“It’s like being robbed in a library, but you can’t shout ‘Thief!’ because there are ‘Silence, please’ signs everywhere.”
That’s how Roger Hamilton, chief executive of Genius Group Ltd.
GNS,
describes the powerlessness he feels as U.S. securities rules prevent him from discussing his company’s share price, even as it comes under attack from a group of naked short sellers.
The Singapore-based education company on Thursday announced it had appointed a former FBI director to lead a task force investigating alleged illegal trading in its stock that it first addressed in early January.
The news sent the stock up a record 290% on Thursday, and it climbed another 59% on Friday. Volume of about 270 million shares traded in Thursday’s session crushed the daily average of about 634,000 — another indicator, Hamilton told MarketWatch in an interview Friday, of wrongdoing, given that the company’s float is just 10.9 million shares. “Clearly, that’s far more shares than we created,” he said.
Genius Group has evidence from Warshaw Burstein LLP and Christian Levine Law Group, with tracking from Share Intel, that certain individuals and/or companies sold but failed to deliver a “significant” amount of its shares as part of a scheme seeking to artificially depress the stock price.
The company is now exploring legal action and is planning an extraordinary general meeting in the coming weeks to get shareholder approval for its planned actions. These include paying a special dividend as a way to flush out bad actors and working with regulators to share information.
Share Intel uses tracking software in real time to determine exactly where there are discrepancies in the market and where brokers are opening large positions, Hamilton said. The software can measure the number of shares that are being naked shorted and has found multiple instances where significant amounts of fake shares were being created, said Hamilton.
Naked short selling is illegal under Securities and Exchange Commission rules, but that hasn’t stopped the practice, which Hamilton said affects far more companies than is generally known.
In regular short trading, an investor borrows shares from someone else, then sells them and waits for the stock price to fall. When that happens the shares are bought cheaper and returned to the prior owner, with the short seller pocketing the difference as profit.
In naked short selling, investors don’t bother borrowing the stock first and simply sell shares with a promise to deliver them at a later date. When that promise is not fulfilled, it’s known as failure to deliver.
By repeating that process again and again, bad actors can generate massive profits and manipulate a stock’s price lower, with an ultimate goal of driving a company to bankruptcy, at which point all the equity is wiped out and the naked shorts no longer need to be covered.
Hamilton said the evidence gathered by Genius Group shows a great deal of the illegal activity is happening on U.S. exchanges, but there’s also activity happening off-exchange and involving dark pools.
The company is fighting back “because we want this to stop,” Hamilton told MarketWatch. “They’re taking value away from our shareholders. They’re predators. They’re doing something illegal, and we want it to stop, whether that means getting regulators to enforce existing regulations or put new ones in place.”
Public companies have to have committees to monitor and report internal fraud to protect shareholders, he said. But there is no such team looking for external fraud and many retail investors see stocks being manipulated, he said.
“Hopefully, regulations will change and regulators will see there are as many, if not more, threats from outside a company,” he said.
Genius Group is not alone, said Hamilton. He cited among other examples Torchlight, an oil- and gas-exploration company that decided to merge with Metamaterial Inc. to thwart a naked-short-selling attack.
The stock rose from 30 cents to $11 in the six months after the deal was completed, and the company was able to raise about $183 million through a combination of convertible debt and equity. An interview Hamilton conducted with Torchlight’s former CEO, John Brda, can be found below.
Then there’s Jeremy Frommer, CEO of Creatd Inc.
CRTD,
which aims to unlock creativity for creators, brands and consumers, who is behind Ceobloc, a website that aims to end the practice of naked short selling.
“Illegal naked short selling is the biggest risk to the health of today’s public markets,” is how the site introduces its mission.
On Friday, the stock of Helbiz Inc.
HLBZ,
joined Genius Group in rocketing higher in high volume, after that company said it, too, was taking on naked short sellers.
The New York–based maker of e-scooters and e-bicyles said that it was following Genius Group’s example and that it believes “certain individuals and/or companies may have engaged in illegal short selling practices that have artificially depressed the stock price.” The stock had plummeted 64% over the three months through Thursday’s close at 12.31 cents.
Genius Group’s stock, which went public in April 2022 at $6 a share, has gained more than 600% this week. The S&P 500
SPX,
has gained 1.1% over the same four trading sessions.
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