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Luckin Coffee Settles USD 175 Mn Class Action Lawsuit Over FraudLuckin denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle while its U.S.-based lawyer did not immediately respond to media requests for comment on Tuesday. After their founding in 2017, Luckin Coffee's hype and share price peaked around early 2020 as they broke out to rival global coffee icon Starbucks. Then Muddy Waters Research dropped a bombshell claim of falsified revenue on behalf of the company to inflate share prices. The internal probe found that its chief operating officer and other staff fabricated about USD 310 million of sales in 2019, or about 40% of annual sales projected by analysts. The SEC stated that Luckin raised more than USD 864 million from equity and debt investors while the fraud was taking place. The Securities and Exchange Commission consequentially delivered accounting fraud civil charges and fined Luckin USD 180 million last December. Then came the fall from grace. Within two months their share price sank more than 80%. Shares are now trading around USD 15 as the stock is up an impressive 220% in the past year. Their unaudited financials for the first half of 2021 show that they achieved a 16% store-level profit margin and that net revenues increased over 106% resulting from higher net selling prices and an increase in items sold. They've still managed to achieve positive revenue growth amidst all of the settlement fees and negative publicity. Luckin Coffee also still manages to operate around 5,259 stores in China maintaining a firm presence. Things should be looking up for Luckin as the clouds clear while investors can capitalize on their refocus.
OTC:LKNCY
by EqualOcean
Tether Concerns And Why They Matter BACKGROUND Tether launched in 2014, and quickly became the world's largest stablecoin, with a current market value of almost $70 billion. In order to assure buyers that Tether is Legitimate, Tether claimed it had cash reserves equal in value to the stablecoins it issued. That means that 1 Tether Has 1 U.S Dollar backing it. The US government found that wasn’t at all true. During a period from 2016 to 2018, the CFTC found that Tether held 27.6% of the value of issued stablecoins in fiat currency reserves. The Commission filed and settled charges with Tether that the company made “untrue or misleading statements and omissions of material fact.” The company insisted it always had enough money in reserve, saying in response to the CFTC fine that “There is no finding that tether tokens were not fully backed at all times—simply that the reserves were not all in cash and all in a bank account titled in Tether’s name, at all times.” Tether has also invested some of its reserves in Chinese commercial paper. A document detailing the reserves of Tether Holdings Ltd reveals that Tether has given billions of dollars in short-term loans to large Chinese companies. Tether has also been offering billions of dollars in crypto-backed loans. Some of these loans have Bitcoin as collateral. However, Tether’s lawyers claim that these secured loans are low risk since the borrowers have put up bitcoin that’s way more worth than their borrowings. Just recently, Alex Mashinsky, CEO of Celsius Network, was the latest person to claim that Tether’s stablecoin tokens aren’t fully backed by dollar reserves. “ If you give them enough collateral, liquid collateral, bitcoin, ethereum and so on . . . they will mint tether against it,” Mashinsky told the Financial Times. He explained that new USDT is issued directly for the loan, and then destroyed after so it doesn’t permanently increase the amount of Tether in circulation. Should this occur as Mashinsky describes, it would be in contradiction of Tether’s own terms of service: “Tether will not issue Tether Tokens for consideration consisting of the Digital Tokens (for example, bitcoin); only money will be accepted upon issuance.” Short-seller Hindenburg just set a $1,000,000 ‘bounty’ for details on Tether’s reserves. SO WHY DOES THIS MATTER? In May, Tether published details of its reserves in a pie chart. The breakdown showed it had 75.9% in "cash and cash equivalents." However, looking at that in more detail, only a small proportion of the 75.9% is held in cash: * 65.4% is in commercial paper. That equates to almost half of Tether's total reserves. * 3.9% is in cash. That equates to 2.9% of its total reserves. Commercial paper is a type of short-term loan that's usually made to corporations. The trouble is that Tether hasn't released information about what types of loans it has made. We don't know who the borrowers are or what types of debt it is. Most importantly, we don't know how easy it would be for Tether to access that money. Bitcoin as well as Altcoins are often paired in USDT. Meaning it isn’t real U.S dollars that are being used to purchase cryptos but instead Tether Dollars. Sure you may have used your hard earned dollars to attain Tether dollars but that money goes to Tether, you in return receive tether dollars that are then used to buy crypto. USDT volume often ranges from 50% to 80%, which is higher than any other crypto on the market. Exchange data clearly shows USDT is mainly fueling Bitcoin’s price valuation, which is deeply concerning. Bitcoin mainly rises during times when Tether is seen injecting hundreds of millions into Bitcoin. And during the periods they stopped, we saw major market corrections. When Tether released their questionable pie chart showing the breakdown of their reserves, Bitcoin dropped by another 53% and lost over $520 billion in market cap. Which was also during a period in which tether stopped printing. SO WHY DOES THIS REALLY MATTER? It’s evident that Tether is the glue holding up the crypto markets. With its potential insolvency, we could see a crypto-liquidity crisis which will create extreme levels of panic and fear amongst investors. Since Tether only has 2.9% of its supply backed by actual cash that means that if enough investors decided to convert from Tether back into U.S dollars simultaneously, Tether simply wouldn’t have enough cash to go around. Meaning the value of Tether could actually go far below 1 USD. Nobody can be sure of what will happen in the future but this is just something to be aware of. I love crypto and believe in the technology. I am just not sold on the legitimacy of the current evaluations of top projects. Should Tether go down it would not mean the end of crypto. It would just be a catastrophic event and would go down as the largest case of fraud in history. Thank you for reading. I will attach all sources below. www.coindesk.com www.fool.com cryptowhale.medium.com www.ft.com blockworks.co qz.com www.coinspeaker.com
by Nutty_Trader
3
Elon Musk the crook of the century part 2People defending Elon Skum, this shameless charlatan carnival barking pathological liar. As always, they ignore the evidence and their "points" are about how I smell like pee-pee, how we that criticize the biggest scammer of the century hate him because we are jealous, got rejected by the opposite gender etc. I am serious when I say he is the crook of the century. His lies, by their numbers, and by their grandiose nature, are so big, a part 2 was necessary. Take Enron. Big. But Elon scams are much bigger and there are several of them. At least Tesla is much bigger than Enron. Elizabeth Holmes? Quite the manipulator. But Elon tricked way more money AND way more people. And convinced them of even more grandiose claims. Tell me he is not a crook when: - While trying to sell SolarCity to Tesla by convincing shareholders, he went to the set of desperate housewives and claimed the house behind him was covered in solar panels that worked. Not only did they not work but THERE WERE NO SOLAR PANELS AT ALL. It was just a regular house and he completely fabricated a lie. Unarguable & undeniable. A big fat lie. SolarCity was deep in debt, and who did the sale of it to Tesla benefit? Elon and his 2 cousins. And what did he do with the company after the purchase? Fire most employees, and over 10 years divide the energy it generated by 10. - Tesla bought cells from China - to build solar roofs - rather than their declared partner Panasonic, to keep costs down. Their solar roofs that since then have a tendency to catch fire :) - Buffalo Billion: Elon Musk scammed Cuomo, assuming he was not in on it. New York taxpayers were defrauded of $1 billion (958 million) to build a Tesla solar panel factory In Buffalo. Auditors went to the factory and concluded the whole thing and the equipment inside was worth just under $75 million. Where did the remaining 880 millions go? He didn't just make gullible investor money disappear, but even an entire state now! - Another reason why he is the crook of the century: He somehow tricked NASA. See, they're not that smart! NASA became reliant on SpaceX to send astronauts to the ISS, obvious spaceTroll did not deliver, and then NASA spent billions for seats on Soyuz rockets and later I think Boeing. - In September 2016 SpaceX destroyed Facebook satellite, months after Elon Crook announced his competing Starlink, and right after destroying FB satellite and setting them years behind, Elon Skum proceeded to put his Starlink in orbit. No conclusive evidence that I know of, but who knows what we may find with time? - Neuralink is trying to link prosthesic arms with minds, to help amputees. Elon Musk, being the perosn he is, simply can't help but lie. He just cannot resist lying, it's in his nature. So he came up with nonsense and told the whole world about Neuralink allowing humans to do telepathy (I just crack up when I hear this, how does the room not just explode in tears of laughter when they hear this?), he added the magical technology could be used to play video games, download a new skill in your head (wat?), and transfer your soul to a younger body (???). How ignorant do his fans have to be to fall for this? It's like I start building a rocking chair and then make claims about how next I'll design it to throw delivery packages around the world, how I'll build an improved rocking chair that will send (catapult) people to the moon, it will be motorized to enable fast travel with its rocking power! Sounds absolutely ridiculous and more than far fetched? Welcome to Musk world. It's a mystery to anyone that understands anything about absolutely anything, how people can listen to his crazy ramblings. - New York again! During the early covid pandemic, Elon Skum promised NYC ventilators. You know, the big machines you can find for 30,000 euros. What he sent was... some weird sleep apnea boxes you can find on Amazon for a few hundred bucks. And not even new ones but second hands. He put them in boxes, slapped a few Tesla stickers on the boxes, and called it a day. Some people actually fell for that. "Ventilators" XD It's really funny. The people that fell for this are today nowhere to be find, probably they returned to their homes in the sewers to avoid being made fun of. Compare this to british billionaire inventor Sir James Dyson who in 10 days designed a ventilator, sold 10,000 to the UK and donated 5,000 to hospitals with an urgent need. Of course he didn't get much praise as he was a vocal supporter of Brexiters, you probably didn't even hear of it. Elon Musk should take notes, this is what a genius inventor should look like. 10 days. Elon Musk could not even figure out what a ventilator looks like. Man how did this clown send plastic sleep apnea devices? I'm dying 😂 Even I, with 0 medical knowledge, I even quit biology at school at 15, could tell the difference immediately. Elon Musk in his close to 30 years career has only made grandiose promises, has never designed anything legit, and has NEVER EVER delivered. Haha remember when he had a plan to save the kids trapped in a cave? Please tell me this crook crazy ramblings won't turn into a religion. Take the craziest things religions claim. Elon Musk claims are often even crazier, and scientifically less plausible. At least religions did not claim it was reality but magic and the power of god. Musk is saying he's using rational science. And some people believe him 🤦‍♂️.
NASDAQ:TSLA
by MrRenev
12
Is Bitcoin's recent bull run part of an exit scam by Tether?Introduction Financial Twitter is buzzing about an article on the "Crypto Anonymous" blog which alleges that Bitcoin's recent 4x price increase is part of an "exit scam" by the folks at Tether, Ltd. (An "exit scam" is when a company that knows it's about to go bust quickly extracts as much money from its customers as it can.) Here's a link to the Crypto Anonymous piece: crypto-anonymous-2021.medium.com The Allegations The highlights from the article are as follows: 1) 70% of Bitcoin's inflow is denominated in Tether coins. The Tether inflow comes through exchanges like Binance, Bit-Z, and HitBTC that have not met the regulatory requirements to get direct access to the US banking system. It seems that users on these exchanges are trading their state-backed currencies for Tether coins and then trading their Tether coins for Bitcoins. 2) People apparently use these unregulated exchanges rather than a more respectable platform like Coinbase for two reasons. First, the unregulated exchanges allow users to trade with up to 100x leverage. (That's an insane amount of leverage.) And second, they do a lot of promotions where they give away free Tether coins in exchange for users completing "timed missions" like inviting friends onto the exchanges. 3) Tether Ltd. is currently under investigation by the Office of the Attorney General for the Southern District of New York. Every Tether coin is supposed to be backed by a US dollar. But for various reasons, journalists and regulators suspect that Tether may not actually have the amount of reserve currency they say they do. Tether refuses to submit to a third-party audit, which is a huge red flag. The Crypto Anonymous post argues that "Tether Ltd.’s bank is Deltec bank in the Bahamas, and the Bahamas discloses how much foreign currency its domestic banks hold each month. The answer was — at least up to the end of September 2020 — not nearly enough. . . . The implication was shocking: there weren’t nearly enough dollars in all the domestic banks in the Bahamas to back the Tethers that were floating around in the crypto market." 4) After the NY AG announced its court filing against Tether, the company accelerated the creation of new blocks of Tether coins. The Crypto Anonymous post suggests that Tether execs see the writing on the wall with the pending case against them in New York, so they are quickly creating as many unbacked Tether coins as possible, using them to manipulate the price of Bitcoin through unregulated exchanges, and then walking away with US dollars. Assessing the Allegations Regarding point number 3, David Fauchier of Nickel Digital argues that the fact that there aren't enough US dollars in all of the Bahamas to back the existing Tether coins is not conclusive, because Deltec isn't Tether's only bank and could also have deposit accounts outside the Bahamas. (Find Fauchier's full rebuttal on Twitter: twitter.com) However, even Fauchier admits there is no good-faith reason for Tether to refuse to submit to a third-party audit. This is classic behavior for a company engaged in fraud. On point number 4, the post gets into some sketchy territory. Crypto Anonymous points out that the new blocks of Tether coins are being created in suspiciously round numbers, but Fauchier argues that that's because of the nature of Tether's coin creation process. Rather than create new Tether coins at the moment a user submits a creation request, Tether creates blocks of them in advance and then uses these blocks to fulfill creation requests. Fauchier also points out that the acceleration in new coin creation is exactly what we'd expect to see in a Bitcoin bull market. If users are primarily buying Bitcoin with Tether, then increased demand for Bitcoin means increased demand for Tether. CryptoAnonymous also probably over-emphasizes promotions that give Tether coins away in exchange for user referrals. He argues that respectable exchanges like Coinbase don't run these types of promotions, which suggests that the payoff isn't actually worth it from a business standpoint. Coinbase may not run such promotions, but lots of stock brokers like Robinhood and Webull do. These sorts of promotions aren't evidence that Tether coins are being created out of thin air. And while such promotions might help attract users to the unregulated exchanges, they aren't big enough to move the needle on Bitcoin's price. What could affect Bitcoin's price is if, as CryptoAnonymous suggests, Tether, Ltd. is either directly buying Bitcoin with newly created Tether coins ("almost certainly through a deniable proxy trading account") or is creating large amounts of unbacked Tether coins to provide users on the unregulated exchanges with massive amounts of Tether-denominated leverage. One or both of those things may be the case, although CryptoAnonymous doesn't offer any conclusive proof. The Takeaway To summarize, I am not fully convinced by CryptoAnonymous's allegation that Bitcoin's recent 4x price increase is the result of an exit scam by Tether. There's certainly smoke here, however, and the fact that 70% of Bitcoin's inflows are denominated in Tether is alarming given the open criminal case against Bitfinex and Tether, Ltd. If Tether were to be shut down for fraud, many of those flows might go away. And the apparently large amounts of leverage in the market are also concerning, because any external shock (such as a criminal finding against Tether) could result in margin calls and forced selling. That's how market crashes happen. In conclusion, Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrency) traders may want to be careful in light of these revelations. It's easy to lose your shirt if you've got too much of your money in a single asset class. Personally, I like to be well-diversified into a wide range of asset classes such as stocks, bonds, metals, real estate, and cash. Do your own due diligence; this is not investment advice.
BITSTAMP:BTCUSDShort
by ChristopherCarrollSmith
29
A historic and unprecedented example of market manipulationIn an unprecedented move, today a large number of brokers has committed what many consider to be blatant and transparent market manipulation and defrauding of their own clients. The list includes Robinhood, Interactive Brokers (IBKR), Merrill Lynch, Webull, Tastyworks, Trading 212, and ETrade among others. They did so by going through with a coordinated effort and simultaneously forbidding their clients from buying a handful of stocks, most notably GME and AMC. Thus, they took millions of buyers away from the market, creating an environment in which only selling is an option. When virually all investors can only sell a security, and buying is removed from the equation, as everyone would assume, the stock drops. The move came a day after numerous large and powerful hedge funds (some of which it has to be noted, own and control large portions of some of the affected brokers, or have other business relationships with them) were exposed as having already lost billions on shorting the stocks in question. As such, the motivation of such a decidedly lopsided halt is on its face highly suspicious, unprecedented, and has cost the affected brokers' retail clients billions of dollars collectively. It is being reported that lawsuits are already about to be filed due to this event, against both the offendors and as an effort to prevent these practices from occuring in the future, with members of both major US parties and numeroud high-profile investors speaking out about the manipulative act that occured today. However, there is still no word on most of the brokers' future plans on lifting the "one-way halt" or keeping it in place.
NYSE:AMC
by yourpalVal
8
MEAT.C - spectacular short opportunity; insiders alleged fraudsModern Meat (CSE:MEAT) is the poster child for everything that is wrong with the Canadian capital markets and the complete lack of oversight by regulators. Check IPO SEDAR filings, check insider names and find that most of them, including the CEO Tara Haddad, were named in the still ongoing Bridgemark investigation by BCSC. For those who are not aware, this is the largest fraud investigation in the history of Canadian capital markets. Google “BCSC Bridgemark” and insider names for more info. Same SEDAR filings show insiders were awarded millions of shares at .05 as well as share purchase warrants. The stock is trading close to $4 at the time of this writing, thanks to hundreds of thousands of $$ being spent on promotion. Latest financials show no revenues, $540K in cash and $390K in liabilities. For the company with over $100M market cap!!! Latest news release (check SEDAR because they kept it away from the wires) has them selling .05 warrants to finance over $600K of promotion over a period of 2 months. There is much more to this and I suggest doing some Googling and checking ceo.ca and Twitter for more DD, but this is an absolutely insane valuation for what appears to be a nearly worthless shell run by the worst possible people imaginable.
CSE:MEATShort
by wealth_bakery
3
I couldn't resist rolling the diceI rolled the dice on a far out-of-the-money July 31 Tesla put this afternoon after Elon Musk tweeted at the SEC to suck his cock. If I'm wrong, it's no big deal to lose $60. If I'm right, maybe I'll make a quick c-note when news of an accounting fraud investigation breaks. Possibly relevant: www.valuewalk.com twitter.com Tesla is also under investigation by the NHTSA for allegedly covering up an issue with their battery cooling system that they knew could set the car on fire. My put might pay off if that investigation were to turn something up, too. On top of all that, Tesla shot up over the last few days on hype around its delivery numbers. So we may be in the "sell the news" part of the stock's cycle as we head into next week. I promised myself I would never short this stock, but what can I say? I'm an inveterate gambler, apparently. XD
NASDAQ:TSLAShort
by ChristopherCarrollSmith
21
Don't bet against justice; Wirecard to zeroIf you've been following the Wirecard story today, you've heard the big news: 1.9 billion Euros that were supposedly in a trust have gone "missing," and the trustee in charge of it has been suspended. Here's what's getting a lot less play: activist short sellers have been warning about Wirecard's fraudulent accounting practices for *years*. The money likely isn't missing; rather, it never existed in the first place. In effect, it appears Wirecard engaged in accounting fraud to inflate its revenues, to the tune of the last seven years of its net profit. What's worse, this apparently just scratches the surface of the hijinks that Wirecard has been up to. As Invisibilia reported a few days ago, it appears that Wirecard hired a black hat hacking firm in India to harass the activists who accused it of fraud. "Private investigators" followed the short sellers and showed up to intimidate them at their homes. German regulators have not only systematically refused to go after Wirecard, but in fact have gone after the short-sellers instead. Wirecard is involved in/connected to the electronic gambling and pornography industries, so I would not be surprised to learn this is all mafia-connected. The activist short sellers accuse them of money laundering. Financial Twitter is widely comparing Wirecard's revenue fraud to Enron, but this situation feels more like if Enron's CEO were Tony Soprano. Bottom line, the truth will out and I think it's only a matter of time before Wirecard is delisted. Short sellers are often accused of betting against propsperity, but in this case it's safe to say they are betting on justice, transparency, and the rule of law.
WShort
by ChristopherCarrollSmith
4
Lucking Coffee fraud scandal: Retail Investors rush in to buy 💩 Quoting: "The Chinese coffee chain has now suspended its chief operating officer Jian Liu and staff reporting to him. It comes after the company appointed a special committee to investigate issues in its financial statements for 2019. Luckin, which competes with Starbucks, had been one of China's few successful US stock market listings last year. The Nasdaq-listed company said its investigation had found that fabricated sales from the second quarter of last year to the fourth quarter amounted to about 2.2bn yuan ($310m; £250m). That equates to about 40% of its estimated annual sales." "On Monday, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said a group of lenders is putting 76.3 million of Luckin’s American depositary shares up for sale, after an entity controlled by Luckin Chairman Charles Zhengyao Lu defaulted on the terms of a $518 million margin loan. Goldman is acting as a “disposal agent” for the lenders, meaning that it is helping to facilitate the sale in one or more transactions." So what happens when this happens? Retail investors step in of course ^^ LK is not available on Robintrack anymore, but here are screenshots from a few hours after the gape. Do note that trading got halted 3 days after, so the number of bagholders had time to go much much higher: static.seekingalpha.com Biggest grower on robinhood (the stock with the most recent buyers): static.seekingalpha.com CCL is carnival, they are second, AAL is american airlines, they are third, DAL is Delat Airlines, F is Ford. Great buys! Ok I am done, I going to post a new idea where I explain why IQ is eliminatory. It's not what differentiates 2 successful investors, but it's what differentiates successful and failed. Those with too low abilities don't even stand a chance. How stupid does one have to be to scoop up that cheap poop? I am now searching for investor accounts, and will screenshot some of them for posterity, because everytime they disappear. They argue and argue and talk and talk and make claims, and then disappear and history forgets. Today it's like no one was bullish on Enron, no one was euphoric, no one was convinced it would go up, no one ridiculed the bears. LOL! Here are a few quotes from various investors I am screenshoting: Press F for the experts in the media: www.fool.com Press F for CNBC: www.cnbc.com www.msn.com Here the CNBC article interview of Jim Chanos. It's from the 2 April and he just had closed his short. So 2 days (well 4) before trading got halted. www.cnbc.com And this is important to remember. You could end up with a short that you cannot close and have to pay interest forever. With CFDs it maye be different. Options could expire worthless. When companies have big reports of fraud, it is typical for trading to be halted. And something that gaps 70% down... Imagine you're up 80-90%, what's the point of holding? Better to close and perhaps re-short or wait for a pullback offered by retail investors. Just a few more of the finest quotes. My gawd this ponzi has so many bulls! A mix of baggies and other funny stocktwits: Baggies only: 1 bear had this to say: $LK when is reverse split? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! There is just so much bagginess. Those social networks are a nest of baggies. It's like kicking in an ant's nest, hordes are coming out to defend their bag. 2 possibilities when the price moves: -> Goes up. All the baggies celebrate and say "told you so" as they breakeven or get out with micro wins. -> Goes down. Never hear from them again.
L
by MrRenev
2
Luckin's not Lucky...Breaking today, Lukin's COO (Jian Liu) said to have fabricated sales in a massive overstatement of 2019 revs. But by how much? Previously stated sales in 2019 were 2.9 billion yuan ($413 million). Overstated 2019 sales by about 2.2 billion yuan ($310 million). So essentially... -75.86 % of their revenue was overstated! Incredibly surprising... but this goes to show how easy it is to obfuscate information and not have someone follow up with fundamental research. Worrisome for the region as well.
LShort
by CrosbyVenture
4
BOEING VIRTUALLY BANKRUPT WITHOUT A BAILOUT This will be one a the biggest financial scandal of all time and a symbol of CEO incompetence , misappropriated rewards and criminal Fraud/ cheating / negligence at its highest level without consequences for the said CEO This is an encouragement for all greedy CEO to take the highest risk possible to gain short term bonus at the expense of the long term consequences on the company viability Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing's former CEO, left the company with $80.7 million in pay and benefits, after being fired over two aircraft crashes that killed 346 people in total. Now he can add to this the collapse of boeing He will be the only one benefiting from his criminal actions and has been paid hundreds of millions for doing it over the last 5 years He deserves to be prosecuted and sue until he got no money left and his family Justice need to be made
NYSE:BAShort
by PhilippeDelpCFA
7