The Gateway Pundit spoke to Julianne Jay, a good market activist and $MMTLP shareholder, who mentioned tens of thousands of investors have been defrauded, their property frozen, whereas regulators just like the U.S. Securities and Change Fee (SEC) and Monetary Trade Regulatory Authority (FINRA) have remained largely silent and proceed to refuse transparency. Based on Jay, her account “displays simply how deeply compromised our self-regulatory methods have change into, threatening the futures of all People.”
She argued that “if the regulators can’t present transparency for the victims harmed by their actions, their silence and deflections elevate critical considerations concerning the integrity of our markets and the broader monetary system.”
Lately, Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), Jr., referred to as consideration to what Congress labeled “The MMTLP Fiasco” by reposting “13 good questions that @FINRA ought to be answering.”
@RobertKennedyJr
$MMTLP #MMTLPfiasco #WeAreNotGoingAway pic.twitter.com/RkQdltDZM4— BusyBrands (@busybrands) September 24, 2024
This post highlights essential questions that stay unanswered concerning the buying and selling and halt of $MMTLP, in line with Jay.
$MMTLP
13 good questions that @FINRA ought to be answering relating to the #MMTLPfiascoThe relationships of Ari Rubenstein, Robert Cook dinner, Gary Gensler, DTCC & elected officers should be made public.
We should discover an sincere particular person amongst all of those thieves and or make this… pic.twitter.com/rOABVIBtmt
— BusyBrands (@busybrands) August 29, 2024
“Kennedy’s repost brings renewed consideration to this monetary scandal, which many declare is greater than Madoff and FTX mixed,” Jay continued. To present context to the repost, she summed up RFK’s reference to the fiasco. “There’s a prison enterprise destroying the integrity of our capital markets and defrauding traders of their investments, financial savings, retirements, and monetary independence,” she defined. What’s extra, she mentioned, “Sitting atop that enterprise is a bunch of regulators tasked with defending traders and the integrity of the markets, [and] sadly, these regulators make-up the very enterprise that’s destroying it.”
In June 2021, Torchlight Vitality Sources, Inc., executed a reverse merger with Meta Supplies Inc. As a part of the deal, a particular dividend—Sequence A Most well-liked Share ($MMAT1)—was distributed to traders. These dividend shares represented Torchlight’s oil and fuel property. Based on the corporate’s SEC filings and public statements, these dividend shares have been by no means meant to commerce. As a substitute, the oil and fuel could be offered or spun-out into one other firm at a later date. “To the shock of the corporate and their traders,” Jay mentioned that “in October 2021, FINRA assigned $MMAT1 a new ticker ($MMTLP), and buying and selling started on the Over-The-Counter Market (OTC).”
“Why would regulators permit a inventory to commerce with out the corporate’s information or permission?” Jay puzzled. She defined, “Brief promoting is a method the place you borrow a share at one worth, promote it into the market, purchase a share at a cheaper price to return to the lender, and pocket the distinction.” Based on her, “Brief sellers didn’t shut their positions in $TRCH. It seems, they broke the principles by buying and selling $MMTLP to permit quick sellers—who have been on the hook for important liabilities—the chance to flee a monetary reckoning on the expense of on a regular basis traders.”
Jay identified, “Issues didn’t go as deliberate, [as] Brief sellers thought we might panic and promote. They underestimated investor sentiment, and given the chance, we purchased extra—much more.” What precisely have been traders shopping for? The 165.5 million dividend shares had already been distributed, most traders refused to promote, and in line with her, they purchased extra. “Many traders imagine brokers have been promoting counterfeit shares,” she claimed. “There have been indicators,” she added. “$MMTLP appeared on the Threshold Securities Checklist for forty plus consecutive days…twice.”
Jay famous, the Threshold Securities Checklist is compiled by regulators and tracks failed transactions over a interval of consecutive days. Failed transactions, also referred to as Failure-To-Delivers (FTDs), happen when purchase or promote orders fail to finish. In terms of quick promoting, FTDs can happen when the quick vendor fails to supply locates for the shares they borrowed, she defined.
And in line with her, “The regulators knew. The massive quantity of FTDs, over an prolonged interval, is a robust indicator of unlawful quick promoting,” she argued. “This prison conduct, and the unwillingness of the regulators to implement the principles, have polluted our capital markets with counterfeit shares.”
“The worth of an organization’s inventory trades on ideas of provide and demand,” Jay shared. Extra provide and fewer demand, worth goes down. Much less provide and better demand, the worth goes up. “When you will have limitless provide,” she mentioned, “these ideas are destroyed, [and] quick sellers can drive the worth of securities wherever they need for his or her income.” However in line with her, “That’s not what traders signed-up for. There may be nothing free or honest about that.”
At the same time as whistleblowers continued to contact regulators, Jay mentioned, $MMTLP traded for over a 12 months. In June 2022, the oil and fuel property of Torchlight have been set to spin-off into Subsequent Bridge Hydrocarbons (NBH), whose shares wouldn’t commerce. After a radical four-month assessment of the deliberate spin-out by the SEC, FINRA issued directions to the investing public on December 6, 2022. FINRA’s corporate action defined who certified for the shares of NBH, and introduced when the final day to promote shares of $MMTLP could be if traders didn’t need to transition their funding right into a non-trading firm.
“FINRA instructed traders that we might promote our shares on December ninth and twelfth., [and] so did our brokers,” Jay identified. “For many people, that was the plan. I didn’t need to be a long-term investor in an oil and fuel exploration firm, however I noticed the chance to reap the benefits of the worth escalation as shorts closed their positions, so after FINRA launched the company motion, I purchased,” she mentioned.
“Sadly, for traders, that was not how this saga unfolded,” Jay asserted. On December 9, 2022, FINRA issued a halt of $MMTLP which terminated buying and selling two-days earlier than the company motion had acknowledged. Based on FINRA’s press release hours later, “a rare occasion has occurred or is ongoing that has induced or has the potential to trigger important uncertainty within the settlement and clearance course of…”
“Along with issuing halts,” Jay mentioned, “FINRA’s UPC (Uniform Apply Code) Committee has the accountability to assessment company actions. “If the committee has considerations about investor confusion or uncertainty, or if they believe fraud, they’ve an obligation underneath their very own Rule 6490, to find out a company motion ‘poor’ and return it to the issuer for decision,” in line with Jay and FINRA’s web site. However that didn’t occur, nor did FINRA resolve their considerations.
Jay identified that emails obtained via a Freedom of Info Act (FOIA) request “present that each FINRA and the SEC had considerations of potential fraud early on, but they didn’t act to guard traders.” She famous, “FINRA had three completely different investigative teams and their SEC counterparts speaking about $MMTLP, [adding that] their considerations have been sufficient that they blue-sheeted on December 5, simply someday earlier than issuing the primary company motion telling us we might commerce.”
Based on FINRA’s website, Digital Blue Sheet (EBS) present regulatory businesses with the flexibility to research a agency’s buying and selling exercise to detect fraud. What did the EBS reveal? Jay mentioned, “We have now but to search out out because the regulators refuse to supply the data to the businesses, traders and even Congress.”
“They knew one thing was improper,” she declared. “They pulled the blue-sheets, noticed the numbers of excellent quick positions, however as an alternative of permitting the ‘free’ market to resolve it, regardless of how infinite the danger to quick sellers, they moved ahead with the spin-out and trapped traders in a non-trading firm,” she revealed. She concluded, “Both FINRA is incompetent in permitting the fraud to proceed, or they conspired to guard quick sellers. Both means, they’re an unworthy regulator, particularly one with immunity.”
Within the meantime, $MMTLP has been deleted, and in line with Jay, “traders have been pressured right into a non-trading firm. Our shares have been changed with IOUs, and our funds frozen with values set to $0.”
“Many traders’ requests to safe their shares and rights to the oil and fuel property by transferring them to NBH’s switch agent proceed to be denied,” Jay mentioned, lamenting, “They’re interfering in our property rights.”
In response to rising outrage, 74 congressional lawmakers despatched SEC Chairman Gary Gensler and FINRA CEO Robert W. Cook dinner an open letter asking for a licensed depend of all $MMTLP shares. On February 6, 2024, Consultant Ralph Norman posted on X, “Simply acquired this empty response from the SEC relating to #MMTLP. 6 days late and nugatory. COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE!!!” Regardless of this stress, Jay mentioned, Congress and traders have but to obtain a transparent response, prompting additional questions concerning the integrity and weaponization of those regulators towards traders.
It has been over 650 days since FINRA halted and deleted $MMTLP and there nonetheless appears to be a settlement situation, Jay argued. Regardless of the assaults and threats that investor advocates like Jay have endured, the battle continues. “What are they hiding?” she requested. “Both traders have been defrauded with counterfeit shares, or they weren’t. It truly is that straightforward. What’s the share depend? Let’s begin there.”
In a ultimate declaration, Jay mentioned, “We aren’t going away.”