2020-05-31, 11:48 PM
By the fall of 2009, John Babikian was also brought into the mix as a part owner of Xplosivestocks.com with Eric Van Nguyen and Tony Papa. Babikian had been involved with some promoter group out of Texas and ran some promotion on Playbox Inc (PYBX) in late 2008. It was during the PYBX promo that John and Eric met for the first time. Being from Montreal and being a smart business man, Babikian probably saw the potential for much more success by getting involved with Eric Van Nguyen.
Together John Babikian, Eric Van Nguyen, and Robert Kalfayan would form a partnership that would change the face of the stock promotion industry. Kalfayan was close friends with Babikian and brought experience with email spamming having been named along with his brother in an email spam lawsuit in 2005. Kalfayan was also a former student at Concordia University just like Eric Van Nguyen.
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From all of these new associations, Awesomepennystocks.com (APS) would emerge as the primary website for this group in early 2010. Somewhere around this time APS gained access to the old email spam list used by Skymark Media Group Ltd. Through all its efforts APS was able to build an email list of over 700,000 subscribers which was by far the biggest spam email list ever assembled by a penny stock promoter.
Skymark was a stock promotion company run by the Kirk family (Benjamin Kirk and John Kirk). Joe Padilla played a big role in bringing the Skymark email list to Awesome Penny Stocks. The Kirks ran high profile pump&dumps on PBEC and TSHO in 2009. The Kirks used Luis Carillo and Wade Huettel to help provide the legal services to make their pump&dumps work.
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John Kirk, Benjamin Kirk, Luis Carillo, and Wade Huettel were finally named by the SEC in litigation in 2013 for PBEC and TSHO. Warren Davis and his money laundering operation, Gibraltar Global Securities, were also named in that litigation. Gibraltar provided a number of services to help individuals in the US and Canada hide their share ownership and the proceeds gains by the sales of those shares into the market. Not only did APS gain the email spam list from Skymark, but they began using Luis Carillo and Wade Huettel for various legal services and began using Gibraltar for various money laundering services. Notable Individuals whose names showed up in documents related to the Gibraltar Global Securities when Gibraltar shut down included Tony Papa, Jim Can, Scottsdale Capital (Joseph Padilla, Andrea Bruno, Stephanie Bruno, Michael Cruz, John Hurry, Phillip Koehnke), Edward Bronson, Luke Zouvas, and Ronald Touchard among many others which can be found here and here.
One of the best promotions done by APS in 2010 was Coastal Pacific Mining Corp (CPMCF) which was a Calgary based company largely controlled by Caroline Winsor (aka Caroline Meyers aka Caroline Danforth). Suzie Ma's websites also helped promote CPMCF. Winsor was arrested in July of 2014 for her involvement in CPMCF, for bribery/kickback charges related to FCTOA and VOIS, and for her involvement in the OCTX pump&dump. She is expected to plead guilty any day now.
Other paid promotions linked to APS and/or APS affiliate sites in early 2010 and early 2011 included PEPR, CPOW, DIAAF, WRIT, and CDOI. A lot of associations formed at this time came back into play later for APS including Phil Kueber (PEPR and WRIT) and Andrew Coldicutt (CDOI) for example. APS and/or APS affiliated stock promotion websites would end up doing promotions for more tickers linked to Kueber and Coldicutt including AMWI in 2011, VLNX in 2012, PWEI in 2012 and 2013, and PCWT in 2013.
CPOW ended up being named in litigation by the British Columbia Securities Commission because of its pump&dump activity and use of Gibraltar Global Securities.
During this time Babikian used his BMO Account because he was still young and did not understand the level of sophistication he would need to protect his identity and business. So in these years millions of dollars were run through the BMO Accounts, at which point BMO became suspicious and filed an SAR (Suspicious Activity Report) with Tax Authority and AMF. They demanded explanations from Babikian. His explanations were not satisfactory. Babikian in an effort to avoid any tax on his income moved assets around from his BMO account to offshore under the impression of "LOANS" this was in his first 2 years when he made $11.5 million.
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In August of 2011, Awesome Penny Stocks would promote HDSI and MILV. These were key tickers for various reasons and in many ways marked the beginning of bigger things for APS. Both HDSI and MILV had Aaron Lamkin as an insider. Aaron Lamkin and Scott Gelbard were very experienced with setting up new shells to be used for pump&dump activities and may have already had some S-1 tickers set-up and ready to go. Like Babikian, Lamkin was a wine enthusiast.
HDSI was a ticker that used Mackie Barch who would end up becoming the CEO of SNPK right before that ticker got promoted by APS in March of 2012. With HDSI, APS would have some problems getting the CEO, Tassos Recachinas, to do timely press releases as requested. More info here. It was during this time that APS decided they needed to control every aspect of the ticker including the shell taken public, the free trading stock, and the merging entity.
MILV had Leonnel Iruke as legal counsel. Iruke represented APS in at least two separate legal matters. One of the legal matters was a lawsuit against TheBullExchange (Dino Paolucci) for allegedly stealing the mailing list from Awesome Penny Stocks. Paolucci was a close associate with Tony Papa. The Papalia family owns a chain of Miami Subs Pizza&Grills in Toronto. Papa and Paolucci would meet at the one on Queen St. often to do deals. Dino Paolucci was also friends with AJ Thompson. It was through those friendships with Papa and Thompson that Paolucci became a partner/associate with Eric Van Nguyen and John Babikian and Awesome Penny Stocks in 2010/2011. Eventually there was some fallout between Van Nguyen/Babikian and Papa/Paolucci and Tony Papa and Dino Paolucci left the group. I suspect it was Tony Papa that stole the email list from APS and passed it on to Dino Paolucci who used it for the first ever TheBullExchange (TBX) promotion of ECIT in January of 2012. In March of 2012, APS filed suit against TBX for stealing that email list. More info here. Leonnel Iruke was also named in litigation against John Babikian filed by his ex-wife in 2013 as one of Babikian's personal attorneys and good friends. More info here.
Another MILV insider was Richard Groome of Montreal. Richard Groome and Jean-Francois Amyot were best friends. Richard Groome was part of the SPPH debacle. Richard Groome was a key player at Marleau Lemire (in Montreal), Notre-Dame Capital Inc, Groome Capital, and Desjardins Securities (the provinces biggest French brokerage firm). Richard Groome would show up again in APS ticker XUII along with Pierre Gauthier. They were the two biggest wheels behind Hitlab Inc. It was Pierre Gauthier that brought Eric Van Nguyen in to XUII to work with Amyot and Groome. Gauthier did some huge gold deals in the 80s and 90s like KWG and St-Genieve. Gauthier is like French promoter royalty. The relationship between Groome, Gauthier, Amyot, and Jean-Guy Lambert goes back to at least 2006 in Diary Fresh Farms (DYFR).
Beginning around this time, with some of the new associates brought on board, APS would no longer be the need to hijack old tickers like was done with a lot of the old APS promotions from 2009 - 2010 or to run promotions on stocks that were controlled by other individuals like was done with a lot of the APS promotions from 2010 and early 2011. APS would now be setting up their own shells and taking them public. By taking their own shells public the APS insiders would have control of all of the free trading stock when the paid promotion was run on the ticker which would translate to better promotions and lots more money being made by the APS insiders. Most of the later APS promoted tickers were done this way including SVEN, FARE, SWVI, XUII, and GOFF.
It was around this time that APS added Anthony Kerrigone to the team. Kerrigone was a broker working for market maker Wilson-Davis (WDCO). He worked out of his home in a one man office that was considered the Denver satellite location for WDCO. That house was located very close to houses owned by Aaron Lamkin and Scott Gelbard in Denver, Colorado. Kerrigone would help with the stock manipulation while the new associates took care of the shell structure and the depositing of stock. Here is where they begin to make SERIOUS money. While this group did trading they all communicated via encrypted blackberries and would sell the stock from a shared account. We believe that Babikian, Van Nguyen, and other key associates all got a cut of the profits with Babikian getting the largest cut. Anthony Kerrigone made his money by going short when they told him to stop supporting the promotion through Wilson Davis (WDCO). It appears that Kerrigone is a good trader shorting penny stocks but in reality he's taking his payment for his role in the Awesome Penny Stock cartel that way.
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With Gibraltar Global Securities under heat from the regulators and no longer in business, Nguyen and Babikian moved their operations to Belize in 2011 using a Money Laundering operation fronted by Robert Bandfield and Andrew Godfrey that included brokerage/clearing firms that were set up with the help of Warren Davis, Robert Shull, Kenneth Liebscher, and Lionel Welch like Legacy Global Markets (Gregg Mulholland and Brian de Wit), Titan Securities (Kelvin Leach and Rohn Knowles), and Unicorn International Securities (Jim Can). Through this Belize money laundering operation a number of high profile stock promotions were done between 2011 - 2014 including SNPK, ROSV, NTRO (Shull deals), TGRO, NHUR, NGRC (Liebscher deals), JAMN, BGBR, KRED, WTER, CANA (Jim Decker deals), CYNK, AMWI (Phil Kueber deals), ENIP, and AMOG. AMWI which was an APS promotion in November of 2011 even used the Bandfield/Godrey Belize address on the bottom of the APS spam email alerts for the ticker during the paid promotion. Several other tickers also used the services of the Belize money laundering group. More information in this report. It is probably no coincidence that shortly after the regulators shut down the Belize operations a number of high profile criminal cases and arrests were done including some members of the Awesome Penny Stock group, the Best Damn Penny Stock group, and Caroline Winsor.
It was probably through David Zazoff (ZA Consulting) out of New York that Awesome Penny Stocks got the SNPK deal. SNPK was a shell with Robert Shull as its key insider. Shull, who now lives in the Bahamas, and Zazoff are very close. Zazoff used to run a stock promotion website of his own, stockprofessor.com, which was very popular when Eric was getting started with xplosivestocks.com. Zazoff was always looking to expand his mailing list and that is how he first became associated with Eric Van Nguyen. After selling stockprofessor.com Zazoff stayed involved with penny stocks in other ways. Another individual closely linked to Zazoff is Barry Honig who together with Dr. Phillip Frost have been involved in dozens of penny stock investments amassing themselves a large fortune. David Zazoff would give TBX (Paolucci) the REFG deal in August of 2013 which ended up being one of the last TBX promotions.
Awesome Penny Stocks also used the money laundering services of Bank Gutenberg AG in Switzerland. Bank Gutenberg AG is another offshore money launder outfit that has been involved in a number of high profile stock promotions like WTER, OCTX, CANA, GNIN, and others. The BCSC named Bank Gutenberg in an investigation last year. The fact is that the money didn't stay in the hands of the Belize organization for long. The money ended up in accounts in places like Bank Gutenberg AG or Caledonian Bank (David Sims).
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Starting in the spring of 2013, the walls began tumbling down for APS.
In April of 2013 Anthony Kerrigone would bankrupt his WDCO office by creating a short position in Lot78 Inc (LOTE) and being squeezed out of his position. Kerrigone changed firms to BMAK after his WDCO office went out of business, but that didn't last long. When APS shut down, Kerrigone stopped working as a broker.
In September of 2013 SEC would end up suspending two straight tickers while they were being promoted by APS (PWEI and PWCT) making it obvious that APS now had a target on its back and the regulators would no longer allow APS to run any more stock promotions.
In October of 2013, the bombshell hit. John Babikian's ex-wife filed a lawsuit against her former-husband exposing his involvement with Awesome Penny Stocks and naming several accounts used by Babikian to hold over $100 million in proceeds from his stock promotion business. Read more about this in our ground breaking October 2013 report about the fall of Awesome Penny Stocks.
In March of 2014, the SEC would file a civil suit against John Babikian for his involvement in AWSRQ.
"The Complaint alleges that John Babikian used AwesomePennyStocks.com and its related site PennyStocksUniverse.com, collectively "APS," to commit a brand of securities fraud known as "scalping." The APS websites disseminated e-mails to approximately 700,000 people shortly after 2:30 p.m. Eastern time on the afternoon of Feb. 23, 2012, and recommended the penny stock America West Resources Inc. (AWSRQ). What the e-mails failed to disclose among other things was that Babikian held more than 1.4 million shares of America West stock, which he had already positioned and intended to sell immediately through a Swiss bank. The APS emails immediately triggered massive increases in America West's share price and trading volume, which Babikian exploited by unloading shares of America West's stock over the remaining 90 minutes of the trading day for ill-gotten gains of more than $1.9 million.
According to documents filed simultaneously with the SEC's complaint in federal court in Manhattan, Babikian was actively attempting to liquidate his U.S. assets, which he holds in the names of alter ego front companies. He was seeking to wire the proceeds offshore."
The suit against Babikian was settled in July of 2014 with Babikian being ordered to pay $3,730,000 in disgorgement, interest, and penalties. That amounted to a slap on the wrist when the total amount of money he made through APS promotions is taken into consideration. Babikian made well over $100 million through APS promotions and that is being very conservative.
In September of 2014, the DOJ of New York would bring criminal charges against Eric Van Nguyen for his role in $290 million in pump&dumps from late 2009 - 2011. The 85 count Indictment filed in New York State Supreme Court charged Eric Van Nugyen, Jay Fung, AJ Thompson, with Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the First and Second Degrees, Grand Larceny in the Second, Third, and Fourth Degrees, Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree, and Securities Fraud. Other Defandants in the Indictment included Anna Schmieder, Kenneth Oxsalida, Joseph Dervali, Luz Rodriguez, and Christopher Balseiro. Later John Babikian and Kendall Thompson were added as relief Defendants.
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To date despite the charges against Babikian and Van Nguyen in the United States, their omissions about their involvement in the stock promotion business, and the overwhelming evidence against John Babikian, Eric Van Nguyen, and Tony Papa, none of them have been charged by the Quebec authorities (AMF). John Babikian was allowed to leave Canada and move to Monaco where he lives a lavished lifestyle safe from the arms of the American authorities. Rumor has it that recently John Babikian acquired Banc de Binary in Cyprus and his latest scam involves making money through binary options. Banc de Binary has had its share of controversy over the past 2 years. Eric Van Nguyen and Tony Papa have remained untouchable seemingly immune from prosecution by the Quebec authorities (AMF). The question is why? Why have Eric Van Nguyen, John Babikian, and Tony Papa been immune from prosecution by the Quebec authorities to date? We know for a fact that the AMF has known about Tony Papa's involvement in penny stocks since at least 2008. We know for a fact that the AMF has known about Eric Van Nguyen's involvement in promoting stocks since 2009. The AMF also known about Suzie Ma's involvement with Eric promoting stocks since 2010. Most of the evidence that has come to light in the past 2 years that has led to charges against Eric Van Nguyen and John Babikian in the United States was all very well known by the Quebec authorities starting in 2010.
In July of 2014 when the SEC brought charges against John Babikian for the AWSR pump&dump the SEC acknowledged the assistance of the AMF. According to the Complaint, John Babikian, using the APS websites, disseminated e-mails to approximately 700,000 people shortly after 2:30 p.m. Eastern time on the afternoon of Feb. 23, 2012, and recommended the penny stock America West Resources Inc. (AWSRQ). What the e-mails failed to disclose among other things was that Babikian held more than 1.4 million shares of America West stock, which he had already positioned and intended to sell immediately through a Swiss bank. The APS emails immediately triggered massive increases in America West's share price and trading volume, which Babikian exploited by unloading shares of America West's stock over the remaining 90 minutes of the trading day for ill-gotten gains of more than $1.9 million.
1) John Babikian sold 1.4 million shares of AWSR for $1.9 Million USD in 80 minutes. This is the definition of pump and dump. He has 700,000 people on his email list (with Eric Nguyen) which is the biggest promotion list for penny stocks in the history of the penny stock business.
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2) The AMF was acknowledged in the SEC complaint against Babikian. At the time Babikian lived in Laval which would make this an AMF issue. The AMF knew Babikian pumped and dumped but they chose to do nothing. This suggests that Babikian had free reign from the AMF and for some reason they never charged him. Does Babikian have a deal with the AMF? Did he pay someone at the AMF to look the other way?
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The AMF and RCMP even formed a special task force that was supposed to be in charge of leading investigations against individuals like Eric Van Nguyen and John Babikian. This special task force has had tons of information passed on to it about the Awesome Penny Stock organization over the past 4 years, but none of that information appears to have ever been used by the Quebec authorities. I have knowledge about email exchanges between this special task force and independent investigators wanting to share their information about Eric Van Nguyen going back to 2011 and 2012. In those exchanges a representative of that special task force seemed more interested in tracking down the sources of the information than he did in following up on the information. He'd ask people sharing information to contact him at non-official emails set up through gmail rather than through his RCMP email. Why was this individual going through so much trouble to hide the information being presented to his agency from his agency? The whole thing was very suspicious to say the least.
If Quebec regulators would have acted on the information they had against Eric Van Nguyen and John Babikian they could have saved US investors from hundreds of millions of dollars in losses which begs the question could the AMF be held responsible in a class action suit brought by the victims of the Nguyen/Babikian/Papa/Ma promotions?
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In May of 2014 one of the domains affiliated with Awesome Penny Stocks, pennystocks.com, became active again promoting a ticker that we once labelled a future APS promotion, Rainbow International (RNBI). Awesome Penny Stocks had purchased the domain pennystocks.com from Peter Leeds for $1,000,000 in 2012.
The RNBI promotion was followed up on November 3, 2014 when promotionstocks.com along with elitepennystock.com and several new domains promoted Glenmark Capital Corp (GLRKF) a Vancouver based company trading on the TSX Venture Exchange.
Most recently this new Elite Penny Stock (EPS) group promoted Media Analytics Corp (MEDA) starting on December 8, 2014. We previously linked MEDA to Michael Kang and Sterling Securities back in September of 2013. The price action for MEDA early on was very similar to the price action we used to see with old Victory Mark and Awesome Penny Stock picks leading this researcher to wonder if Eric Van Nguyen is still involved in promoting stocks through this new Elite Penny Stock group of domains. From what we've learned about Eric in our research, he is a very greedy person that is very driven to make money.
The Elite Penny Stock group runs the following websites:
elitepennystock.com
pennystocks.com
elitespennystock.com
stocktipmagazine.com
wallstmagazine.com
bestamericanstocks.com
smartstockchoices.com
smartstockwinners.com
finestpennystocks.com
stocksthatsoar.com
mysoaringpennystocks.com
thebestofthemarket.com
qualitypennystocks.com
pennystockrepublic.com
stockstrategysecrets.com
amazingpennystockpicks.com
amazingpennystockpick.com
equitiesthatsoar.com
poisedtosoar.com
xetraboersentipps.de
xetratipps.de
pennystocksmagazin.de
xetraboerse.de
pennystocksborse.de
pennystocksite.de
pennystocks.de
Together John Babikian, Eric Van Nguyen, and Robert Kalfayan would form a partnership that would change the face of the stock promotion industry. Kalfayan was close friends with Babikian and brought experience with email spamming having been named along with his brother in an email spam lawsuit in 2005. Kalfayan was also a former student at Concordia University just like Eric Van Nguyen.
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From all of these new associations, Awesomepennystocks.com (APS) would emerge as the primary website for this group in early 2010. Somewhere around this time APS gained access to the old email spam list used by Skymark Media Group Ltd. Through all its efforts APS was able to build an email list of over 700,000 subscribers which was by far the biggest spam email list ever assembled by a penny stock promoter.
Skymark was a stock promotion company run by the Kirk family (Benjamin Kirk and John Kirk). Joe Padilla played a big role in bringing the Skymark email list to Awesome Penny Stocks. The Kirks ran high profile pump&dumps on PBEC and TSHO in 2009. The Kirks used Luis Carillo and Wade Huettel to help provide the legal services to make their pump&dumps work.
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John Kirk, Benjamin Kirk, Luis Carillo, and Wade Huettel were finally named by the SEC in litigation in 2013 for PBEC and TSHO. Warren Davis and his money laundering operation, Gibraltar Global Securities, were also named in that litigation. Gibraltar provided a number of services to help individuals in the US and Canada hide their share ownership and the proceeds gains by the sales of those shares into the market. Not only did APS gain the email spam list from Skymark, but they began using Luis Carillo and Wade Huettel for various legal services and began using Gibraltar for various money laundering services. Notable Individuals whose names showed up in documents related to the Gibraltar Global Securities when Gibraltar shut down included Tony Papa, Jim Can, Scottsdale Capital (Joseph Padilla, Andrea Bruno, Stephanie Bruno, Michael Cruz, John Hurry, Phillip Koehnke), Edward Bronson, Luke Zouvas, and Ronald Touchard among many others which can be found here and here.
One of the best promotions done by APS in 2010 was Coastal Pacific Mining Corp (CPMCF) which was a Calgary based company largely controlled by Caroline Winsor (aka Caroline Meyers aka Caroline Danforth). Suzie Ma's websites also helped promote CPMCF. Winsor was arrested in July of 2014 for her involvement in CPMCF, for bribery/kickback charges related to FCTOA and VOIS, and for her involvement in the OCTX pump&dump. She is expected to plead guilty any day now.
Other paid promotions linked to APS and/or APS affiliate sites in early 2010 and early 2011 included PEPR, CPOW, DIAAF, WRIT, and CDOI. A lot of associations formed at this time came back into play later for APS including Phil Kueber (PEPR and WRIT) and Andrew Coldicutt (CDOI) for example. APS and/or APS affiliated stock promotion websites would end up doing promotions for more tickers linked to Kueber and Coldicutt including AMWI in 2011, VLNX in 2012, PWEI in 2012 and 2013, and PCWT in 2013.
CPOW ended up being named in litigation by the British Columbia Securities Commission because of its pump&dump activity and use of Gibraltar Global Securities.
During this time Babikian used his BMO Account because he was still young and did not understand the level of sophistication he would need to protect his identity and business. So in these years millions of dollars were run through the BMO Accounts, at which point BMO became suspicious and filed an SAR (Suspicious Activity Report) with Tax Authority and AMF. They demanded explanations from Babikian. His explanations were not satisfactory. Babikian in an effort to avoid any tax on his income moved assets around from his BMO account to offshore under the impression of "LOANS" this was in his first 2 years when he made $11.5 million.
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In August of 2011, Awesome Penny Stocks would promote HDSI and MILV. These were key tickers for various reasons and in many ways marked the beginning of bigger things for APS. Both HDSI and MILV had Aaron Lamkin as an insider. Aaron Lamkin and Scott Gelbard were very experienced with setting up new shells to be used for pump&dump activities and may have already had some S-1 tickers set-up and ready to go. Like Babikian, Lamkin was a wine enthusiast.
HDSI was a ticker that used Mackie Barch who would end up becoming the CEO of SNPK right before that ticker got promoted by APS in March of 2012. With HDSI, APS would have some problems getting the CEO, Tassos Recachinas, to do timely press releases as requested. More info here. It was during this time that APS decided they needed to control every aspect of the ticker including the shell taken public, the free trading stock, and the merging entity.
MILV had Leonnel Iruke as legal counsel. Iruke represented APS in at least two separate legal matters. One of the legal matters was a lawsuit against TheBullExchange (Dino Paolucci) for allegedly stealing the mailing list from Awesome Penny Stocks. Paolucci was a close associate with Tony Papa. The Papalia family owns a chain of Miami Subs Pizza&Grills in Toronto. Papa and Paolucci would meet at the one on Queen St. often to do deals. Dino Paolucci was also friends with AJ Thompson. It was through those friendships with Papa and Thompson that Paolucci became a partner/associate with Eric Van Nguyen and John Babikian and Awesome Penny Stocks in 2010/2011. Eventually there was some fallout between Van Nguyen/Babikian and Papa/Paolucci and Tony Papa and Dino Paolucci left the group. I suspect it was Tony Papa that stole the email list from APS and passed it on to Dino Paolucci who used it for the first ever TheBullExchange (TBX) promotion of ECIT in January of 2012. In March of 2012, APS filed suit against TBX for stealing that email list. More info here. Leonnel Iruke was also named in litigation against John Babikian filed by his ex-wife in 2013 as one of Babikian's personal attorneys and good friends. More info here.
Another MILV insider was Richard Groome of Montreal. Richard Groome and Jean-Francois Amyot were best friends. Richard Groome was part of the SPPH debacle. Richard Groome was a key player at Marleau Lemire (in Montreal), Notre-Dame Capital Inc, Groome Capital, and Desjardins Securities (the provinces biggest French brokerage firm). Richard Groome would show up again in APS ticker XUII along with Pierre Gauthier. They were the two biggest wheels behind Hitlab Inc. It was Pierre Gauthier that brought Eric Van Nguyen in to XUII to work with Amyot and Groome. Gauthier did some huge gold deals in the 80s and 90s like KWG and St-Genieve. Gauthier is like French promoter royalty. The relationship between Groome, Gauthier, Amyot, and Jean-Guy Lambert goes back to at least 2006 in Diary Fresh Farms (DYFR).
Beginning around this time, with some of the new associates brought on board, APS would no longer be the need to hijack old tickers like was done with a lot of the old APS promotions from 2009 - 2010 or to run promotions on stocks that were controlled by other individuals like was done with a lot of the APS promotions from 2010 and early 2011. APS would now be setting up their own shells and taking them public. By taking their own shells public the APS insiders would have control of all of the free trading stock when the paid promotion was run on the ticker which would translate to better promotions and lots more money being made by the APS insiders. Most of the later APS promoted tickers were done this way including SVEN, FARE, SWVI, XUII, and GOFF.
It was around this time that APS added Anthony Kerrigone to the team. Kerrigone was a broker working for market maker Wilson-Davis (WDCO). He worked out of his home in a one man office that was considered the Denver satellite location for WDCO. That house was located very close to houses owned by Aaron Lamkin and Scott Gelbard in Denver, Colorado. Kerrigone would help with the stock manipulation while the new associates took care of the shell structure and the depositing of stock. Here is where they begin to make SERIOUS money. While this group did trading they all communicated via encrypted blackberries and would sell the stock from a shared account. We believe that Babikian, Van Nguyen, and other key associates all got a cut of the profits with Babikian getting the largest cut. Anthony Kerrigone made his money by going short when they told him to stop supporting the promotion through Wilson Davis (WDCO). It appears that Kerrigone is a good trader shorting penny stocks but in reality he's taking his payment for his role in the Awesome Penny Stock cartel that way.
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With Gibraltar Global Securities under heat from the regulators and no longer in business, Nguyen and Babikian moved their operations to Belize in 2011 using a Money Laundering operation fronted by Robert Bandfield and Andrew Godfrey that included brokerage/clearing firms that were set up with the help of Warren Davis, Robert Shull, Kenneth Liebscher, and Lionel Welch like Legacy Global Markets (Gregg Mulholland and Brian de Wit), Titan Securities (Kelvin Leach and Rohn Knowles), and Unicorn International Securities (Jim Can). Through this Belize money laundering operation a number of high profile stock promotions were done between 2011 - 2014 including SNPK, ROSV, NTRO (Shull deals), TGRO, NHUR, NGRC (Liebscher deals), JAMN, BGBR, KRED, WTER, CANA (Jim Decker deals), CYNK, AMWI (Phil Kueber deals), ENIP, and AMOG. AMWI which was an APS promotion in November of 2011 even used the Bandfield/Godrey Belize address on the bottom of the APS spam email alerts for the ticker during the paid promotion. Several other tickers also used the services of the Belize money laundering group. More information in this report. It is probably no coincidence that shortly after the regulators shut down the Belize operations a number of high profile criminal cases and arrests were done including some members of the Awesome Penny Stock group, the Best Damn Penny Stock group, and Caroline Winsor.
It was probably through David Zazoff (ZA Consulting) out of New York that Awesome Penny Stocks got the SNPK deal. SNPK was a shell with Robert Shull as its key insider. Shull, who now lives in the Bahamas, and Zazoff are very close. Zazoff used to run a stock promotion website of his own, stockprofessor.com, which was very popular when Eric was getting started with xplosivestocks.com. Zazoff was always looking to expand his mailing list and that is how he first became associated with Eric Van Nguyen. After selling stockprofessor.com Zazoff stayed involved with penny stocks in other ways. Another individual closely linked to Zazoff is Barry Honig who together with Dr. Phillip Frost have been involved in dozens of penny stock investments amassing themselves a large fortune. David Zazoff would give TBX (Paolucci) the REFG deal in August of 2013 which ended up being one of the last TBX promotions.
Awesome Penny Stocks also used the money laundering services of Bank Gutenberg AG in Switzerland. Bank Gutenberg AG is another offshore money launder outfit that has been involved in a number of high profile stock promotions like WTER, OCTX, CANA, GNIN, and others. The BCSC named Bank Gutenberg in an investigation last year. The fact is that the money didn't stay in the hands of the Belize organization for long. The money ended up in accounts in places like Bank Gutenberg AG or Caledonian Bank (David Sims).
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Starting in the spring of 2013, the walls began tumbling down for APS.
In April of 2013 Anthony Kerrigone would bankrupt his WDCO office by creating a short position in Lot78 Inc (LOTE) and being squeezed out of his position. Kerrigone changed firms to BMAK after his WDCO office went out of business, but that didn't last long. When APS shut down, Kerrigone stopped working as a broker.
In September of 2013 SEC would end up suspending two straight tickers while they were being promoted by APS (PWEI and PWCT) making it obvious that APS now had a target on its back and the regulators would no longer allow APS to run any more stock promotions.
In October of 2013, the bombshell hit. John Babikian's ex-wife filed a lawsuit against her former-husband exposing his involvement with Awesome Penny Stocks and naming several accounts used by Babikian to hold over $100 million in proceeds from his stock promotion business. Read more about this in our ground breaking October 2013 report about the fall of Awesome Penny Stocks.
In March of 2014, the SEC would file a civil suit against John Babikian for his involvement in AWSRQ.
"The Complaint alleges that John Babikian used AwesomePennyStocks.com and its related site PennyStocksUniverse.com, collectively "APS," to commit a brand of securities fraud known as "scalping." The APS websites disseminated e-mails to approximately 700,000 people shortly after 2:30 p.m. Eastern time on the afternoon of Feb. 23, 2012, and recommended the penny stock America West Resources Inc. (AWSRQ). What the e-mails failed to disclose among other things was that Babikian held more than 1.4 million shares of America West stock, which he had already positioned and intended to sell immediately through a Swiss bank. The APS emails immediately triggered massive increases in America West's share price and trading volume, which Babikian exploited by unloading shares of America West's stock over the remaining 90 minutes of the trading day for ill-gotten gains of more than $1.9 million.
According to documents filed simultaneously with the SEC's complaint in federal court in Manhattan, Babikian was actively attempting to liquidate his U.S. assets, which he holds in the names of alter ego front companies. He was seeking to wire the proceeds offshore."
The suit against Babikian was settled in July of 2014 with Babikian being ordered to pay $3,730,000 in disgorgement, interest, and penalties. That amounted to a slap on the wrist when the total amount of money he made through APS promotions is taken into consideration. Babikian made well over $100 million through APS promotions and that is being very conservative.
In September of 2014, the DOJ of New York would bring criminal charges against Eric Van Nguyen for his role in $290 million in pump&dumps from late 2009 - 2011. The 85 count Indictment filed in New York State Supreme Court charged Eric Van Nugyen, Jay Fung, AJ Thompson, with Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the First and Second Degrees, Grand Larceny in the Second, Third, and Fourth Degrees, Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree, and Securities Fraud. Other Defandants in the Indictment included Anna Schmieder, Kenneth Oxsalida, Joseph Dervali, Luz Rodriguez, and Christopher Balseiro. Later John Babikian and Kendall Thompson were added as relief Defendants.
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To date despite the charges against Babikian and Van Nguyen in the United States, their omissions about their involvement in the stock promotion business, and the overwhelming evidence against John Babikian, Eric Van Nguyen, and Tony Papa, none of them have been charged by the Quebec authorities (AMF). John Babikian was allowed to leave Canada and move to Monaco where he lives a lavished lifestyle safe from the arms of the American authorities. Rumor has it that recently John Babikian acquired Banc de Binary in Cyprus and his latest scam involves making money through binary options. Banc de Binary has had its share of controversy over the past 2 years. Eric Van Nguyen and Tony Papa have remained untouchable seemingly immune from prosecution by the Quebec authorities (AMF). The question is why? Why have Eric Van Nguyen, John Babikian, and Tony Papa been immune from prosecution by the Quebec authorities to date? We know for a fact that the AMF has known about Tony Papa's involvement in penny stocks since at least 2008. We know for a fact that the AMF has known about Eric Van Nguyen's involvement in promoting stocks since 2009. The AMF also known about Suzie Ma's involvement with Eric promoting stocks since 2010. Most of the evidence that has come to light in the past 2 years that has led to charges against Eric Van Nguyen and John Babikian in the United States was all very well known by the Quebec authorities starting in 2010.
In July of 2014 when the SEC brought charges against John Babikian for the AWSR pump&dump the SEC acknowledged the assistance of the AMF. According to the Complaint, John Babikian, using the APS websites, disseminated e-mails to approximately 700,000 people shortly after 2:30 p.m. Eastern time on the afternoon of Feb. 23, 2012, and recommended the penny stock America West Resources Inc. (AWSRQ). What the e-mails failed to disclose among other things was that Babikian held more than 1.4 million shares of America West stock, which he had already positioned and intended to sell immediately through a Swiss bank. The APS emails immediately triggered massive increases in America West's share price and trading volume, which Babikian exploited by unloading shares of America West's stock over the remaining 90 minutes of the trading day for ill-gotten gains of more than $1.9 million.
1) John Babikian sold 1.4 million shares of AWSR for $1.9 Million USD in 80 minutes. This is the definition of pump and dump. He has 700,000 people on his email list (with Eric Nguyen) which is the biggest promotion list for penny stocks in the history of the penny stock business.
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2) The AMF was acknowledged in the SEC complaint against Babikian. At the time Babikian lived in Laval which would make this an AMF issue. The AMF knew Babikian pumped and dumped but they chose to do nothing. This suggests that Babikian had free reign from the AMF and for some reason they never charged him. Does Babikian have a deal with the AMF? Did he pay someone at the AMF to look the other way?
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The AMF and RCMP even formed a special task force that was supposed to be in charge of leading investigations against individuals like Eric Van Nguyen and John Babikian. This special task force has had tons of information passed on to it about the Awesome Penny Stock organization over the past 4 years, but none of that information appears to have ever been used by the Quebec authorities. I have knowledge about email exchanges between this special task force and independent investigators wanting to share their information about Eric Van Nguyen going back to 2011 and 2012. In those exchanges a representative of that special task force seemed more interested in tracking down the sources of the information than he did in following up on the information. He'd ask people sharing information to contact him at non-official emails set up through gmail rather than through his RCMP email. Why was this individual going through so much trouble to hide the information being presented to his agency from his agency? The whole thing was very suspicious to say the least.
If Quebec regulators would have acted on the information they had against Eric Van Nguyen and John Babikian they could have saved US investors from hundreds of millions of dollars in losses which begs the question could the AMF be held responsible in a class action suit brought by the victims of the Nguyen/Babikian/Papa/Ma promotions?
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In May of 2014 one of the domains affiliated with Awesome Penny Stocks, pennystocks.com, became active again promoting a ticker that we once labelled a future APS promotion, Rainbow International (RNBI). Awesome Penny Stocks had purchased the domain pennystocks.com from Peter Leeds for $1,000,000 in 2012.
The RNBI promotion was followed up on November 3, 2014 when promotionstocks.com along with elitepennystock.com and several new domains promoted Glenmark Capital Corp (GLRKF) a Vancouver based company trading on the TSX Venture Exchange.
Most recently this new Elite Penny Stock (EPS) group promoted Media Analytics Corp (MEDA) starting on December 8, 2014. We previously linked MEDA to Michael Kang and Sterling Securities back in September of 2013. The price action for MEDA early on was very similar to the price action we used to see with old Victory Mark and Awesome Penny Stock picks leading this researcher to wonder if Eric Van Nguyen is still involved in promoting stocks through this new Elite Penny Stock group of domains. From what we've learned about Eric in our research, he is a very greedy person that is very driven to make money.
The Elite Penny Stock group runs the following websites:
elitepennystock.com
pennystocks.com
elitespennystock.com
stocktipmagazine.com
wallstmagazine.com
bestamericanstocks.com
smartstockchoices.com
smartstockwinners.com
finestpennystocks.com
stocksthatsoar.com
mysoaringpennystocks.com
thebestofthemarket.com
qualitypennystocks.com
pennystockrepublic.com
stockstrategysecrets.com
amazingpennystockpicks.com
amazingpennystockpick.com
equitiesthatsoar.com
poisedtosoar.com
xetraboersentipps.de
xetratipps.de
pennystocksmagazin.de
xetraboerse.de
pennystocksborse.de
pennystocksite.de
pennystocks.de