According to a recent tweet from litigant George Sharp, who on Monday announced a lawsuit against BOPT, FINRA and the SEC both called him asking for copies of emails between him and BOPT representative, Kevin McLean. We don't believe that Sharp's lawsuit is the reason for the halt. But it did have something do with it, as we'll discuss below.
9:30am PDT FINRA and SEC call asking for original emails between me and $BOPT rep McLean. 11:21am PDT $BOPT halted! #endpennystockfraudnow
— George Sharp (@Goniffs) April 17, 2013
In last Sunday's advisory we said, "As the SEC has been halting stocks undergoing ridiculous promotions, FUEG by recent example, it is possible that Eco-Trade Corporation (BOPT) could be next."
Told ya so!
That BOPT was going to be halted was a foregone conclusion, the inevitable result of sloppiness by de facto boss William Lieberman and the rest of his cronies. Here are the three events that led to the halt:
1) THE PHONY ASSET PURCHASE. As we told you in our original BOPT exposé, the concept of purchasing BakkenQuest LLC, owner of the oil and gas leases, for as much as $60 million in cash and stock, one year after BakkenQuest was formed and then paid $301,600 for those same leases, was preposterous. This was an obvious intent to overvalue an asset that may or may not hold something (no work was done on the property), in order to give the coming Pump & Dump campaign some legs.
2) PHONY BIDS. In the week leading up to the massive Pump & Dump started on Monday, trading was already heating up on BOPT, supported by significant and obviously phony bids, such as the ones displayed below, as a Level II snapshot taken on April 9, 2013 at 12:45:10 EDT. As the stock price came down (fluctuated) over the course of the day, the bids disappeared without ever being filled. We forwarded several of these Level II snapshots to the SEC and FINRA last week. Both are market regulators who have several subscribers to this blog.
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| BOPT Level II April 9, 2013 12:45:10 EDT (click to enlarge) |
3) THE RESPONSE TO THE GEORGE SHARP LAWSUIT. BOPT's absurd rebuttal to the press release announcing the Sharp litigation, was to accuse Sharp of breaching the original settlement agreement with the company (then Yasheng Eco-Trade), when he sued for stock fraud (deja vu) and was paid $25,000. It also made the point of Sharp's tendency to sue company's for stock fraud. Aside from a passing reference to the "frivolous" lawsuit, BOPT did not outright deny that it was involved in email spamming, stock fraud or a Pump & Dump.
4) THE 10-K. We believe that the final nail in the BOPT coffin was the 10-K (annual financials) filed by the company yesterday, with the company listing zero assets, in spite of the fact that BOPT claimed that it had acquired BakkenQuest for $1.5 million and 150 million shares of stock, prior to the end of the year. At a minimum, the $1.5 million should have been listed as an asset.
There you have it. An obvious scheme, by an obvious schemer, obviously halted.
Told ya so!