Reader ‘M’ is “an industry professional” (who rightfully prefers to keep things anonymous) who sent the following in to your humble scribe this morning, by way of a reflection on the scammy world of the junior and in particular memories he had triggered by the Punchline Resources (PUNL) (PUNL.ob) scam we’ve tracked recently. M kindly consented to his mail being given a wider audience and here it is
Several years ago we were approached by a former Canadian Olympic athlete (who was then in finance) about a radically new approach to financing mining companies. We expressed interest, and soon a document arrived from some group of German banks and financial companies, in which they proposed we give them a whole pile of shares and they would manage a listing for us in Frankfurt. But the fine details set off a whole series of red flags.
First off, they get a pile of shares. They claim that they can maintain a market price of about 1 euro. But we aren’t allowed to do any financings or sell any shares on the market over here for one year. There were several other one-sided clauses in the contract as well, all of which led me to believe it was possible the shares would be used in a pump and dump operation. At the time there was a lot of pump and dump activity in Frankfurt.
I researched the various banks involved over the internet and discovered that their English language and German language sites were not linked. This was important, as the officers and directors on the English-language sites all had very bland backgrounds, but the officers listed on the German-language site were different and more interesting. Two of them feature in this release
I presented my findings at our next meeting with the German group, who shouted obscenities and stormed out. We never saw them again.
I like meetings where definite decisions are made.
The reason why I wanted more eyeballs to see M’s words isn’t the connection that PUNL made with him, but more to show yet another way that you, Mr/s Retail Investor, are routinely taken to the woodshed by these scamrunners. Frankfurt was and still is a hotbed for these scumballs, so one of the things to look out for is high volume trading on the German market(s) compared to the homeplate listing (usually Canada Venture).
And what is it about hockey players going into junior mining, anyway?