The SEC has temporarily halted trading of Neuromama Ltd. | Hacker News Reader

The SEC has temporarily halted trading of Neuromama Ltd.

bloomberg.com

175 pointspeterjliu132 comments

Trading was just halted in Neuromama (OTC:NERO), a startup with a $35 billion market cap. They have a search engine (https://neuromama.com/), a social network (http://vica.life/), and claim "heavy ion fusion" and oceanfront property in Mexico. The CEO got out of prison 6 years ago.

WTF?

https://neuromama.com/get/web/WTF

I am entirely unsure how this search engine works.

I tried searching for 'pig 14' - and got back an error message that included (html removed):

We're sorry... but your computer or network may be sending automated queries. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now. See https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/86640 Google Help for more information.

https://neuromama.com/get/web/pig-14

thats what i got

It's a PHP application proxying Google search results based on the errors and results.

On my stock Android phone, all the searches just return blank pages. Are you saying it actually works on non-mobile clients?

Getting blank pages on my MBP. So apparently not.

Yes, it's a Laravel PHP application just as dangrossman said. It simply fetches the Google search URL based on your query and returns the results [0].

As you can see, it's returning a Laravel exception, displaying the Google Captcha check HTML code to avoid this type of thing.

[0]: http://i.imgur.com/ojwZedZ.png

That is a MVP.

But you get rewards! http://fsr.neuromama.com

What the hell is that story in the footer.

It reads like a serial killer's confession.

this made my day

I'm convinced there's a hidden message in this

Maybe someone pwned their server?

Holy hell... what is going on!

I believe it's pulled from here?

http://www.eurasialasvegas.com/our-mission.html

Or re-used...

Same company behind them. Both domains are registered to the same email address.

This thing appears on their social network too: https://www.vica.io/our-story/

What a creepy story

It looks like the crap they used to put in spam emails to get past the early spam filters

Best guess is there was a Victoria Zubkis, daughter of Steven Zubkis, who's body was found washed up under a pier in San Diego.

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Ocean-Beach-Pier-Death...

Apparently that's the CEO's daughter? But the only references I can find say the death was ruled to not be a homicide, so I don't get the references in the text to being murdered by a loved one. And why he put a eulogy to his daughter into the footer of all his web pages are beyond me.

I think mentally unstable and crazy can be rather orthogonal with the ability to scam people.

Can also see it as a clever ruse -- act a little bit "crazy" to attract some short sellers. In hope they'd think something like "This is some crazy company, so cringeworthy, looks overvalued, let's short it".

I got an error while searching which contains a Laravel stack trace, in case anyone is curious what a small snapshot of their stack looks like: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/efa644da4f2713b...

We may have overloaded it by mentioning it on HN. Previously, the only users were probably the investors trying it out.

I got a similar one http://pastebin.com/YdDbkVDZ but no HTML kinda looks like they are just fetching from a fixed list.

What the hell am I even looking at with neuromama?

Their Android app only has 10-50 installs :0 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vica.chat

Wow that logo looks like a birthday banner

Very helpful explanation from a thread about this on reddit (narrated from the first person perspective of the scammer):

It's pretty beautiful in an illegal sort of way: So the clever short sellers borrow and sell 100,000 shares of stock at $2 each, hoping to profit when it crashes to zero.

By hypothesis, there are no buyers. But we buy. We buy those 100,000 shares for $2 each, laying out $200,000. Now we own 300.1 million shares, out of 300 million outstanding.

On Thursday we go to our brokers and say "you know what, we changed our minds, we want our stock back from whoever you loaned it to."

So the brokers call in the short sales.

The short sellers can't borrow the stock anywhere else. We own it all. So they have to close out their short sales by buying in the stock.

But they can't buy the stock anywhere else either. We own it all. So they have to buy it from us. How much do we charge?

Yeah, $15. Or $20 or whatever, I don't know. We can charge whatever we want. If the short sellers don't buy the stock, they're breaking the law. So they'll pay whatever we ask.

They pay $20 to buy back the shares they sold us at $2, making us a $1.8 million profit.

source: https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/4wvlkv/a_scam_wi...

[edit: formatting]

This sounds pretty amazing but I can't figure out bindings for all the pronouns.

Who are the short sellers? Who are the brokers? are they complicit? Is one of them acting as the market maker for the stock? When the con is exploded and the money gets paid back, where did it come from? The short sellers? the brokers? thin air?

This is a typical short squeeze. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_squeeze ) [ With the caveat that I'm far from an expert on this, I just have a collection of documents of many failed corners and very few successful corners. ]

The short sellers are anyone with a negative outlook on the stock. For example, some hedge funds do 50% buying, 50% short selling, so in theory they are neutral to overall market conditions.

The brokers in this case have been permitted to lend out the stock to earn extra money, the short sellers are ordinary customers of the brokers, the short sellers don't necessarily have any special relationship with the brokers.

The market maker would be buying as much as selling, and not holding any position over extended time, so they don't influence this event.

In theory, the short sellers have to pay up to meet their obligations.

Haha yeah the pronouns are not the clearest in this. Let me try:

Let's set up three parties to this scam: 1. The Scammers - these people start the company 2. The Short Sellers - these are the "smart money" who uncover some fictitious/sketchy company and want to profit 3. Brokers - these are the intermediaries through which both The Scammers and The Short Sellers trade

First, The Scammers set up the company and take it public on some sort of lightly regulated exchange (look up pink sheets, over-the-counter trading, etc.). These are not the NY Stock Exchange where an IPO has to be somewhat legitimate.

Second, The Scammers lightly trade the stock up among themselves over time until it looks overvalued enough for The Short Sellers to notice it in their quantitative screens and get interested.

Then, expecting the price to drop, The Short Sellers decide they want to sell short the stock. This would generally mean that they borrow the shares from someone that has them (e.g., borrow 100 shares at $10 a share), sell them to someone else (e.g., all 100 shares at $10 a share), and buy shares again when the price goes down (e.g., buy 100 shares at $2 a share) to repay the person they bought them from (to whom they owe 100 shares, regardless of share price).

So, in order for the Short Sellers to orchestrate this, they turn to Brokers, who match buyers and sellers. Since this company is a scam, only The Scammers have any shares. So the Brokers go find The Scammers (hopefully not realizing they are scammers), and ask them to lend their shares to The Short Sellers. The Scammers gladly do this.

Next, the Short Sellers want to sell their borrowed shares back to someone, so they are set up for when the price drops. Again, The Scammers are glad to buy these shares (putting up some cash to do so).

When enough Short Sellers get involved, or when The Scammers feel like it, they will call up their Brokers and ask for the shares they loaned back. There are some rules around this, but they can generally call them back. Now begins an epic short squeeze - the Short Sellers don't have any shares, but they owe them to someone, not realizing that the person they borrowed from is the same as the person they sold to (The Scammer in both cases).

So, the Short Sellers go out looking for shares to buy to repay their loan (again, denominated in shares, not cash). But since only The Scammers have shares, they can demand any price, and they do. They demand higher and higher prices, until the Short Sellers finally have to pay up exorbitantly for shares to pay back their loan. The Short Sellers buy shares from The Scammers at wildly high prices, and return them (through a Broker) to The Scammers, who are very pleased with themselves, having both sold their shares for 100s of times what they bought them for, and having gotten the shares returned to them.

Ah makes sense now, thanks for illustrating it so clearly.

Ok, that is helpful. I'm still a bit confused though. (where's collida when you need him?)

So I get the point where the scammer is selling options amongst themselves to get the stock price to rise. I put out an "ask" and then later come back with another shell company/identity and buy that stock with my "bid". Brokers are handling these transactions by connecting the buyers to the sellers (which happen to be the same people so they can buy an sell at an arbitrary price and only the brokers are making any money on the transaction fees.)

Now you stipulate this causes the stock to show up as "over valued" based on pretty standard technical analysis. Sort of "look no revenue but people are buying this stock for $2? WTF?"

So our short seller (who isn't a scammer right? they are being scammed?) goes to their broker and says we think this price is too high and its going down, so we want to sell a put option (that is the promise of a sale) of these shares at $2 a share, 6 months from now. Since they are an options trader and they know how these things go, they also buy a call option, to buy shares at $2.25 6 months from now. This is known as a "butterfly" if the shares go up you will be able to cover your put options with shares from the call option and "lose" only 25 cents per share, if the shares go down, the person on the other side of your put buys your shares for $2 and you sell them for less than $2 and pocket the difference.

What I don't understand is what broker is going to play the other side of the short seller's order book?

If our scammers agree to sell a call option at $2 to counter balance the short seller's put option, they are forced to sell at $2, they can't decide to sell at $20.

How does the scammer get the short seller's broker to take a bath here? They aren't some dupe in an investment club who things "its going to the moon!" and so buying what ever comes out, they are trading options on high risk securities over the counter (in many ways the highest risk securities).

So the only way I see this working is if the broker in this melodrama is corrupt and telling someone to short a stock which the broker does not ever get control over (essentially con them into a naked short).

But there are no options involved here. Short selling is a separate strategy that doesn't involve options at all (as far as I understand).

Your point still stands and in respect to broker(s), I wonder if they:

* knew, but could ignore it, because it is legal and they wanted to collect the fees

* didn't know

* knew, and should have done something, but didn't, and thus broke some law.

And why is this scheme illegal? Isn't it Short Sellers' fault that they have borrowed shares without reading the conditions properly? They could just buy them.

It looks like a casino where you are allowed only to lose, not a free market where you can trade however you like. Once you find a profitable scheme you go to jail.

Eve finds NeuroMama, a worthless stack of nothing but shady documents, and importantly, without a significant number of shares available to borrow. She knows how to manipulate markets and doesn't care much for legality. Eve buys a significant position in NeuroMama over a period of time. She can do this cheaply, but slightly drives up the price.

Alice sees that the stock price has increased and this puts it on her radar of companies to investigate. She sees that NeuroMama is a worthless stack of nothing but shady incorporation papers. Alice thinks the stock value will decline. She goes to her broker, Bob, to borrow shares so that she can short sell. Bob calls around Long Island and locates some shares belonging to Eve for Alice to borrow.

Alice offers these shares for sale. Eve buys up a significant portion of them and puts them back on the market for sale at a massive markup.

Eve calls back her shares. Alice is required to return the shares to Eve. But Alice has sold those shares, so she must buy them back. She tries to find anyone to buy them from. Unfortunately, Eve is the only one selling, so Alice must pay Eve's price.

The only money that has changed hands is between Alice and Eve. There was no $34B, only a small fraction of the shares changing hands at highly inflated prices. If Eve is caught she'll need to disgorge her earnings to Alice.

Why would Eve worry about being caught? Everything you've outlined is perfectly legal, and in fact was executed brilliantly by Porsche (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-idUSTRE49R3I920...) in 2008.

executed brilliantly by Porsche

Didn't really work out for them in the end. They executed the short squeeze to acquire VW but they're owned by VW now.

http://www.automobilemag.com/news/porsche-and-volkswagen-wha...

TL;DR Banks stopped lending to Porsche before it could seal the deal because 2008 happened.

And Angela Merkel herself dissuaded the sheikh from lending Porsche money!

There are two Porsche companies. Porsche AG (the car company) is controlled/owned by Volkswagen AG, but there's also Porsche SE (holding company). The latter controls a 50.7% majority of voting rights of Volkswagen AG, for 31% of share ownership. The families of Porsche-Piech own 50% of Porsche SE, but 100% of the voting rights.

> Although some short squeezes may occur naturally in the market, a scheme to manipulate the price or availability of stock in order to cause a short squeeze is illegal.

https://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/regsho.htm

My understanding of securities law is that intent is 95%. If you're doing market manipulation "just to make money" (instead of, say, to buy a company? Not really sure) then it's illegal.

> to borrow shares so that she can short sell.

why would she do this instead of just buying a bunch of put options on the stock ?

There need to be someone who is selling/writing put option before you can buy put option.

Same here. Reading the original makes things clearer though.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-07-11/cynk-make...

Side note unrelated to your question itself, the name for the reference that a pronoun points to is an antecedent.

Not trying to correct you, I just think grammar is nifty.

Sounds like what SCOX was speculated to be doing on their way down the chute during the IBM suit.

Sounds like the plot of the "Ties That Bind Us" episode of the BBC show Hustle from 2006

Famous example with Porsche: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/business/worldbusiness/30i...

As I mentioned elsewhere, it didn't really work out for them in the end. They executed the short squeeze to acquire VW but they're owned by VW now.

http://www.automobilemag.com/news/porsche-and-volkswagen-wha...

This is called a short squeeze. It's done all the time and is not illegal. Pumping the stock up at first through manipulative transactions is illegal, but not all overvalued stocks get that way through illegal means. If you have an overvalued stock and short sellers move in, conducting a short squeeze against those sellers is not by itself illegal and can be an effective way to encourage short sellers to stay away from the stock.

If you follow that link all the way back to the original source, you're back at Bloomberg, and the writing of Matt Levine.[0]

It provides additional context, some entertaining footnotes, and is generally just very much worth the trip.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-07-11/cynk-make...

That's so damn cool. So does the SEC regularly just raid places or wiretap them or ...? Seems like more sophisticated financial scams can just go undetected or impossible to prosecute if you split it up enough.

From that article, it sounds like the SEC wait until they hit television news..

Wow. That social network feels like a kinda creepy way to remember someone. Seems a little too attached. Additionally, it has a store (because why not?) and I figured I would check it out because at this point I'm mildly impressed by the effort they've put forth. The store is just Amazon affiliate links.

Something about a sucker being born every minute seems appropriate.

"He left prison in August 2010 after being sentenced for five years for defrauding investors, in a $1.8 million scheme through misrepresentations tied to the renovation of a Las Vegas casino. The Ukrainian immigrant was sued by the SEC in the 1990s for orchestrating a $12 million penny stock scam. He was ordered to pay more than $21.6 million in disgorgement and penalties for selling unregistered securities from 1993 to 1996."

Why isn't this guy on the bad actors list?

club fed is a financial crime postdoctorate

With the apparent gold mine of batshit footage[0][1][2][∞], horrifying failed PR stunts[4], pdfs[5], and fake products, I really, really, hope someone with the right skills picks up the documentary ball here...

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok-8uVR4Pa0

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZhI5zRJ8zw

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hreCQlJB7bE

[3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23C_fKGuSls

[4] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1rbxisJGJ4

[5] - https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&biw=&bih=&q=site%3...

[∞] - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbSwch2hCQcgy-ecz1Z_guQ

edit: spacing

> The SEC has pushed to keep shell companies out of the hands of fraudsters, who manipulate their shares to make illegal profits through a so-called pump-and-dump scheme.

So if you wondered what a shell company is, one way to get a publicly traded company is to buy the "shell" of an existing company that is already public but wound down operations.

Sort of a take over of just the name, incorporation documents and exchange documents that let it list. You'd then delist and have your shares only trade OTC. This helps explain why they haven't filed any financials for the past few years.

If you look at its trading history, NERO US Equity<HP GO> if you have a Bloomberg terminal, you can see that it traded a few hundred shares a day and slowly climbed up each day. This probably indicates that the shares are very tightly held. So the owners can't really cash out by selling their shares, but they can possibly use the shares as collateral.

Being so tightly held also eliminates the possibility of shorting the company, though shorting any OTC symbol is always a bit sketchy.

For comedic gold visit http://investor.neuromama.com/

There's… a 17-minute rant about Google being bad? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok-8uVR4Pa0

Note the fake NASDAQ symbol.

I only watched 5 minutes of it. Interestingly, Neuromama.com does indeed return Microsoft as the top result for "computer software": https://neuromama.com/get/web/computer+software

But the rest is the same as Google.

Funny because their php app is a Google scraper

Here's the Neuromama Recruitment Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZhI5zRJ8zw

Wow.

A 30 minute recruitment video? This belongs on /r/deepintoyoutube.

Actually, I just posted it.

Never thought I'd see the day two of the sites I frequent most would overlap like this.

This is incredible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hreCQlJB7bE

He says "adventure capitalists" more than a few times, then appears to be possessed

This is amazing.

I like the image with Google, Alibaba, and Facebook on one side of a sports arena and Neuromama on the other. Like they are competing stocks.

This rise in value was orchestrated no doubt.

Gold for sure.

http://investor.neuromama.com/uploads/2/4/6/9/24695823/impor...

> NeuroMama.com is a large online platform, kind of like a large plaza, which has everything you need, and if you will start using NeuroMama, you don't need any other sites.

> NeuroMama.com is the best in the world Search Engine and Social Network, researched, designed, developed and implemented based on Neural Technology and artificial intelligence ..... Developed by the best International team of mathematicians, and computer analysts.

Finally! The dream that was Zombo.com has been realized!

> What can you tell to PREDATORS to have them to STOP DEFRAUD INVESTOR.... or to prevent them from starting to defraud them? The only thing that will work .... that they will GET LIFETIME SENTENCE FOR DEFRAUDING INVESTORS ... because PREDATORS v. INVESTORS is the same thing as MIKE TYSON v. 5 YEAR OLDS.

I feel like it's funniest website I seen in last couple of years. Probably they just too late for the Fools Day.

Here's the "CTO" who appears to be a poorly paid actor reading from cue cards: https://youtu.be/g66rO79QL9w

Their YouTube videos are all amazing. Here's one particularly fun transition: https://youtu.be/g66rO79QL9w?t=9m34s

Stick with it for a few minutes and you can listen to him describe heavy ion fusion in terms of an "angel the size of Los Angeles that runs off nuclear power" while inexplicable jet-skiing videos play in the background.

Edit: Eight minutes later and water sports are still playing behind him. He's talking about Mt. Kilimanjaro now.

I think he's saying "imagine an engine the size of Los Angeles airport", but it's basically "imagine something this company is not going to do".

whoa, this one has their copy running over video of someone plummeting in an aerial silk accident. You can even hear people shouting "Call 911!" over the dubstep soundtrack.

This is so bizarre!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1rbxisJGJ4

FYI: None of the music heard in that video is "dubstep".

This is so weird. It seems like this entire site is something I'd see on "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!".

The youtube goes for days... this is the TimeCube of the 2010s.

I think the crazy and cringe factor is deliberate. Remember the goal is to find short sellers who think this is stuff is overvalued, total failure, crazy etc and then proceed to short sell it.

Not saying owners are not crazy, but in this case crazy happens to also help them.

What is this[1]?!

"To fully understand the difference between our Business Opportunity ad and all the other business opportunity ads you've been reading, the first thing you must know is that we are offering an overflowing profit palette of business 'opportunities', not just a single business 'opportunity.'..."

Plus 30 more paragraphs of similar madness.

[1] http://investor.neuromama.com/licensing-territories.html

I found this on the "Special Password Protected Area for Original Baja California Investors" page:

> Why would it make sense for APPLE Computers to acquire NeuroMama, Ltd.

> (1) If APPLE acquired NeuroMama, Ltd. it could potentially generate $100 billion, by selling advertising, in new revenues per year within 5 years by replacing GOOGLE with Neuromama.com’s Search Engine based on Neural Technology in APPLE's browser - SAFARI. Of course, it no longer will be NeuroMama.com search engine .... it will be APPLE Search Engine.

...what?

> Of course, it no longer will be NeuroMama.com search engine .... it will be APPLE Search Engine.

Of course.

(Sorry bout this folks - just trying to wrap my head around it)

What we seem to know and the unanswered questions:

- this seems to be an atrociously bad startup (their "search engine" proxies Google but can be easily tripped)

- it seems to have been a genuine IPO (2000???) that then failed (see search engine) and yet the outstanding shares trade OTC (between large institutions privately - a very common method)

- the scam that seems to be happening is curious (See good explanation about Eve down thread). The idea is bad scammers can trap genuine hedge funds into a short squeeze on this very rarely traded stock. But no sane hedge fund will short the stock without also buying a call option - and so it seems only insane hedge funds get ripped off here.

My questions:

Why on earth are these stocks still lying around and being traded OTC. This seems the sort of thing that would never get allowed on any genuine exchange (the company could barely fulfill minimum reporting requirements)

Why did anyone take this as a "naked short"? Options trading is risk risk risk and people do this for a living aren't fools. Are they?

Even if this got public in the dotcom boom, why is such a scammy company still allowed to operate with outstanding shares ? I mean they have only just halted trading on a company that proxies Google ... Why give the imprimatur of SEC over the past few years to such crap?

> no sane hedge fund will short the stock without also buying a call option

Short plus a call is a put. If you can buy a call you can just buy a put. Thinly-traded stocks such as this one would not have exchange-listed options.

But no sane hedge fund will short the stock without also buying a call option

Bill Ackman reads this and says "Oh, shit ... you can do that? Why didn't someone tell me that before I lost about $1 billion shorting that POS Herbalife pyramid scheme?"

In other words, sometimes "insane" hedge funds are run by BSDs[1] who are convinced they are the smartest guys in the room. They're so convinced that a stock is worthless that they don't bother doing something prudent like buying protective calls.

And then guys like Carl Icahn buy HLF stock just for the lulz, knowing that they are giving Ackman a very painful galactic wedgie.

Wall Street is definitely Adult Swim. And occasionally joker hedge funds need to be reminded of that.

[1] not Berkeley, but Liar's Poker

They didn't take it as a naked short, that's no longer allowed: they had to borrow to short, and the borrowing was called in.

Presumably they couldn't find someone to write the call option at a reasonable price. Which makes sense for a volatile thinly traded stock.

All their website does is scrape Google and return the results. I found this by causing an error by accident which shockingly exposes this error page: (http://i.imgur.com/w0tgNUA.png)

Was just about to post the same.

https://i.imgur.com/pSWLXIx.png

The rotating carousel backgrounds on their homepage are comically bad Photoshop jobs, and the logo looks like it's traveled here from the early 2000s.

Why on earth does NASDAQ make it look so much like Neuromama (NERO) is a real NASDAQ-listed company? If I was trying to fool investors, this is the link I would use:

http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/nero/stock-chart

The Business Insider headline (original, and yes Business Insider is terrible) from today was quite funny.

"This $35 billion company supposedly owns 'a clone of Amazon’ and is developing atomic fusion — and the SEC thinks something might be wrong."

This makes no sense...OTC stocks are almost never bigger than a billion dollars. This used to be at $28 in 2012, which meant is was still worth over $20 billion but the SEC didn;t notice then. No information about this company. not even a wiki page. I think the $35 billion may be a typo and it's only $35 million. There is something missing in the reporting. Maybe it traded at a penny and went to $55 ,maybe it wound be worth billions but it never got lower than $10

There were strange things going on with the numbers of shares outstanding in 2013, I wouldn't jump to conclusions about historical prices/market-caps without double checking.

Read the (Important Disclosure) pdf at the bottom of http://investor.neuromama.com/ - It's amazingly crazy.

Here: http://investor.neuromama.com/uploads/2/4/6/9/24695823/impor...

It's a 68 page, haphazardly stitched mess of documents. Can't say they're not confident in their product:

From page 37: "NeuroBrowser of NeuroMama.com is the best, easiest to use, and blocks all kind of viruses and pop-outs on your screen...In 2 years the NeuroMama stock will be the most popular and will make NeuroMama shareholders and employees very, very rich. NeuroMama.com is the best Search Engine in the world."

The best description I can find of this "company" lies on page 37: "https://neuromama.com/ - Search Engine based on Artificial Technology....."

"Artificial technology" is an apt way of describing it, too. It's a Google scraper. :)

lmao, well the SEC is going to have to drop the investigation given that spot on disclaimer

My favorite: "I can provide a lot of references, who will say that I always keep my word, although on many occasions due to unforeseen circumstancesit could take longer for me to deliver on my promises."

Wow - They don't even bother actually building a realistic-looking product. Their NeuroMama search engine doesn't seem to work at all and it has pictures of (Russian-looking) priests and clowns in the background.

I think this is pretty much like gambling though... Not so different from how most people deal with the NYSE or NASDAQ (most people know nothing and make decisions based entirely on hype/media). People gamble on horses and lottery, and they also gamble on stocks... I think if someone can pull this off, they deserve the money as much as any legitimate company on the NASDAQ or NYSE.

A lot of these NASDAQ/NYSE companies have overinflated valuations (far beyond their real intrinsic value); it's the same thing except in this case, the intrinsic value is 0.

Who honestly believes this company is worth anywhere near $35B?

A couple of suckers who got conned into buying in at that price.

They're not even trying to make it not look like a scam http://investor.neuromama.com/

I'm reminded of Cormac Herley's theory about Nigerian scammers acknowledging they're from Nigeria because they prefer to deal with people naive enough not to see that as a red flag https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-...

Unlike your average Nigerian scammer, these guys also presumably had the ability to afford a web designer and someone to write copy that looked vaguely legitimate if they'd wanted to. Trouble is, investors that aren't ludicrously unsophisticated are more likely to ask awkward questions and get lawyers involved...

Some poorly bounded automated trading algorithm.

They own the rights to over 60 jazz documentaries plus a search engine and heavy ion fusion tech.

Their Jazz Network is so bizarre... http://investor.neuromama.com/neuromama-library-of-entertain...

$35 sounds a bit high to me...

Tiajuana, Mexico? Siberia? Sounds like the makings for a 'Red Dawn 2: Putin and El Chapo" where Trump is holed up with the NRA as patriotic rebels protecting Hillary, the POTUS ;)

The 2012 film remake of Red Dawn made China the bad guys compared with 1984 original Red Dawn where Russia and Cuba were the bad guys.

But seriously, could this be used to launder money, or the scam wouldn't allow for it based upon the setup of the short squeeze? Could money be put in the system this way and cleaned and turn a profit at the same time?

NeuroMama, LTD. is a development stage company which designs and implements the Internet Platform containing all of the popular components used by majority of population. NeuroPlatform offers its users more search relevancy, privacy and FSR - Frequent Search Rewards. NeuroPlatform consists of NeuroMama.com search engine, based on Neural Technology (Artificial Intelligence), secure e-mail service - Neuro-Mail, NeuroBrowser with a special version for children, NeuroMania social network with multitude of features such as Video management system, marketplace and auction, TviMama.com Video On-Demand and Live Broadcasting Infrastructure, functioning as the next generation Internet Content Distribution Platform (CDP). The NeuroZone online shopping mall is in implementation stage that will offer its users and vendors unique online shopping experiences, provide its e-commerce merchants with ability for instant integration to NeuroZone platform, and reward users for shopping at NeuroZone merchants. The flagship store for NeuroZone will be NeuroMania Department Store with large variety of products sold under the NeuroBrand such as NeuroPad, NeuroPhone, NeuroBook, etc. The company is currently in the process of establishing its presence in China to sell advertising and to establish Joint Ventures with manufacturers in China in order to deliver large profit margins in NeuroMania online store and brick and mortar store locations as part of its licensing program. NeuroMama, Ltd. is in the process of researching, designing and implementing its licensing program to accelerate growth of revenues worldwide. NeuroMama, Ltd. is currently implementing revenue generating infrastructure to sell advertising on its Internet Platform.

http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/NERO

I trade this market professionally, and it is quite easy to massively elevate your stock price if you control most of the floating shares. These sorts of price run-ups happen very regularly, but, to their credit, the SEC normally stops them before they get this far. They are typically able to halt trading by the time it's worth a billion dollars, two tops. :/

TL;DR (DontRead)

Some con artist gets expelled from US after spending 6 years in prison for investment fraud. Tries new pump and dump gig from Mexico called NeuroMama, deliberately hilariously crazy stupid.

Issues some 650M shares, sells 200 for 50$, probably to himself, gets stopped by SEC. Holds the remaining 650M-200 shares, that's where the trillion dollar figure comes from.

Time to stop calling virtual shares 'market cap' or even 'worth'!

That's pretty old and boring, the 'new' attempted twist is called short squeeze, see and thank @thegranderson for explanation.

Shun the Neuromama meme.

This gives a whole new dimension to the word 'pump and dump con artist': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1rbxisJGJ4

I got very nice error from their search engine, revealing a bit where they get results from :)

http://pastebin.com/RnsB33Ea

WHY WOULD THEY JUST SUSPEND THE STOCK TRADING, WHAT IS THE ILEGALITY HERE? THAT THEIR STOCK TRADES AT $56DLLS AND THEY HAVE LOW VOLUME? OR THAT THEY HAVE NOT FILED THEIR FINANCIAL DOCUMENTS? I HAVE READ ON ONE OF THEIR CONTRACTS THAT THEY PERFECTLY STATE THAT THEIR COMPANIE USES INVESTORS CAPITAL SEED TO FUND PROJECTS. WELL LETS JUST WAIT AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS ON THE 26TH OF THIS MONTH

That "search engine" looks like it was never really build to be used. I searched the term "blender" and got this:

`ErrorException in getResults.php line 45:`

https://neuromama.com/get/web/blender

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_i...

This forum post has links to some of their financials which are just comical.

$35 billion market cap, but it looks like the daily volume is never more than ~$200,000...

Screenshot of a search for "8 billion" on neuromama.com http://imgur.com/a/Y1Ior

>To read more about the saga of Cynk, click here.

...with no link to click on

This is like watching a flaming dumpster fire.

Bloomberg's headlines are infuriatingly clickbaity these days.

How so? That article is amazing, and I think the title reflects it.

Blatant penny stock scams /= "a $35 billion stock"

...hence the halting on manipulation concerns

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