10/18/2006 23:26

1226 Incessant Stock Spam for TXHE

Beginning late Tuesday evening and continuing throughout the day today occurred the single largest and most widespread spam campaign I've ever witnessed. Before you gloss over that sentence, keep in mind that I've been using the internet in some form or another since 1994. I predate email spam; for much of my online experience, there simply was no such thing. The onslaught I've seen over the past 24 hours has been so far-reaching and such an inundation that I have to say it takes the cake as the most pervasive spam I've ever seen. Period. And in fact, it's still taking place. The subject of this giant deluge of spam is not v14gr4, or r0l3xe5, even m0rtgag3s. The (presumably) unwitting and unfortunate target of this campaign is a company known as Texhoma Energy, Inc. If you've checked your email over the past 24 hours, you probably know this company better as TXHE or TXHE.PK. As the owner of some ten or fifteen domains - and through various consultancies and admin gigs, the recipient of email on dozens of others - I've received hundreds upon hundreds of messages today promoting stock in TXHE. This particular M.O. is known among anti-spam circles as a "pump-and-dump," or "P&D." Someone buys a position in a company, typically an OTBB penny-stock, then they send out a flood of spam promoting the company, hoping that the recipients of the spam will buy into the company and drive the share values up. Soon thereafter, assuming things worked out as planned, the spammer sells his position at a profit. Stock spam is nothing new, I've been receiving pump-and-dumps on a daily basis for several years. What is new, at least to me, is the sheer magnitude of this particular spam campaign, and its apparently amazing success for the perpetrator. TXHE.PK opened at $0.10 per share, and after peaking at $0.125, closed at $0.12, a net gain of 20% in one day. And Texhoma's average daily churn of around 100,000 shares was blown out of the water, as an unprecedented 3.1 million shares traded hands today. Here is a graphic courtesy of Yahoo! Finance, showing today's activity on TXHE: Suppose that the spammer invested $100,000 in Texhoma immediately prior to sending out his millions of spam messages. The 20% gain induced by this spam run would have earned the spammer a cool $20,000 profit in a single day! Not bad for an average chunk of capital and a substantial lack of morals. However, it appears that the spammer may have greater profits in mind - and may have realized them already, with only the future to determine his ultimate take. Research shows that a prior, smaller pump-and-dump spam run began on September 7th. I can't locate (but I would welcome!) any charts to determine where TXHE's valuation stood at that time compared to the present. And, the current spam campaign's message was modified late Wednesday to add a new request - "After you buy that stock please hold it until 10/20/2006 and you will see the effect" - which was not present in the earlier messages of this spam run. Either the spammer was astounded at the positive effect that his spew was having on the stock and is attempting to prolong the rise, or he's already long sold and is attempting to disguise his pull from the position. In any case, pump-and-dump is a violation of federal law. Spamming is supposed to be illegal, too, but nobody ever seems to get busted for that. Securities fraud is a different story. Whoever's responsible for this giant internet-wide diarrhea of TXHE needs to go to prison. You can help. If you received spam today (or get some tomorrow - like I said earlier, it's still coming) that advertises the stock ticker TXHE or TXHE.PK, please forward it to the email address: enforcement {at} sec.gov. I would imagine that the SEC is probably clued in by now, and seriously scrutinizing anyone who has traded positions in Texhoma recently, but your complaint will not hurt, and a forwarded copy of spam you've received will only help to make a case against whatever fucktard is behind all of this. You and I don't see our assets grow 20% in one day, and neither should this spammer. Let's take care of the problem. -- Why can't we not be sober, I Just want to start things over