Hmmmm — a better investment than a Gordito lottery ticket?
a cautionary note by Eric Jackson
1. In Google News, we find this item: “MOBI724 Global Solutions Launches First Commercial Operations in Panama With a Leading Local Bank” at http://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/06/05/1516991/0/en/MOBI724-Global-Solutions-Launches-First-Commercial-Operations-in-Panama-With-a-Leading-Local-Bank.html.
2. Google News hardly covers Panama, and so much of their “coverage” is actually sales hype. And the advertising that Google will sponsor? Fraudulent stuff there, especially when it comes to political libel coming from one country to affect another country’s elections, is an ongoing scandal and not just in the United States.
3. What is the point of this press release out of Montreal? Go down toward the bottom:
“Legal Disclaimer
Certain statements in this document, including those which express management’s expectations or estimations with regard to the Company’s future performance, constitute “forward-looking statements” as understood by applicable securities laws.
…
This news release does not constitute a solicitation to buy or sell any securities in the United States.”
Safe to say that this is an offer that would likely be considered illegal under US securities laws. But isn’t Canada more calm and civilized than the USA? Actually, Canadian securities markets are notoriously fraud-friendly, much more so than those of the United States.
4. This company claims a history back to 2005 (which is not to say that the same people have been running it all along). You would think that such a firm would have someone with at least an inkling of a journalistic background to write its press releases. The standard, often violated by folks writing longer, in-depth stuff that’s nevertheless valid, is an inverted pyramid style lead, answering the questions “Who? What? When? Where?”
Forget, for a moment, the “Who?” about the company. Who is the bank in Panama? They don’t say.
A proposal to invest money on the basis of a connection with an unidentified entity, person or family is one of the hallmarks of fraud in or connected to Panama.
5. So, since this offer is likely illegal in the United States and you are thus unlikely to find a US broker willing to touch this with a 10-foot pole, do you run right out to a Panamanian brokerage firm to make your stock purchase? In an infamous ruling to protect his patron at the time, the criminal who just got out of prison and is now working at a law firm again, then Supreme Court presiding magistrate Alejandro Moncada Luna, infamously ruled in 2012 that stock swindles are in effect legal in Panama if they do not involve shares traded on this country’s small Bolsa de Valores stock and bond exchange. Neither the courts nor the politicians have ever seen fit to disavow this. So you just might be able to find a Panamanian broker who can get you some of these shares. That doesn’t make it a wise move.
6. You can look up the company in Canada’s English-language “newspaper of record,” The Globe and Mail, at https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/markets/stocks/MOS-CN/. The company does actually exist.
7. Remember all the buzz words and phrases of the Dot-Com Bubble? Perhaps, way back when, you listened to the gurus and to noted economic theorist Willow Bay, believed devoutly in “the new economy,” so put all of your life’s savings into Fog Dog. (The ephemeral online sporting goods company, not the unrelated brewery of a later time and similar name, nor the lewd dancing.) One of today’s overused buzz phrases is “big data.” Never mind that the European Union has moved to restrict some of the practices that go under that heading, and that it’s one of the nexes of controversy in the United States with respect to Russian propaganda campaigns in the 2016 US election season.
“Big data” is a bipartisan malady, which made huge money for a few Democratic consultants for one of the worst political campaigns ever, and which brought the alt-right into the mainstream of Republican politics at least until their star started to fade with the Roy Moore campaign in Alabama. It is a controversial private espionage / micro-targeted advertising technique, pioneered by secretive government agencies and some of their contractors, one of which is Google.
And there you have it in this company’s self-description: “The company captures value from big data to deliver seamless and personalized user experiences for the benefits of all parties in the ecosystem.” Whatever THAT means.
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Bottom line? Google should be ashamed for presenting this as news about Panama.
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