May 02, 2012
Those who have read my book know that I grew up in the inner city. It was there I learned that a seasoned con-artist could be more sincere and convincing than Mother Teresa. Daunting economic conditions can easily make you question yourself, the conventional approach, and your options going forward. Let me caution, taking a gamble on a “hot stock” is never a prudent long-term option and, as I detail in my book, are an extremely high risk proposition that offer little more than false hope.
Today I alert all independent investors of a current scam circulating through the U.S. Postal Service. Just now I received a twelve page full color advertisement for what was billed to be the next great green energy play. See cover art below.
The advertisement featured a company trading under symbol SEFE and the piece was authored by a guy named Andy Carpenter, from a company called, Carpenter Global Stock Advisory. Besides recommending SEFE as a hot stock pick to buy, the advertisement also encouraged enrollment to a “free” website located at PennyStockWizard.com. PS: I never went to their website, nor do I care to.
Instead, I went to Yahoo Finance and performed the Lose Your Broker process outlined in chapter 5 of my book. The purpose of that chapter, entitled The Fundamentals of Fundamentals, was to sniff out the kind of rat that Andy Carpenter is. The company, SEFE, has no revenue, 4 employees, and one million dollars of expense. It’s a total scam, a Ponzi scheme at the very least. How such a company could be listed on any respectable exchange is beyond me. The fact that it is lends reason to so many people considering investment an insider’s game, rigged against them, with Vegas type odds. And who could blame them? It’s an industry gone rotten.
Carpenter, who passes himself off as an expert, boasts of an extensive track record of success picking hot new stocks, with triple digit returns easily had in weeks, days, and “sometimes hours.” He props himself up on coverage he received from The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, whether this is true or not I do not know, nor do I care. Carpenter, and his ilk, are a discredit to an ugly industry and a cancer to society.
In essence, Carpenter lays a bet on SEFE – a go nowhere shell company – hoping to buy low. Then he runs a direct mail campaign directed at creating demand for SEFE. If his mail campaign works, greater demand will cause SEFE’s price to rise swiftly – where he will then sell you out. (As an FYI, it doesn’t take much for penny stocks to move wildly in price on small volumes of trade. That’s the nature of the beast that they are.) In other words, he buys low and then sells high to you.
SEFE, at the very best, is a sucker’s bet against a seasoned con-artist named Andy Carpenter. It’s a gamble, and very much not worth the risk.
It’s time to Lose Your Broker, not your mind. Stay away from scams and con-artists – you just might stumble across them in your mailbox.
🙂