A@P; Amr &quot;Anthony&quot; Elgindy Discussion; Anthony@Pacific

http://biz.yahoo.com/ts/000517/kansas_00...

Top 153. May 24, 2000 9:45 AM

» Kirk - Anthony@FederalDetention.gov

TheStreet.com - View from TSC
This Silicon Investor Is Now Anthony@FederalDetention.gov

Felony mail fraud charges bring Anthony Elgindy, known for message board postings, a fine and prison time.

By Robert Kowalski
Staff Reporter

Short-seller and flamboyant Internet message board poster Anthony Elgindy was sentenced Monday by a Texas judge to a $20,000 fine and four months in a federal prison for felony mail fraud.

Elgindy, a former Nasdaq market maker and broker who's well known for his Internet postings critical of various publicly traded companies, also must spend four months in a work-release-type house confinement and three years on probation after finishing his prison term.

U.S. District Court Judge Terry Means, of the Northern District of Texas , ordered Elgindy to report to a federal detention facility on June 11. He rejected Elgindy's request for a lesser sentence of probation.

"I think it's fair because the judge said it's fair," Elgindy, 32, said in a phone conversation Tuesday.

Elgindy pleaded guilty to the mail fraud charge in February, after he was charged in a nine-count insurance fraud indictment. (TSC wrote about his plea in February.)

The indictment had alleged that Elgindy received compensation from securities firms while he was also fraudulently receiving disability benefits from an insurance company. The mail fraud charge stemmed from the method of delivery for the disability checks.

"I have no hard feelings whatsoever toward the prosecutor. I have no hard feelings whatsoever toward the judge," said Elgindy, who lives in San Diego.

David Jarvis, an assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Elgindy's case, said he was satisfied with the judge's ruling Monday.

"That sentence is the minimum that the judge had to give him," Jarvis said. "He wasn't the transformed man that they made him out to be."

Elgindy, who posts messages about companies under the alias Anthony@Pacific on the Silicon Investor message boards and maintains a Web site, said he doesn't know if he'll be able to continue posting messages from prison. "I don't know if there's Internet access or not," he said.

In a posting on Silicon Investor early Tuesday, he bid his readers a temporary goodbye.

Elgindy also said he didn't know if he'd return to posting messages about companies on message boards after he is released. But he said there's some value to his opinions about fraudulent activities in business because he's able to "use my own knowledge of how these scumbags work, because I used to be a scumbag."

"I'm stuck in this role of bad guy who exposes bad guys," he added. But, "I'm just a young guy trying to earn an honest living."

See TheStreet.com's full site for more of its unique insider's perspective on Wall Street. Try a 30-day subscription for free!

-- posted by Kirk

Top 154. May 25, 2000 5:42 AM

» Whirlwind - Saw a story on A@A on MSNBC's stock talk a few weeks back...

They tacked on at the end a blurb about his mail fraud conviction. Serves him right. Let it follow him around wherever he goes. He's so quick to point out how others are defrauding while he's raking the dough in himself likewise.

-- posted by Whirlwind

Top 155. May 25, 2000 5:44 AM

» Rande - Kind of odd that the story seems to say he got dinged on a disab

Kind of odd that the story seems to say he got dinged on a disability fraud charge (using the mails was the hook). Totally unrelated to the realm of securities?

-- posted by Rande

Top 156. May 25, 2000 6:29 AM

» Kirk - It is odd

I read A@P's side of it on SI but forgot where so I didn't post the link.

From memory, so this COULD be wrong...

He was suffering from depression at the time.
(and I believe he was being treated for it)
This was when he was a securities dealer which is a stressful job. I think this quote says it well: "use my own knowledge of how these scumbags work, because I used to be a scumbag."

People that are suffering from depression often do things that they later regret.

Anthony admitted he did wrong and is taking his punishment like a man.

SOMETIMES, people that are successful at exposing fraud in others often become targets of very powerful people.

-- posted by Kirk

Top 157. May 25, 2000 7:34 AM

» Whirlwind - Rande, Kirk

He knew it was wrong to take the money and he did anyway. I don't care if it was securities related or not. He defrauded, period, and points fingers everywhere else. The only powerful person involved here was his own conscience and it wasn't powerful enough.

-- posted by Whirlwind

.
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk...

Top 158. May 23, 2002 6:54 AM

» Kirk - 5/23: Anthony in the News Again... not good

Well, A@P is the front page lead in the WSJ tomorrow. Fame@last, I guess.

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB10220...

PAGE ONE

FBI Agent Charged With Using Secret Records for Stock Scheme

By AARON ELSTEIN, LAURIE P. COHEN and GARY FIELDS
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

May 23,2002

The government charged an FBI agent and a former one with giving stock traders confidential information about criminal probes of public companies, in a short-selling scheme that profited by spreading unfavorable information to drive stock prices down.

The scheme was allegedly headed by Anthony Elgindy, a colorful and controversial investing figure who also is known on the Internet as Anthony@Pacific, according to an indictment announced by the U.S. Attorney's office for New York's Eastern District in Brooklyn.

The government alleged that Mr. Elgindy received information from the FBI insiders, who used the bureau's databases to tip him about public companies facing criminal problems or investigations. Then, according to the indictment, he used the information to sell the companies' shares short, advise others to do the same -- and to extort stock from companies that feared manipulation of their shares.

A short-seller unloads borrowed shares for a profit when a stock declines, so exclusive access to unfavorable information would be valuable. The six-count indictment alleged that the scheme thrived on confidential information supplied by two rogue agents -- Jeffrey A. Royer, who left the FBI's employ last December to join Mr. Elgindy's trading operation, and Lynn Wingate, who joined the bureau in 1999 and was relieved of duty Tuesday night.

U.S. V. ELGINDY, ET AL

See the full text of the indictment, by arrangement with Findlaw. To view the document, Adobe Acrobat is required.

Both are accused of providing confidential information to help Mr. Elgindy decide which companies to target. "The allegations in the indictment reveal a shocking partnership between an experienced stock manipulator and law-enforcement agents, undertaken for their illicit personal financial gain," said U.S. Attorney Alan Vinegrad in a prepared statement.

White-collar crime experts voiced shock at the allegations, especially the FBI agents' alleged involvement. "I've never come across a case like this one," said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor who heads the government investigations practice at the Newark law firm of McCarter & English. "It seems incredibly bold to use the government's own resources to orchestrate a stock-manipulation scheme."

He said the confidential information allegedly used in the scheme -- from the FBI's Automated Case Support and National Crime Information Center databases -- would be a "gold mine" of information. The databases contain information about companies and individuals under criminal investigation and their criminal histories, as well as information about civil investigations undertaken by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Two additional Elgindy traders, Derrick Cleveland and Troy Peters, were charged along with the other three with racketeering and securities fraud conspiracy. Messrs. Elgindy, Royer and Peters were also charged with extortion conspiracy. Ms. Wingate and Messrs. Elgindy and Royer face additional charges of obstructing a grand jury probe of the allegations. The most serious charge against each defendant carries a prison term of up to 20 years.

A person who answered Mr. Elgindy's cellphone said he wasn't available for comment. Calls to Mr. Elgindy's firm, Pacific Equity Investigations, of San Diego, weren't returned. Messrs. Royer, Wingate, Cleveland and Peters couldn't be reached. The government said all five defendants were arrested on Tuesday -- Messrs. Elgindy and Peters in California, Ms. Wingate and Mr. Royer in New Mexico, where they were most recently assigned with the FBI, and Mr. Cleveland in Oklahoma.

Stephen T. McCue, a court-appointed federal defender who represented Ms. Wingate at Tuesday's hearing, said she is now assigned to the drug squad. He said she is "a solid line agent who has done a number of different things in her time." He said Ms. Wingate "intends to plead not guilty." Mr. McCue said that her financial resources are "limited" and that counsel will be appointed for her in New York.

David Kitchen, who was Special Agent in Charge of the Albuquerque FBI office at the time of Ms. Wingate's arrival, says she came to work for him fresh out of the FBI's training academy in Quantico, Va., in the fall of 1999. Mr. Kitchen says Ms. Wingate was assigned to the bureau's bank robbery squad for about six months and was then "moved up" to the white-collar crime squad, possibly putting her in touch with publicly traded companies under scrutiny. At the time Mr. Kitchen left the FBI, in May 2000, Ms. Wingate was just getting started in her new assignment.

"I am really surprised to hear she could be involved in something like that," Mr. Kitchen said.

Court Date

Ms. Wingate was released on her own recognizance. Mr. Royer was released but must wear an electronic bracelet. Both have been ordered to appear on noon next Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie in Brooklyn. Doug Couleur, the court-appointed counsel for Mr. Royer, said he will have a different court appointed counsel in New York next week, where Mr. Royer plans to plead "not guilty."

The indictment didn't say how much money the defendants netted from the scheme, though Mr. Royer was alleged to have been paid $30,425 while he was still an FBI agent. In a separate action authorities filed a civil suit seeking to seize funds from numerous accounts held by Messrs. Elgindy and Royer, as well as Mr. Elgindy's Rolls Royce, Bentley, Jaguar and Hummer automobiles and his $2.2 million home.

The indictment says that starting in 2000, Messrs. Elgindy and Cleveland "corruptly induced" Mr. Royer to provide them with confidential law-enforcement information about companies whose stock they had sold short. After leaving the FBI to join Mr. Elgindy's operation, it says, Mr. Royer allegedly persuaded Ms. Wingate to provide similar information from FBI databases.

In one alleged instance, Mr. Royer found criminal-history information in an FBI database about Paul Brown, chief executive of Nuclear Solutions Inc., a small company based in Meridian, Idaho, and passed it to Mr. Elgindy, who shorted the stock and distributed a report to his subscribers last December calling Mr. Brown "a convicted felon." Nuclear Solutions' stock fell sharply in the aftermath of Mr. Elgindy's report. Nuclear Solutions officials couldn't be reached for comment.

The indictment says Messrs. Elgindy and Peters would use the confidential information they collected from the FBI to make "extortionate demands" on companies that they knew were being investigated by federal authorities. Once these demands were satisfied, the indictment says, Mr. Elgindy would tell subscribers to his Web site to exit their short positions and cease disseminating "negative information" about the company being targeted.

Internet Celebrity

Mr. Elgindy, a 34-year-old native of Cairo, Egypt, became something of a celebrity among Internet investors during the headiest days of the technology-stock bubble. His messages on such stock-chat sites as Silicon Investor, usually recommending investors sell shares he deemed overpriced, were widely followed. Silicon Investor members demanded Mr. Elgindy be reinstated after he was suspended from the site in 1999 when his remarks got a little too caustic. He later started his own Web sites, AnthonyPacific.com and InsideTruth.com, charging people up to $600 a month to see his picks first and read his often colorful comments.

Mr. Elgindy has a history of run-ins with criminal authorities and securities-industry regulators. In May 2000, he was sentenced to four months in federal prison and three years of probation for fraudulently collecting disability payments between May 1994 and February 1995 while he continued to work as a stockbroker at Bear Stearns. In 1997, he was fined $30,000 by the National Association of Securities Dealers for stock-trading violations in 1993 that included improperly using a trading system for retail customers. The NASD revoked Mr. Elgindy's membership in 1998 after he stopped making payments on the fine.

Mr. Elgindy's wasn't shy about expressing opinions about his field. Once, after a person posted on the Internet a fake Bloomberg News story saying that PairGain Technologies Inc. would be acquired, he seemed to decry such tactics. "The Internet has become the world's largest conference call," Mr. Elgindy said an Associated Press article. "And plenty of the people talking about stocks have hidden motives for what they're saying."

When he was convicted in 2000 on federal charges of mail fraud, Mr. Elgindy was forthcoming in acknowledging his misdeed. "I was a stupid kid and I did a stupid thing," he said then. "I can't hold others accountable if I'm not held up to the same standards. I have no hard feelings toward anybody."

Wow!

-- posted by Kirk

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http://www.usatoday.com/money/general/20...

Top 159. May 23, 2002 7:00 AM

» Kirk - 5/23: USA TODAY Story

05/23/2002 - Updated 08:44 AM ET

Stock scam allegedly abuses FBI database

By Adam Shell, USA TODAY

NEW YORK — The FBI, already under fire for intelligence failures related to Sept. 11, got more bad news Wednesday: A special agent and former agent were indicted for allegedly helping a Web stock tout pull off an insider-trading scam.

Prosecutors charged agent Lynn Wingate and Jeffrey Royer, a former agent who quit in December, with lifting damaging information on public companies from confidential FBI databases and giving it to trader Amr "Tony" Elgindy.

Elgindy, the alleged mastermind of the scheme, profited from the leaks by "shorting" the stocks of the targeted companies through a Canadian brokerage firm. He then launched smear campaigns via Internet sites he ran in an attempt to drive the stock prices down and inflate his profits. (In a short sale, an investor sells borrowed stock with the hope of buying it back later at a lower price.)

"The allegations reveal a shocking partnership between an experienced stock manipulator and law enforcement agents," says U.S. Attorney Alan Vinegrad.

The indictment included charges of insider trading, extortion and obstruction of justice.

As payment for sharing the inside secrets, prosecutors allege that Royer, while still working for the FBI, received $30,425 in four wire transfers in 2000 and 2001 from Elgindy's associate, Derrick Cleveland. Troy Peters, who allegedly helped Elgindy manipulate stock prices, was also charged.

In March and April, Wingate accessed the FBI database to see if Elgindy or any of the four other defendants were the subject of an FBI investigation. Royer was also accused of a similar act in October 2001. That resulted in an obstruction of justice charge.

"That a current and former FBI special agent are among the defendants is particularly distressing," says Kevin Donovan, assistant director-in-charge of the FBI investigation in New York.

This isn't the first time Elgindy, who gained a wide following on the Silicon Investor stock chat site under the alias Anthony@Pacific, has run afoul of the law. In May 2000, he was sentenced to four months in federal prison by a Texas judge for felony mail fraud.

Elgindy and Cleveland also allegedly extorted stock from companies in exchange for agreeing to stop their smear campaigns.

Contact information for the defendants was not available Wednesday night. Each could face up to 20 years in prison.

And in a civil forfeiture action, prosecutors are seeking cash from Elgindy's and Royer's bank accounts, as well as Elgindy's Bentley, a Jaguar, a Hummer and his primary residence, bought a year ago for $2.2 million.

Amazing! I have actually spoken to Anthony on the phone and have had email exchanges a few years ago when he was looking for internet sites to promote his work when SI first kicked him off! I am sure glad we didn't end up featuring him here now that it turns out he appears to have been a crook. He ended up making his own web site where people pay to belong.

To be honest, I'd have been happy to have had his traffic as he appeared legit but the much larger site, Silicon Investor, decided they wanted to have his large following reading their site so they allowed him to come back and A@P then had no use for us.

-- posted by Kirk

Top 160. May 23, 2002 9:40 AM

» Kirk - Full Text of indictment

Full Text of indictment. http://news.findlaw.com/wsj/docs/fbi/use...

Quick reading and very interesting...
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-- posted by Kirk

http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk...

Top 161. May 23, 2002 12:01 PM

» Kirk - MM Mary comments in Tony's Defense

To:Anthony@Pacific who started this subject
From: mmmary Thursday, May 23, 2002 2:02 PM
View Replies (3) | Respond to of 76311

My comments on indictment

I read the indictment and it seems to me that the FBI and attorney have it in for the agent, Tony and shorters in general. Perhaps it's the natural jealousy that civil servants have for successful people in the private sector. Perhaps it's because Tony acted like he was a "deputized" FBI agent in the fight against stock fraud. Perhaps it was Tony's in-your-face approach to stock fraud. He really made fun of con men and took jabs at the FBI and SEC for not doing enough to prevent it. Perhaps it's just the public sentiment that all shorters are bad.

The indictment makes it seem that all short sellers are guilty of destroying the value of honest companies and stealing money from little old ladies. I know the public and courts feel this way, just like they think all anonymous posters are trying to commit illegal acts behind the veil of anonymity when that is not the case either.

I personally believe that Tony has directly helped stop and prevent more stock fraud than some local governmental agencies. I just read a report about the problems with the FBI this morning and it talked about how they prefer to go in after the crime is done and not before. Tony would go in before everyone got ripped off completely. Sure, he profited and that was a good thing. If there were no incentive, no one would have the guts to do this type of work. If they're going to go after shorters, then they better go after the huge hedge funds as well. This is America, home of capitalism. We are allowed to play both sides of the market which is important to fair market stability.

I do realize that Tony is not a saint and has had problems with the law before which is why he's a prime target. I think the RICO issues are bull. If someone asks Tony for a short tip and he gives it to them or posts it on a public message board, are they all in cohoots in securities fraud? If someone on the internet reads one of his reports from NY, does that mean he's got a national fraud ring going? I don't think so. Maybe everyone who read his reports which he sent out through PRs should be arrested as well. I think they made it a RICO issue so they could take his house and cars so he couldn't adequately defend himself. They also wanted to frighten everyone away from helping him. I got 14 PMs this morning telling me not to defend Tony on the boards. Again, if Tony is guilty, then he's guilty. But if the government is using the laws against him or some entity is trying to frame him here, then I will post my opinion about it. It's still a free country.

I also think the bit about the FBI giving him information is a little bull as well. The FBI told me that the ASTN and the mob investigation was just starting. I posted that on the board and nobody got arrested. They told me they just arrested the first round of people and want the big guys and would arrest more and they did. I didn't ask the guy. He just told me. Who's guilty here?

I believe that the information in the company reports I read was all public. I verified the SLPH report myself. If the ceo of nsol was a convicted felon, he didn't need the FBI database to find that out. I also think his shorts were probably good enough without the need of any privy information, based on what I read in the public reports. This will sure teach everyone not to share a stock tip or their due diligence reseach or you'll get sued under RICO and lose everything you have without even a trial.

I saw the site go down yesterday so I copied it all. There's also http://web.archive.org There's a script in tony's profile which keeps it invisible. I know for certain that the FBI didn't do that to his profile.

FTR I've never met Tony FTF. I never saw him at USC. I was not a member of his club. I never played any of his shorts. I did learn a lot from him and I think he did a great service to the individual investor. He taught them how to do proper due diligence and how to stay away from stock scams.

-- posted by Kirk