New Jersey deli doing $35,000 in sales valued at $100 million in the stock market

[OfTheCross]

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/15/the...alued-at-100-million-in-the-stock-market.html

Fraud on fleek

The Paulsboro, New Jersey-based Your Hometown Deli is the sole location for Hometown International, which has an eye-popping market value despite totaling $35,748 in sales in the last two years combined, according to securities filings.


“Someone pointed us to Hometown International (HWIN), which owns a single deli in rural New Jersey ... HWIN reached a market cap of $113 million on February 8. The largest shareholder is also the CEO/CFO/Treasurer and a Director, who also happens to be the wrestling coach of the high school next door to the deli. The pastrami must be amazing,” Einhorn said in a letter to clients published Thursday.

Hometown, which appears to have begun trading in 2019, according to FactSet, has shares that trade over the counter and rarely has more than a few hundred shares change hands per day. Often, there are no trades logged in an entire trading day.

Still, the company’s market cap is just over $100 million, according to FactSet.

 

[mc_brew]

for those of us who are ignorant to the stock market, what does this mean..... .... ... .. . .. ... .... .....?

 

[DonFrancisco]

for those of us who are ignorant to the stock market, what does this mean..... .... ... .. . .. ... .... .....?

A market or sector pop is possible. Also there is a ton of market manipulation.

For sure there is a bubble with IPOs and SPACs/blank check companies. These SPACs are just shell companies waiting to aquire a private company and then take it public.

 

[OfTheCross]

That mysterious New Jersey deli once owned by a publicly traded company is closed, regulatory filing shows

Your Hometown Deli in New Jersey, once the sole asset of a publicly traded company, is closed.

www.cnbc.com

 

[BigMoneyGrip]

Chase clout and admit to money laundering Mafia brehs

 

[Meta Reign]

Reminds me of that Sopranos episode

 

[get these nets]

Owners of a small deli are charged with fraud for valuing business at $100 million​

September 28, 2022

U.S. officials have announced fraud charges against three men who, they allege, orchestrated a scheme to inflate the market value of the company that owned Hometown Deli, a small delicatessen in New Jersey. In this photo illustration, a person views online information for the now-shuttered deli.
Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images

Three men have been charged with securities fraud and market manipulation in alleged schemes that temporarily inflated the market value of a tiny New Jersey deli to more than $100 million, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

James Patten, 63, of Winston-Salem, N.C.; Peter Coker Sr., 80, of Chapel Hill, N.C.; and Peter Coker Jr., 53, of Hong Kong are each charged in a 12-count indictment with conspiracy to commit securities fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy to manipulate securities prices. Patten is also charged with four counts of manipulation of securities, four counts of wire fraud and one count of money laundering.

Patten and Coker Sr., who were arrested on Monday, are scheduled to appear in federal court in the Middle District of North Carolina. They'll also appear in federal court in New Jersey at an undetermined date. Coker Jr. is still at large.

The delicatessen, called Hometown Deli, was located in Paulsboro, N.J., and has since closed. It was known for its cheesesteaks and bagels but also for the fact that it was publicly traded on the stock market, where it was valued at over $100 million. The Securities and Exchange Commission, in a news release, alleges that the three men artificially inflated the share price of Hometown International — the entity operating the deli, which generated less than $40,000 in yearly revenue — from roughly $1 per share in October 2019 to almost $14 per share by April 2021, resulting in a wildly inflated market capitalization of $100 million.



"We allege that the defendants' brazen schemes resulted in the artificial inflation of the stock price of two publicly traded companies with little to no annual revenues," Scott Thompson, one of the agency's associate directors of enforcement, said. "Such manipulative schemes diminish the trust investors must have in the integrity of the markets, and we will pursue those who engage in such wrongdoing."

 

[Meta Reign]

I would imagine this very same scam has worked for atleast a few other companies currently trading on some indexes. The question isn't whether Ponzi schemes (and all other schemes) exist, the question is how many can stay liquid enough to stay off the SEC's radar.

 

[choc_cardigan]

I remember that

 

[Payday23]

I would imagine this very same scam has worked for atleast a few other companies currently trading on some indexes. The question isn't whether Ponzi schemes (and all other schemes) exist, the question is how many can stay liquid enough to stay off the SEC's radar.

$hkd comes to mind. Ran from $12 to $2500 in a WK on almost no volume

 

[Ethnic Vagina Finder]

but there are plenty of tech startups that get an over inflated valuation.

And a company can report positive earnings and the price of the stock will still dip.

A stock value is based on the number of people buying and selling.

The only difference is the owners of the deli didn’t reinvest by opening more deli’s or doing anything to grow the company.

 

[bnew]

Man pleads guilty in stock fraud case involving $100 million New Jersey deli

Hometown International once was valued at $100 million on the stock market despite owning a tiny, money-losing deli in New Jersey.

www.cnbc.com

Man pleads guilty in stock fraud case involving $100 million New Jersey deli​

PUBLISHED THU, DEC 21 20238:14 AM ESTUPDATED 2 HOURS AGO

Dan Mangan@_DANMANGAN

KEY POINTS

• James Patten, a North Carolina resident, pleaded guilty to securities fraud charges related to manipulating the stock prices of two publicly traded companies.
• One of the firms, Hometown International, had a market capitalization of more than $100 million despite owning just a small, unprofitable deli in Paulsboro, New Jersey.
• Two other men, Peter Coker Sr. and son Peter Coker Jr., remain charged in the case in New Jersey federal court.
  

Your Hometown Deli in Paulsboro, N.J.

Google Earth

A North Carolina ex-convict pleaded guilty to securities fraud in connection with conspiring to manipulate the stock of a company that once had a market capitalization of as high as $100 million despite owning just one, small money-losing deli in southernNew Jersey.

Disgraced former stockbroker James Patten also admitted on Wednesday in Camden, New Jersey, federal court to conspiring with two other men to manipulate the share price of another related shell company, which had no tangible assets. That company’s market cap was even higher than the Hometown International deli company the men controlled.

Prosecutors said that Patten, 64, and the other two defendants conspired over eight years to increase the stock price of Hometown International and the shell company E-Waste to create a false impression of demand for the firms’ shares, and better position them as candidates for so-called reverse mergers with privately owned companies.

Courtroom sketch of James Patten, left, and attorney Ira Sorkin at N.J. District Court in Camden, N.J., Oct. 11, 2022

Source: Elizabeth Williams

The other defendants, Peter Coker Sr. and son Peter Coker Jr., remain charged in the case, in which they have pleaded not guilty.

The Cokers and Patten also are being sued over the alleged scheme by the Securities and Exchange Commission. That lawsuit in New Jersey federal court has been paused until the resolution of the criminal case.

The scheme relied on a pattern of coordinated stock trading between a relatively small number of accounts nominally held by family members, friends and associates, according to court documents.

As a result, Hometown and E-Waste’s stock prices were artificially inflated by 939% and 19,900%, respectively.

The scheme began in 2014, when Patten suggested the creation of Hometown as an umbrella corporation to a friend, a high school principal and wrestling coach named Paul Morina, to own Your Hometown Deli, which Morina and another person were discussing opening in Paulsboro at the time. Morina and the other deli owner were unaware of Patten’s scheme to manipulate Hometown’s stock, authorities have said.

Hometown Deli, Paulsboro, N.J.

Mike Calia | CNBC

Patten’s guilty plea to securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit securities fraud, could well ratchet up pressure on both Cokers to reach plea deals in the case.

Coker Sr., who lives in North Carolina, remains free on bond, while Coker Jr., a former Hong Kong resident who was arrested as a fugitive in Thailand in January, is being held without bond in a New Jersey jail.

Charges were filed against the trio in September 2022, more than a year after CNBC detailed a series of questionable connections between Hometown and E-Waste, past criminal and civil court issues of Patten and the elder Coker, and eyebrow-raising consulting deals with the companies that benefitted those two men. Your Hometown Deli closed earlier in 2022.

CNBC’s reporting was sparked by a client letter that hedge fund mamager David Einhorn sent clients in April 2021, which highlighted Hometown International’s bizarre stock price given its very meager single asset of the deli.

“The pastrami must be amazing,” Einhorn wrote in that letter.

On the heels of those articles, both Hometown International and E-Waste took the highly unusual step of disavowing their market capitalization, saying there was no basis to support their stock prices. The companies later executed reverse mergers with other firms.

Peter Coker Sr. and his wife Susan Coker at U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey, March 15, 2023.

Dan Mangan | CNBC

Patten, who lives in Winston-Salem, faces a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison and fines of $5.25 million, but he is likely to get much less than that given federal sentencing guidelines.

He is scheduled to be sentenced on April 23, at which point the other 10 securities fraud charges he faced with the Cokers will be dismissed.

His lawyer Ira Sorkin told CNBC, “He admitted that he had engaged in wrongdoing.”

When asked if Patten had agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in their case against the Cokers, Sorkin said, “I’m not going to get into anything.”

Sorkin, who previously represented the notorious late Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernie Madoff, said that Patten’s case was unusual only because of the media attention paid to it.

“The press has come in and said the pastrami sandwich cost $100 million,” Sorkin quipped.

The attorney said that at sentencing “you will find out” what the pastrami actually cost.

Lawyers for the Cokers have argued that no one actually lost money in the alleged scheme.

But prosecutors have pointed to the hundreds of thousands of dollars Hometown and E-Waste paid out in consulting fees, and to the funding of the companies by other individuals who are not charged.

Patten previously pleaded guilty in 2010 in New Jersey federal court to a mail fraud charge related to sending a client a false financial statement to cover up bad investments he had made using her money. He was sentenced to 27 months in prison in that earlier case.

Four years earlier, Patten was barred by FINRA, the broker-dealer regulator, from acting as a stockbroker for having failed to comply with an arbitration award of more than $753,000, for violating securities laws, unauthorized trading for churning a client’s account. Sorkin had represented him in that regulatory action.

Coker Sr. previously was sued for allegedly hiding money from creditors and alleged business-related fraud. He has denied wrongdoing in those cases.