fugitive whose indictment on tax fraud in 1983 was called the “biggest in history” is shocking.
Furthermore, the possibility that the shadowy ALCAP/Casino Ursa/Bear Cub Capital Management, which, depending on when you ask the question, is either a trust or a hedge fund or an investment club organized as an LLC or LLP, that either is or is not affiliated with Bear Stearns, might have served as one of Marc Rich’s notoriously numerous offshore money laundering or campaign finance law-skirting vehicles should be investigated.
This post was written by:
Judd Bagley - who has written 104 posts on Deep Capture.
Contact the author
« Floyd Schneider: a paid stock message board basher unmaskedPaid bashers: cracking the code »
Was Dan Loeb’s capital allied with David Einhorn’s?
Posted on 27 August 2008
Mega-hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb recently disclosed a double-whammy to his investors: substantial losses early in the third quarter of 2008, and the initiation of a formal SEC investigation into the operation of Loeb’s fund, Third Point Partners.
Loeb blamed part of his firm’s losses on the unfortunate fact of being short financial stocks just when the SEC decided to temporarily enforce existing laws prohibiting illegal naked short selling of a handful of such firms.
Loeb blamed the SEC investigation on a perception that his communications with other hedge funds violate securities laws.
While nobody outside the SEC can know with certainty just what it is about Loeb’s communications with other hedge funds that might be problematic, based on my observations of Loeb’s stock message board postings, I do have a theory.
In this installment, we’ll examine apparent coordination between Daniel Loeb and David Einhorn, manager of mega-hedge fund Greenlight Capital.
According to his book, Fooling Some of the People All of the Time, Einhorn established his much-storied short position in Allied Capital (NYSE:ALD) in early May of 2002. Einhorn first publicly outlined his short thesis on the late afternoon of May 15, 2002. The next morning, Allied held a conference call to address Einhorn’s claims. Interestingly, Einhorn himself did not participate in that call, however the first several questions – which achieved a much greater level of specificity and detail than Einhorn offered the night before – were asked by Daniel Loeb.
Either Loeb is an unusually quick study, or he and Einhorn had communicated substantially on the subject of shorting Allied Capital in advance.
Interestingly, on Allied’s Yahoo Finance message board, one of the biggest proponents of the Einhorn thesis also turns out to be Daniel Loeb.
In this message, for example, Loeb’s alter-ego, senor_pinche_wey (as proven here), confronts a poster who questions the veracity of Einhorn’s claims regarding Allied.
A few weeks later, Loeb’s alter-alter ego, mr_pink_esq (also proven here), says of Einhorn’s analysis:
“Looks like Einhorn has this one nailed. Einhorn has one of the best reputations in the business. He would hate to be on the wrong side of this trade.”
And lest you think Loeb was just offering his buddy Einhorn moral support, consider this post, in which Loeb wonders aloud (in the third person) how he might spend the “millions He will make on his ALD short. He was considering purchasing Himself a new car. However He is torn between the Aston Martin DB9, the Bentley GT and the Ferrari 360 Spyder…Maybe if this thing goes bust He can buy Himself a Mercedes Maybach.”
In all, Loeb, with the direct support of known paid message board basher Yolanda Holtzee (using such account names as ms_mint_green_esq and regulators_have_been_notified) personally posted scores of such messages over three years.
This appears to be an example of Loeb and Einhorn coordinating their efforts on the short side.
Coming soon: a clear-cut example of Loeb coordinating efforts with another hedge fund manager in his role as a so-called “activist investor” (and in so doing, skirting key securities laws while holding a metaphorical gun to a target company’s head).
Posted on 27 August 2008
Mega-hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb recently disclosed a double-whammy to his investors: substantial losses early in the third quarter of 2008, and the initiation of a formal SEC investigation into the operation of Loeb’s fund, Third Point Partners.
Loeb blamed part of his firm’s losses on the unfortunate fact of being short financial stocks just when the SEC decided to temporarily enforce existing laws prohibiting illegal naked short selling of a handful of such firms.
Loeb blamed the SEC investigation on a perception that his communications with other hedge funds violate securities laws.
While nobody outside the SEC can know with certainty just what it is about Loeb’s communications with other hedge funds that might be problematic, based on my observations of Loeb’s stock message board postings, I do have a theory.
In this installment, we’ll examine apparent coordination between Daniel Loeb and David Einhorn, manager of mega-hedge fund Greenlight Capital.
According to his book, Fooling Some of the People All of the Time, Einhorn established his much-storied short position in Allied Capital (NYSE:ALD) in early May of 2002. Einhorn first publicly outlined his short thesis on the late afternoon of May 15, 2002. The next morning, Allied held a conference call to address Einhorn’s claims. Interestingly, Einhorn himself did not participate in that call, however the first several questions – which achieved a much greater level of specificity and detail than Einhorn offered the night before – were asked by Daniel Loeb.
Either Loeb is an unusually quick study, or he and Einhorn had communicated substantially on the subject of shorting Allied Capital in advance.
Interestingly, on Allied’s Yahoo Finance message board, one of the biggest proponents of the Einhorn thesis also turns out to be Daniel Loeb.
In this message, for example, Loeb’s alter-ego, senor_pinche_wey (as proven here), confronts a poster who questions the veracity of Einhorn’s claims regarding Allied.
A few weeks later, Loeb’s alter-alter ego, mr_pink_esq (also proven here), says of Einhorn’s analysis:
“Looks like Einhorn has this one nailed. Einhorn has one of the best reputations in the business. He would hate to be on the wrong side of this trade.”
And lest you think Loeb was just offering his buddy Einhorn moral support, consider this post, in which Loeb wonders aloud (in the third person) how he might spend the “millions He will make on his ALD short. He was considering purchasing Himself a new car. However He is torn between the Aston Martin DB9, the Bentley GT and the Ferrari 360 Spyder…Maybe if this thing goes bust He can buy Himself a Mercedes Maybach.”
In all, Loeb, with the direct support of known paid message board basher Yolanda Holtzee (using such account names as ms_mint_green_esq and regulators_have_been_notified) personally posted scores of such messages over three years.
This appears to be an example of Loeb and Einhorn coordinating their efforts on the short side.
Coming soon: a clear-cut example of Loeb coordinating efforts with another hedge fund manager in his role as a so-called “activist investor” (and in so doing, skirting key securities laws while holding a metaphorical gun to a target company’s head).
Paid bashers: cracking the code
Posted on 16 April 2008
Third Point, LLC is a hedge fund run by Daniel Loeb, also known on stock message boards as “Mr. Pink.”
Michelle McDonough (formerly Michelle Sarian), is a convicted felon who has spent one year in prison for securities fraud. Today, as before going to prison, McDonough has a company called Magic Consulting.
Floyd Schneider is a prolific message board poster, whose many pseudonyms can typically be found repeating the same drumbeat of fraud and executive incompetence. Schneider’s posts frequently encourage shareholders to file SEC complaints and/or join shareholder lawsuits.
Yolanda Holtzee is also a prolific message board poster, most notably as Ms. Mint Green, who holds herself out at a close associate of Daniel Loeb/Mr. Pink. Holtzee is also frequently found to be encouraging shareholders to complain to the SEC and participate in shareholder lawsuits.
Roddy Boyd is a reporter for the New York Post and frequent online supporter and offline apologist of Floyd Schneider and Yolanda Holtzee.
AntiSocialMedia.net has learned that Third Point has, on multiple occasions, engaged Michelle McDonough to generate support for SEC investigations and/or class action lawsuits brought by shareholders against companies in which Third Point has substantial short interests. (Daniel Loeb refused to comment on the nature of his relationship with Michelle McDonough.)
McDonough, in turn, frequently engages Floyd Schneider and Yolanda Holtzee (among others) to foment and feign support for such shareholder actions on stock message boards. (McDonough refused to comment on the nature of her relationship with Schneider and Holtzee.)
Roddy Boyd has been asked on two occasions to comment on his relationship with McDonough. The resulting exchanges, via email with Judd Bagley, proceeded as follows:
Judd Bagley: “…What do you know about a woman named Michelle McDonough?”
Roddy Boyd: “re Michelle M: nothing. Should I? google has about 1mm entries for that name.”
Judd Bagley: “She used to go by the name Michelle Sarian. Today she runs “Magic Consulting.” I think she did a year in prison back in 2001.”
Roddy Boyd: “re sarian or mcdonough…youre (sic) concern, not mine.”
The second, more recent, exchange proceeded as follows:
Judd Bagley: “While I’ve got you…you recently denied knowing Michelle McDonough (formerly Sarian). Is that still your position?”
Roddy Boyd: “sorry judd, im (sic) not talking to you about anything else, period. if youre (sic) not comfortable with me asking the questions-fine. but im (sic) not anwering (sic) yours.”
That’s right…Roddy Boyd, a reporter, essentially twice gave me a reply of “no comment” when asked about any relationship he may have with Michelle McDonough.
Of course that response falls right in line with Daniel Loeb, Michelle McDonough and Yolanda Holtzee — who also ignored my requests for comment.
Posted on 16 April 2008
Third Point, LLC is a hedge fund run by Daniel Loeb, also known on stock message boards as “Mr. Pink.”
Michelle McDonough (formerly Michelle Sarian), is a convicted felon who has spent one year in prison for securities fraud. Today, as before going to prison, McDonough has a company called Magic Consulting.
Floyd Schneider is a prolific message board poster, whose many pseudonyms can typically be found repeating the same drumbeat of fraud and executive incompetence. Schneider’s posts frequently encourage shareholders to file SEC complaints and/or join shareholder lawsuits.
Yolanda Holtzee is also a prolific message board poster, most notably as Ms. Mint Green, who holds herself out at a close associate of Daniel Loeb/Mr. Pink. Holtzee is also frequently found to be encouraging shareholders to complain to the SEC and participate in shareholder lawsuits.
Roddy Boyd is a reporter for the New York Post and frequent online supporter and offline apologist of Floyd Schneider and Yolanda Holtzee.
AntiSocialMedia.net has learned that Third Point has, on multiple occasions, engaged Michelle McDonough to generate support for SEC investigations and/or class action lawsuits brought by shareholders against companies in which Third Point has substantial short interests. (Daniel Loeb refused to comment on the nature of his relationship with Michelle McDonough.)
McDonough, in turn, frequently engages Floyd Schneider and Yolanda Holtzee (among others) to foment and feign support for such shareholder actions on stock message boards. (McDonough refused to comment on the nature of her relationship with Schneider and Holtzee.)
Roddy Boyd has been asked on two occasions to comment on his relationship with McDonough. The resulting exchanges, via email with Judd Bagley, proceeded as follows:
Judd Bagley: “…What do you know about a woman named Michelle McDonough?”
Roddy Boyd: “re Michelle M: nothing. Should I? google has about 1mm entries for that name.”
Judd Bagley: “She used to go by the name Michelle Sarian. Today she runs “Magic Consulting.” I think she did a year in prison back in 2001.”
Roddy Boyd: “re sarian or mcdonough…youre (sic) concern, not mine.”
The second, more recent, exchange proceeded as follows:
Judd Bagley: “While I’ve got you…you recently denied knowing Michelle McDonough (formerly Sarian). Is that still your position?”
Roddy Boyd: “sorry judd, im (sic) not talking to you about anything else, period. if youre (sic) not comfortable with me asking the questions-fine. but im (sic) not anwering (sic) yours.”
That’s right…Roddy Boyd, a reporter, essentially twice gave me a reply of “no comment” when asked about any relationship he may have with Michelle McDonough.
Of course that response falls right in line with Daniel Loeb, Michelle McDonough and Yolanda Holtzee — who also ignored my requests for comment.