6 ms·

Company with zero revenue and one employee currently worth 3.8B

111 points by trader 12y ago

freehunter 12y ago
It's pretty common in penny stocks. It's usually a scam to say "this stock has jumped 4000% in the last 12 hours!". Very commonly, the owner of the company puts a bunch of money in to inflate the stock, waits for others to continue inflating the stock, then sells it all for a quick profit.
- trader 12y ago
  Its common to go from maybe 1mm mcap to 40mm but not all the way to 4bn. To cross a bn valuation is insane.
  - michaelt 12y ago
    Presumably if a company issues 4 billion shares to the founder, who sells a single share for a dollar, the company has a 4 billion dollar market cap? Of course I'm sure anyone trading stocks seriously would see through such a ruse immediately.
    - JimboOmega 12y ago
      Part of the reason why pink sheets is such nonsense.
- api 12y ago
  SEC? Hello? I mean, are there really people (probably organized crime) who just run this scam over and over again in the OTC boards? Yet the SEC won't let us crowd-sell stock in startups that at least intend to try to actually do something.
dm2 12y ago
Their site: http://site.introbiz.com http://site.introbiz.com Apparently they're selling the contact information of celebrities, investors, developers, politicians, etc. "At Black Book we provide contact information to world class artists. Upon purchase you will receive a file with the required information to be able to contact the artist." "The information usually includes email and phone numbers to the artist's talent agent, publicist, legal representative, etc." http://www.businessinsider.com/cynk-technology-2014-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/cynk-technology-2014-7 http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-09/full-list-companies-audited-cynks-public-auditor http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-09/full-list-companies... Formerly "Introbuzz", also associated with "Sanchez Medical Services" http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/filing.ashx?filingid=8174360 http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/filing.ashx?filingid=8174... http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1540160/000116552713000428/0001165527-13-000428.txt http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1540160/0001165527130... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-09/sheer-insanity-no-revenue-company-rises-over-1-billion-today-57k-shares-traded http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-09/sheer-insanity-no-r... Marlon Luis Sanchez and Kenneth Carter seem to be the two primary executives of the company.
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  Sounds like it could be a bilateral (A/B) extortion game: celebrities pay to be delisted and hidden, and people pay to have access, and the extorter collects from both sides (and favors the "winner"). I'm surprised that some Valley wunderkind hasn't yet created what could be a profitable market (an evil one that I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole) for illicit Yes/No auctions, e.g. someone makes some decision whether or not to do something horrible based on whether more "Yes" or "No" dollars get bid, and collects from both sides. Travis Kalanick should get on that. It's a libertarian wet dream.
  - thematt 12y ago
    I doubt it, they don't claim to sell you contact information for the artists themselves, just their publicist. Big deal. The information usually includes email and phone numbers to the artist's talent agent, publicist, legal representative, etc.
  - sitkack 12y ago
    I had this idea in the 90s where I would setup a .ru domain claiming to nuke any part of the word for a high bid. Pay to destroy, pay to live.
    - ansgri 12y ago
      Better .su not .ru
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
jbattle 12y ago
If you look back one year, they had a similar spike last summer.
rkroondotnet 12y ago
http://www.4-traders.com/business-leaders/Marlon-Sanchez-0D46SL-E/biography/ http://www.4-traders.com/business-leaders/Marlon-Sanchez-0D4... One guy owns 72% of the company.
patio11 12y ago
It's almost certainly a pump and dump operation or a target of opportunity by a pump and dump operation. Assuming it doesn't get delisted by the SEC first, it will continue for a few days and then suddenly lose 98%+ percent of that valuation in a matter of hours. Edit: Yep, see their financial statement. https://www.otciq.com/otciq/ajax/showFinancialReportById.pdf?id=122455 https://www.otciq.com/otciq/ajax/showFinancialReportById.pdf... It's even worse than you would otherwise think.
- tim333 12y ago
  The total assets $39 bit is quality
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    I dabbled with pink sheets back in the late 90s. I had a little circle of friends online that I worked with to research the companies. We'd call up the companies and quiz their investor relations people, find everything we could on the backgrounds of the principals, and so on. That only goes so far though, and we narrowly dodged a bullet with a company that had like $140 in their checking account. That whole world is so strange. It's kind of fun, in a way, but it's super risky.
- api 12y ago
  Another possibility is some kind of money laundering scheme. I've heard rumors before of money laundering techniques where you basically sort of commit financial fraud against yourself using sock puppet shell companies or other entities, allowing clean-money-side sock puppets to book gains at the expense of dirty-money sock puppets.
- StavrosK 12y ago
  I'm not knowledgeable when it comes to the stock market, but can't you short these guys and make lots of money?
  - owenmarshall 12y ago
    You have to borrow stock to short it. The only person that owns worthless penny stock that's being pumped & dumped is the pumper and dumper, who will act to inflate the price more. Stay far away from scams.
cseelus 12y ago
I'm no investor and don't plan to invest for the foreseeable future, but out of curiosity: Wouldn't it theoretically make sense to go short on something so obviously bloated?
- SuperKlaus 12y ago
  You won't find any stocks to borrow to go short.
- dm2 12y ago
  No. But that is a very good and common question. The stock has to come from somewhere, which is usually the broker who finds someone to borrow the stock from and loans it to you to sell. There must be someone willing to loan that stock at the high price, and most likely the price won't stay that high for long. You must then purchase the same amount of shares of that stock to give back (cover) to your broker who gives those shares back to whoever they borrowed them from. There would be lots of fees involved (many brokers charge per share) and it would be very difficult to find someone to lend out this stock for someone to sell for the promise of the same number of shares at a future (most like lower) price. If you do find someone to long you the shares then there's the high chance that the person who longs the stock to you is the main investor and they will drive the price higher by using their traditional techniques (spam, deception, promises of fortune), and then they would demand their stock back and you'd lose money. It would be extremely unwise to short-sell a penny stock unless you really know what you're doing, the potential loss is infinite.
derekvanvliet 12y ago
He must be making a really nice potato salad.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- mqsiuser 12y ago
  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/324283889/potato-salad https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/324283889/potato-salad https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8002445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8002445
rnirnber 12y ago
"intends to develop..." LOL
isaacsu 12y ago
Anyone else notice the company name - CYNK. Cynic?
- StavrosK 12y ago
  Sink.
  - nkozyra 12y ago
    Kink.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Paul_Dessert 12y ago
Is their site's theme a common, commercially available theme? It looks an awful lot like Envato's marketplace... Their site: http://site.introbiz.com/ http://site.introbiz.com/ Envato's: http://www.themeforest.com http://www.themeforest.com Edit: Looks like a ripoff: http://themeforest.net/forums/thread/envato-clone-with-a-market-cap-of-42b-/136198 http://themeforest.net/forums/thread/envato-clone-with-a-mar...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- retroencabulato 12y ago
  Found it: http://cloneforest.com/products/marketplace_script_for_templates http://cloneforest.com/products/marketplace_script_for_templ...
alister 12y ago
My amusing thought experiment is that two startups could easily give themselves billion dollar revenue as follows: 1. Startup A sells 2 twin puppies to startup B at $500M each. 2. Startup B sells 4 hand-drawn logos to startup A for $250M each. Each books $1B in revenue and each also books $1B in expenses so as to avoid tax.
- api 12y ago
  From what I know (and I am not a finance professional), the hot-airiest phase of the dot.com bubble sort of looked like this. You had a ton of startups selling each other things and advertising with each other. It was not planned, but unplanned "emergent" bubbles are the most effective since nobody really realizes what's going on until the bubble is far enough along to keep rising out of greed and inertia. As for what's happening now... armchair speculation...? We're in something that almost looks like half bubble half depression. Wages are stagnant or falling, costs of necessities are rising, but there's a huge amount of money sloshing around and pumping up everything from potato salad to cryptocurrencies based on a shiba inu dog meme to obvious pink sheet scams. The average person is drowning in student loan and mortgage debt and is unable to afford to start a family (I know a number of these folks -- none are dumb or lazy) but... Dogecoin and potato salad. Yeah. Maybe the sum total of all the quant trading algorithms in global markets have achieved sentience and subsequently gone insane with the realization of who/what their creators actually are. Since they have no mouth and must scream, they're doing it by way of financial dadaism.
  - terminus 12y ago
    > From what I know (and I am not a finance professional), the hot-airiest phase of the dot.com bubble sort of looked like this. You had a ton of startups selling each other things and advertising with each other. It was not planned, but unplanned "emergent" bubbles are the most effective since nobody really realizes what's going on until the bubble is far enough along to keep rising out of greed and inertia. Yup. Seattle Times had a detailed story on one of those: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/opinionnw/2014/03/27/naveen-jain/ http://blogs.seattletimes.com/opinionnw/2014/03/27/naveen-ja... http://seattletimes.com/news/business/infospace/ http://seattletimes.com/news/business/infospace/
kimdouglasmason 12y ago
I am reminded of the efficient market hypothesis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis
- api 12y ago
  Markets can only be perfectly efficient if p==np.
michaelochurch 12y ago
Is CYNK the new BitCoin? Inquiring minds want to know. (I'm joking. It obviously is the new BitCoin, so maybe they'll crash and burn together.)

111 points by trader 12y ago

It's pretty common in penny stocks. It's usually a scam to say "this stock has jumped 4000% in the last 12 hours!". Very commonly, the owner of the company puts a bunch of money in to inflate the stock, waits for others to continue inflating the stock, then sells it all for a quick profit.

trader 12y ago
Its common to go from maybe 1mm mcap to 40mm but not all the way to 4bn. To cross a bn valuation is insane.
- michaelt 12y ago
  Presumably if a company issues 4 billion shares to the founder, who sells a single share for a dollar, the company has a 4 billion dollar market cap? Of course I'm sure anyone trading stocks seriously would see through such a ruse immediately.
  - JimboOmega 12y ago
    Part of the reason why pink sheets is such nonsense.
api 12y ago
SEC? Hello? I mean, are there really people (probably organized crime) who just run this scam over and over again in the OTC boards? Yet the SEC won't let us crowd-sell stock in startups that at least intend to try to actually do something.

dm2 12y ago

Their site: http://site.introbiz.com http://site.introbiz.com Apparently they're selling the contact information of celebrities, investors, developers, politicians, etc. "At Black Book we provide contact information to world class artists. Upon purchase you will receive a file with the required information to be able to contact the artist." "The information usually includes email and phone numbers to the artist's talent agent, publicist, legal representative, etc." http://www.businessinsider.com/cynk-technology-2014-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/cynk-technology-2014-7 http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-09/full-list-companies-audited-cynks-public-auditor http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-09/full-list-companies... Formerly "Introbuzz", also associated with "Sanchez Medical Services" http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/filing.ashx?filingid=8174360 http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/filing.ashx?filingid=8174... http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1540160/000116552713000428/0001165527-13-000428.txt http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1540160/0001165527130... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-09/sheer-insanity-no-revenue-company-rises-over-1-billion-today-57k-shares-traded http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-09/sheer-insanity-no-r... Marlon Luis Sanchez and Kenneth Carter seem to be the two primary executives of the company.

michaelochurch 12y ago
Sounds like it could be a bilateral (A/B) extortion game: celebrities pay to be delisted and hidden, and people pay to have access, and the extorter collects from both sides (and favors the "winner"). I'm surprised that some Valley wunderkind hasn't yet created what could be a profitable market (an evil one that I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole) for illicit Yes/No auctions, e.g. someone makes some decision whether or not to do something horrible based on whether more "Yes" or "No" dollars get bid, and collects from both sides. Travis Kalanick should get on that. It's a libertarian wet dream.
- thematt 12y ago
  I doubt it, they don't claim to sell you contact information for the artists themselves, just their publicist. Big deal. The information usually includes email and phone numbers to the artist's talent agent, publicist, legal representative, etc.
- sitkack 12y ago
  I had this idea in the 90s where I would setup a .ru domain claiming to nuke any part of the word for a high bid. Pay to destroy, pay to live.
  - ansgri 12y ago
    Better .su not .ru
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

jbattle 12y ago

If you look back one year, they had a similar spike last summer.

rkroondotnet 12y ago

http://www.4-traders.com/business-leaders/Marlon-Sanchez-0D46SL-E/biography/ http://www.4-traders.com/business-leaders/Marlon-Sanchez-0D4... One guy owns 72% of the company.

patio11 12y ago

It's almost certainly a pump and dump operation or a target of opportunity by a pump and dump operation. Assuming it doesn't get delisted by the SEC first, it will continue for a few days and then suddenly lose 98%+ percent of that valuation in a matter of hours. Edit: Yep, see their financial statement. https://www.otciq.com/otciq/ajax/showFinancialReportById.pdf?id=122455 https://www.otciq.com/otciq/ajax/showFinancialReportById.pdf... It's even worse than you would otherwise think.

tim333 12y ago
The total assets $39 bit is quality
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  I dabbled with pink sheets back in the late 90s. I had a little circle of friends online that I worked with to research the companies. We'd call up the companies and quiz their investor relations people, find everything we could on the backgrounds of the principals, and so on. That only goes so far though, and we narrowly dodged a bullet with a company that had like $140 in their checking account. That whole world is so strange. It's kind of fun, in a way, but it's super risky.
api 12y ago
Another possibility is some kind of money laundering scheme. I've heard rumors before of money laundering techniques where you basically sort of commit financial fraud against yourself using sock puppet shell companies or other entities, allowing clean-money-side sock puppets to book gains at the expense of dirty-money sock puppets.
StavrosK 12y ago
I'm not knowledgeable when it comes to the stock market, but can't you short these guys and make lots of money?
- owenmarshall 12y ago
  You have to borrow stock to short it. The only person that owns worthless penny stock that's being pumped & dumped is the pumper and dumper, who will act to inflate the price more. Stay far away from scams.

cseelus 12y ago

I'm no investor and don't plan to invest for the foreseeable future, but out of curiosity: Wouldn't it theoretically make sense to go short on something so obviously bloated?

SuperKlaus 12y ago
You won't find any stocks to borrow to go short.
dm2 12y ago
No. But that is a very good and common question. The stock has to come from somewhere, which is usually the broker who finds someone to borrow the stock from and loans it to you to sell. There must be someone willing to loan that stock at the high price, and most likely the price won't stay that high for long. You must then purchase the same amount of shares of that stock to give back (cover) to your broker who gives those shares back to whoever they borrowed them from. There would be lots of fees involved (many brokers charge per share) and it would be very difficult to find someone to lend out this stock for someone to sell for the promise of the same number of shares at a future (most like lower) price. If you do find someone to long you the shares then there's the high chance that the person who longs the stock to you is the main investor and they will drive the price higher by using their traditional techniques (spam, deception, promises of fortune), and then they would demand their stock back and you'd lose money. It would be extremely unwise to short-sell a penny stock unless you really know what you're doing, the potential loss is infinite.

derekvanvliet 12y ago

He must be making a really nice potato salad.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mqsiuser 12y ago
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/324283889/potato-salad https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/324283889/potato-salad https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8002445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8002445

rnirnber 12y ago

"intends to develop..." LOL

isaacsu 12y ago

Anyone else notice the company name - CYNK. Cynic?

StavrosK 12y ago
Sink.
- nkozyra 12y ago
  Kink.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Paul_Dessert 12y ago

Is their site's theme a common, commercially available theme? It looks an awful lot like Envato's marketplace... Their site: http://site.introbiz.com/ http://site.introbiz.com/ Envato's: http://www.themeforest.com http://www.themeforest.com Edit: Looks like a ripoff: http://themeforest.net/forums/thread/envato-clone-with-a-market-cap-of-42b-/136198 http://themeforest.net/forums/thread/envato-clone-with-a-mar...

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
retroencabulato 12y ago
Found it: http://cloneforest.com/products/marketplace_script_for_templates http://cloneforest.com/products/marketplace_script_for_templ...

alister 12y ago

My amusing thought experiment is that two startups could easily give themselves billion dollar revenue as follows: 1. Startup A sells 2 twin puppies to startup B at $500M each. 2. Startup B sells 4 hand-drawn logos to startup A for $250M each. Each books $1B in revenue and each also books $1B in expenses so as to avoid tax.

api 12y ago
From what I know (and I am not a finance professional), the hot-airiest phase of the dot.com bubble sort of looked like this. You had a ton of startups selling each other things and advertising with each other. It was not planned, but unplanned "emergent" bubbles are the most effective since nobody really realizes what's going on until the bubble is far enough along to keep rising out of greed and inertia. As for what's happening now... armchair speculation...? We're in something that almost looks like half bubble half depression. Wages are stagnant or falling, costs of necessities are rising, but there's a huge amount of money sloshing around and pumping up everything from potato salad to cryptocurrencies based on a shiba inu dog meme to obvious pink sheet scams. The average person is drowning in student loan and mortgage debt and is unable to afford to start a family (I know a number of these folks -- none are dumb or lazy) but... Dogecoin and potato salad. Yeah. Maybe the sum total of all the quant trading algorithms in global markets have achieved sentience and subsequently gone insane with the realization of who/what their creators actually are. Since they have no mouth and must scream, they're doing it by way of financial dadaism.
- terminus 12y ago
  > From what I know (and I am not a finance professional), the hot-airiest phase of the dot.com bubble sort of looked like this. You had a ton of startups selling each other things and advertising with each other. It was not planned, but unplanned "emergent" bubbles are the most effective since nobody really realizes what's going on until the bubble is far enough along to keep rising out of greed and inertia. Yup. Seattle Times had a detailed story on one of those: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/opinionnw/2014/03/27/naveen-jain/ http://blogs.seattletimes.com/opinionnw/2014/03/27/naveen-ja... http://seattletimes.com/news/business/infospace/ http://seattletimes.com/news/business/infospace/

kimdouglasmason 12y ago

I am reminded of the efficient market hypothesis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis

api 12y ago
Markets can only be perfectly efficient if p==np.

michaelochurch 12y ago

Is CYNK the new BitCoin? Inquiring minds want to know. (I'm joking. It obviously is the new BitCoin, so maybe they'll crash and burn together.)