Investor's Watchdog.com: Stock, finance and investment protection for investors

CyberKey Solutions, Inc., (“CyberKey”) hired Big Apple Consulting USA, Inc. (“Big Apple”) to do investor relations work.  CyberKey claimed that it had a $25 million purchase order with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”).  The problem was that no one at DHS could find such a purchase order.  Big Apple had reason to know that the purchase order may have been a creation of creative minds at CyberKey. That purchase order was CyberKey’s only supposed significant source of revenue.

According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC’), Big Apple ignored the distinct possibility that there was no purchase order, while selling millions of unregistered CyberKey shares by telling investors that CyberKey had that order.  The SEC has charged Big Apple, its wholly owned subsidiary MJMM Investments LLC (“MJMM”) and four of its executives — CEO Marc Johnson, vice president Matthw Maquire, MJMM president Mark Kaley, and Keith Jablon, vice president of another Big Apple subsidiary with violation of the anti-fraud violations of the federal securities laws.

How can you protect yourself from buying stock based upon misrepresentations?  One important step is finding out all you can about the broker recommending the purchase.  Wealthy investors may also decide to opt for an in-depth investigation of the company involved  In either case, the most important thing is doing that investigation through someone skilled at telling the real thing from a convincing forgery.  Don’t try to do it yourself.  That’s like performing do-it-yourself surgery.  Bloody, painful, and always catastrophic.