http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,39583,00.html
> Trader Made a Mint Anyway
> Associated Press
>
> 8:30 a.m. Oct. 20, 2000 PDT
>
> CEDAR GROVE, N.J. -- The teenage trader who paid $285,000 to
> settle stock manipulation charges didn't come away empty handed:
> He kept about a half-million dollars in profits.
>
> The Securities and Exchange Commission last month brought civil
> fraud charges against Jonathan G. Lebed, claiming he made his
> money through a "pump and dump" scheme. Lebed, now 16, bought
> large blocks of nine low-priced stocks, hyped them on Internet
> financial message boards and then within 24 hours sold his shares
> after the price rose. He used this method twice with two stocks.
Wow. I wish I had access to all this cool stuff when I was 15.
So much extra time on my hands back then...
> The trades were made between Aug. 23, 1999 and Feb. 4, 2000.
>
> Lebed agreed to pay back $285,000 without admitting or denying
> the allegations to settle SEC charges related to 11 trades.
>
> But, according to "60 Minutes," he actually made about $800,000
> from 16 trades the SEC did not charge.
>
> Lebed spent some of the profits on a $42,000 Mercedes-Benz sport
> utility vehicle for his family, his mother said.
>
> SEC regulators told The Wall Street Journal that they alleged
> wrongdoing in the cases they felt they had abundant evidence.
>
> "We charged violations with clear instances of fraud," SEC
> enforcement chief Richard Walker said.
>
> Lebed's attorney, Kevin Marino, said the SEC had wanted to
> recover his client's total earnings but they settled on what he
> called the "somewhat arbitrary" figure.
>
> In an interview with "60 Minutes," Lebed said he sees nothing
> wrong with what he did.
>
> "I wasn't posting any kind of false information. I didn't make up
> any facts or do anything like that," Lebed said on the show to
> air Sunday.
>
> SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt said Lebed made more than 200 postings
> on individual securities. "And that represents, in my view, a
> wholesale effort at deceiving many investors," Levitt said.
>
> Marino said most of the Internet postings included a disclaimer,
> "Be sure to take the time to do your research."
>
> The SEC found that Lebed sent e-mail messages under fictitious
> names. One claimed a company trading at $2 per share would be
> trading at more than $20 per share "very soon." Other postings
> claimed a stock would be the "next stock to gain 1,000 percent."
In other words, he posted exactly the same thing as most other
people that post to stock message boards, just a lot more of it.
(unless all the posts I've seen like that on various boards have
actually been from him. ;) On the Internet, nobody knows you're a
15-year-old daytrading millionaire.
> "Well, I'm not aware of one investor that exists that I cheated,"
> said Lebed, a junior at Cedar Grove High School. "And I don't
> think the SEC is aware of one investor that exists that I
> cheated."
>
> Marino, who has declined to make the boy available for an
> interview with The Associated Press, did not return a message
> left Thursday, when "60 Minutes" released a transcript of the
> segment.
>
> Lebed has been fascinated by finance since age 11. In eighth
> grade, he and two friends were among the finalists in CNBC's
> stock-picking contest. Lebed eventually traded in custodial
> accounts in his father's name at two brokers, the SEC said.
>
> On the CBS show, Marino admitted "there was some manipulation,"
> but argued there is little difference "between what he did and
> what is done every single day of the week on Wall Street. That
> is, he touted various stocks. And he sold them, after the prices
> went up."
Yup. Good for him...
> Copyright � 2000 Associated Press
--
Gerald Oskoboiny <
[email protected]>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/