Source: http://blog.wordtothewise.com/2011/05/email-marketing-firm-smacked-by-the-sec/ ... Yes, the SEC. Really. Apparently the email marketing firm mUrgent, which provides services to the restaurant and hospitality industry also had a side business. According to the complaint filed by the SEC last month, they had an entire boiler room set up to sell shares for their non-existent IPO. I’d never heard of this firm before, so I did a little digging. First step, check out their website. Overall, it looks like a fairly standard email marketing website. Pretty splash page, appropriate links, it even shares the names of the management team. So what is this with the SEC filing a complaint against the company? I kept doing some digging, and discovered that the principals behind mUrgent have a rather storied past. In 2000, they were cited for violating securities laws in the State of Wisconsin. This also points out they were cited in 1996 and 1999 in Kansas and Pennsylvania respectively. An ex-employee outed them on Scamchecker. And they have their own page on entrepreneurs.about.com discussing how they’re an example of what not to do. They are not the only email marketers out there that have been involved in scams, only the latest ones. But still, if you’d asked me to look a their email services page I would not have picked out that they were any different from any of the other hundreds of email marketing companies out there.
SEC has some pretty strict law and its a fine line to advertise a stock via email. Otherwise we could all make a killing moving penny stock prices but this is illegal. although, strangely enough these guys specialize in it. BTW they are NOT recommended for anything. I used them back 5 years ago before I got in the game and they got our companies domain spamhaused in 2 days from a 'blast' that we hired them to do. http://www.expedite-email-marketing.com/OTCPinkSheetStocksEmailMarketing.htm I dont think its illegal to advertise stocks but you cant own an interest in those stocks. So you cant own a penny stock. Email advertise it to make the price go up then sell etc... Even though that is exactly what penny stocks are useful for...... anyone know the law on this? Seems like an easy way to make a lot of money so it MUST be illegal..lol? I think this just answered my question. Interesting... http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2007/2007-130.htm
Well technically in the email world, its more a pump and dump and no cold calls. No website needed, just blast and watch the ticker.....lol.... This was very popular among many underground mailers till about 2006....thereafter its just not like before (from what i hear)
Misleading title... It's like they want to suggest that the SEC went after them for email marketing but the reason was that they were trying to sell stocks without the proper filings in place. It doesn't matter what industry you are in, if you want to sell stock to investors and you are doing business in the USA then you need to follow the SEC guidelines. I'd suggest looking at the OTC BB for email marketing firms wanting investment capital...less hassle than getting on one of the major exchanges and can be done for about $150K or less in fees.
Believe it or not there are legal ways to promote stocks via email, but from what I understand it's a real pain in the dick to comply with all the laws.
