The Short List

The following stocks are being promoted by spammers. It is my suspicion that the usual reason for spams advertising a particular company's stock is to run a pump-and-dump scheme; they may also do it with companies they control in order to take advantage of a temporary spike in market value to acquire other companies in exchange for stock that then plummets back to the usual value of ten quintillion shares per penny.

My recommendation on all of these is to avoid 'em like the plague. If you've already got stock in 'em, sell it; if you've got stock options, selling them short apparently pisses off the spammers. And is liable to be profitable when the price crashes through the floor.

GREAT BIG CAVEATS:
I am not an investment counselor.
I would personally benefit from seeing stock spams trigger price crashes, as I believe that would probably reduce the amount of spam I receive over the long run. That means that I have a vested interest in presenting this to maximize the impression of harm.
I don't own or trade stocks.
Pump-and-dump is not the only possible reason for a stock spam. If spamming LOWERS the value of a stock, it may be seen as beneficial for individuals to tout companies that their competitors own, for example.
My advice comes with NO WARRANTEE WHATSOEVER. If you don't like that, don't take it.
While I am quite capable of predicting the future, any action based on accurate foreknowledge CHANGES the future. That being the case, forward-looking statements can only be relied upon to be true if nobody notices them.
My magic haemhorroids contributed to the analysis of these stocks. Employees are advised to wash their hands after handling this webpage.

Anyhow, without further ado nor subtracto, here is the Short List for November 2004 to the present..

Which, while short right now, is unfortunately expected to get longer.

	BOWC.OB (2005 Mar 29 - Apr 3) - see LENF.OB.
	FATS.OB (2005 Apr 18 - 20) - Firearms Training Systems. Hmmm. Why is it that so many of these dubious companies claim to have Homeland Security-related contracts? Are the neocons stupid enough to think email stock touts work? Are their rivals sending this to disrupt their infrastructure?
	GEEC (2005 Feb 24) - Global Environmental Energy Corp.. Apparently the 'Market Watch News Flash' received $19K for their spam run.
	ITEC.OB (2005 Mar 21) - Itec Environmental Group.
	LENF.OB (2005 Mar 29 - Apr 3) - Law Enforcement Associates. This spam contains a few sentence fragments from some article on LENF, spaced several lines apart, and announces "BOWC.OB to be run by LENF.OB promoters". Given the quality of their promotion, this is hardly a point in their favour.
	KSIG.OB (2005 Mar 16) - Ksign International Inc., a public-key infrastructure company whose tout promises to raise prices through a big fax campaign. Their product is a glowingly described single-sign-on solution whose purpose is to enable automatic login to websites that previously required separate username/password pairs. In other words, they actually expect people to pay for a security hole.
	KEGS (2005 Apr 11 - 22) - touted by 'St0ck Watch A\|ert' along with WYSK.
	MEGJ (2005 Mar 5) - Meg Athletic Corp.
1.02 - 0.91	MTNU (2005 Feb 24 - 26) - Martin Nutraceticals, Inc.
	NPNI (2005 Feb 15) - Neptune Industries.
	SPBV.PK (2004 Nov 16 - 2004 Dec 22) - Sports Pouch Beverage Company.
	MFYS (2005 Apr 11 - 22) - touted by 'St0ck Watch A\|ert' along with WYSK.
$2.50 - 0.50	SKHR.PK (2005 Jan 26 - 29) - Canary Resources Inc. Apparently since resymboled to "CYRR.PK", with a share price of 50 cents (2005 Apr 22).
0.09 - 0.06	SCRE (2005 Apr 10 - 21) - Secured Data Inc., which apparently recently acquired a Chinese company manufacturing dubious nutraceticals. Their goal: to outdo WYSK for sheer prolificity. They aren't doing all that well - in twelve days, I've only caught about 35 spams from them. As to the question of who, exactly, would be stupid enough to take seriously a stock recommendation that arrives three times daily...
	SQNC (2005 Apr 11 - 22) - touted by 'St0ck Watch A\|ert' during their stunningly prolific yet ineffective run on behalf of WYSK.
0.34 - 0.22	UACP (2004 Sep 9 - 2004 Dec 20) - uAuthorize Corp. Which sticks spaces all through its disclaimer to try to foil filters. The spam mentions a 'major promotional campaign' and claims the spammers received $112,500 for it. At the time of the spam, they claimed it was going for 34 cents a share now, with a three-month target of $1.66 a share. It's been three months, and the shares are a whopping $0.22. Who paid $112K for that again? I'm not the only one underjoyed with UACP. A websearch turned up dissections on pennystockspam.com and pennystock-fraud.info. And I wonder if the "D User" and "Darrel Uselton"s in some uAuthorize domain names' contact info are any relation to the Darrel Thomas Uselton here?
0.24 to 0.17	WYSK (2005 Apr 11 - 22) - Wysak Petroleum, though the spam spells it "Petro\|eum" instead. The promoter is using a Yahoo throwaway address to process remove requests and threw in references to a few other companies (KEGS, MFYS, SQNC. The lattermost of which, at least, was also being promoted via spam.) In a rare moment of honesty, they conclude the tout with the disclaimer that "This report is for entertainment and advertising purposes only and shou\|d not be used as investment advice". In those eleven days, I received no fewer than fifty-two separate spams for them. I'm pleased to see that the cost of Wysak shares fell steadily from a high of 24 cents (on the eleventh) to 17 cents (now, the 22nd.)
0.145 to 0.14	YPIL (2005 April 9 - 13) - Yap International. They sell a 'unique and patent-pending' device that, they claim, allows one to make VOIP calls from anywhere on the globe. The description neglects to mention that the device, as described, will give the user LD rates equivalent to (current location < - > gateway) + (Yap's rates, if any). Oops. I'm also inclined to doubt that it's patentable - generally, trivial modifications aren't, if I recall correctly.