Weiss: Financial media not doing good job policing small stocks

Forbes.com columnist Gary Weiss writes Wednesday that the financial press seems to be ignoring great stories about stock scams involving small-cap stocks.

Weiss wrote, “Just today, the SEC announced administrative action against a Florida brokerage, in a boiler room scheme involving offshore accounts. This case is interesting for several reasons, including the use of the Patriot Act to snare stock-related money laundering.

“This and other cases, which you can see in regional newspapers almost every day, leads me to believe that pump and dump scams are alive and well.

“Yet I have not seen much in the way of press coverage of this trend. Incidentally, if it is not a trend, if for the first time in history pump-and-dump has been wiped out — and I don’t believe that for a moment — that’s also a story.”

He concluded, “Since Cuban’s venture is crapping out, I guess that leaves the job of policing microcap stocks to the financial media, and– with some notable exceptions — lately we’ve not been doing a very good job.”

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