By Tom Winnifrith | Tuesday 1 June 2021
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from ShareProphets). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
This issue seems to be confusing some of the morons who own the humungously overvalued shares in the fraud Zoetic International (ZOE). And so I shall explain why. I shall make it simple as those who are confused are themselves simple and so there will not be too many long words. Before I start, I explain why Zoetic is a fraud.
The morons say “but it has real products which folks can buy so it cannot be a fraud!” They misunderstand the nature of fraud. Nearly all frauds have at their heart a real business. It is just that usually, as in this case, it is a poor one, not a successful one. The fraud comes in deceiving investors or bankers in order to raise money. In the case of Zoetic, it has also lied to customers which has helped inflate sales from bugger all to a bit above bugger all. And it has lied to regulators. So the fraud comes in telling lies to gain a financial advantage. That is fraud and that is why Zoetic is a fraud.
So why is Zoetic not suing me for libel for calling it a fraud? One theory put about on the Bulletin Boards is that I am a penniless peasant and so it is not worth suing me. But if one has a rock solid case, it should make no difference whether someone committing libel is penniless or a plutocrat: the object is to get him or her to shut up and retract. One moron who follows this theory is a chap called echoridge on the ADVFN asylum who posted on 29 May:
Quote of the month from a recent conversation with a good old boy who’s been there, done that: “No one sues winnifrith mostly because they know he has no assets. Just a miserable website that pays him a couple of grand a month from Google advertising if it manages to generate enough clicks. So basically, if he doesn’t keep the phoney outrage amped up, he doesn’t eat. That’s been his ‘business model’, give or take, for 30 years. Sure the FCA is aware of his misbehaviour but until some fed-up company exec gets frustrated enough to bring a largely private prosecution, they just treat him like the family’s crazy, racist uncle at Christmas dinner.”
That would be the FCA which has twice thanked me in recent months for dobbing in companies one of which promptly had its shares suspended. My pay is a private matter which nobody knows but my websites are subscription only so to make money need to get it right not just make up saucy stories. We earn sod all from google advertising!
But echoridge is right. I own nothing in this world but am delighted to be able to live in a 1600s listed Welsh farmhouse in 12 acres by the River Dee when not in a Greek eco-palace, sleeping seven, sitting in 16,000 metres with the view below. This poverty really is a real burden to bear. Gosh, in a few weeks I shall be sitting on the balcony of the Greek place wondering about having another dip in our pool and considering the view below. This poverty really is crushing. Think of how I suffer. If only I was rich like a Zoetic-owning Bulletin Board moron!
And of course some PLCs have either threatened to sue me or sued me for libel. It is just that they have all been ridiculed or lost. African Potash’s nomad quit when it realised that I would, under the disclosure process, be getting to see its involvement in a fraud. Quindell was a £3 billion fraud sending in the top law firm at Schillings. I saw them off. Pinsent Masons, Memery Crystal (three times!) and other top firms have been sent into bat against me and sent packing.
For some, it is the realisation that the disclosure process would be a nightmare that scares them off. For instance, I’d love Zoetic to sue me as we could then see all the correspondence between it and PR spinners Buchanan regarding changes to its website after my dossier of February 3rd to cover up its bogus claims to customers, faked customer reviews and much else. Any libel judge would love that. And that is just for starters. All those RNS statements about imminent European rollout, what data allowed financial adviser Allenby to sign off on what was a lie. Disclosure would be a hoot. We already have a list of around 50 areas where we’d be asking for documents and emails.
Others just go ahead and lose. They lose because all that I write can be verified. In the case of the February 3 dossier on Zoetic, the research was awesome. Every claim was verified and just cannot be disputed. PR spinner Henry Harrison Topham who has represented almost ten frauds which I have exposed may have advised his client to change its website to cover its tracks but those old screenshots survive and Topham knows that.
There are folks who argue that it is not worth suing me for libel as no one cares what I write as I am always wrong. Oddly, the same folks seem to obsess about me. But the strange thing is that I am not wrong. On the ADVFN Asylum, they argue that I have got Zoetic wrong. This is not echoridge who says of my farmhouse in 12 acres that I am “ sitting in his converted garden shed home” but another moron, bo90 says:
“Tw hasn’t called it right, the dodgy dossier came out in Dec 2020 and the shares continued to rise for 3 months!!”
Which is all very well but the dossier came out on February 3 when the shares were 75p – they are now 48p and falling. So, on balance, I have got it right. I reckon that in the past few years I have been commended by the FRC or FCA well over a dozen times – I always publish such thanks on this website. And there are numerous more frauds or overpromotes I have called out including all those Chinese scams on AIM, so many of which Harrison-Topham did PR for. Quindell, Cupid, Globo, 3DM, UK Oil & Gas, Gulf Keystone, US Oil & Gas, Akazoo/InternetQ, the list goes on and on and on.
Each time I expose fraudsters, BB morons come up with the same “he usually gets it wrong, etc etc“ line. It is always the same, just like the lawyers’ letters and the regulators thanking me.
The reason Zoetic has not sued is that
a) I have not said or written anything I cannot prove
b) Disclosure would kill them
c) I’d win.
And for that reason, I really wish it would go ahead before it runs out of other folks’ cash and goes bust which it will. It is for exactly the same reasons that Zoetic and those who promote it would rather pretend that it is not suing me as nobody listens to me or because I am so poor.
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