Another Defeat for Baloney

A gawdawful little company called Universal Express has taken on a leading role in the "stock counterfeiting conspiracy" movement, which seeks to deflect investor attention to a nonexistent problem from -- well, from the defects of gawdawful little companies like Universal Express.

This company's CEO Richard Altomare has become the town crier of the anti-shoring Baloney Brigade, issuing hysterical press releases such as a recent one calling this nonexistent problem a "trillion dollar tax scam."

A federal judge is fed up with all this malarkey. As reported recently in the South Flordia Business Journal:

An order by New York Federal District Court Judge Gerard Lynch, filed on April 2, calls for a penalty of $21.9 million against the Boca Raton-based company, $3.1 million against CEO Richard Altomare and $794,711 against corporate counsel Chris Gunderson. Lynch had previously ruled that they violated securities trading laws by selling unregistered shares of Universal Express and issuing misleading press releases to inflate the value of those securities.

The judge's ruling, brought in a suit by the SEC, also "prohibits Altomare from acting as an officer or director of a public company and permanently bars Altomare and Gunderson from participating in an offering of penny stocks," said the newspaper.

A more fitting punishment, I think, would be a requirement that Altomare eat the kind of stale baloney he's been pushing for the past few years.

The same goes for the state regulators, legislators and journalists who buy in to the naked shorting con game.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
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