CEP News, NTKN and high freqency trading

High Frequency Trading is apparently what CEP News, Vigilant futures, NTKN and Jed Capital were/are up to -- or some variation thereof. Time to get NTKN booted from the lockups, I'd say. And where's World Business Press these days? And who's its trading "partner?" Vigilant Futures?

Vigilant Futures funded CEP News

Confirmed by Vigilant Futures director Arvind Ramanathan in a telephone conversation yesterday.

Both he and Marco Gomez worked together at Refco and Gomez also worked at Vigilant Futures before he started CEP News.

The Wire was right

Have you ever watched the Wire? In season one, there's a scene where Lester's telling Prez how to follow the paper trail of secretive companies and he says that even when people are trying to hide their tracks, they always use the same lawyers. Well, Lester was right. And you know what, it doesn't surprise me. I always liked him, maybe even better than Omar,.

Numbered Company: Canadian Economic Press aka CEP News
Numbered Company: Vigilant Futures

Lawyers for both: Spiegel Sohmer

The directors of Vigilant Futures are Arvind Ramanathan and Joshua Felker.

Stay tuned.

An update on CEP News, DexTV and Geosign

I haven't had all that much time for this blog lately but I wanted to post something on the three big stories (implosions) I've covered here and encourage readers to come forward if they have any new information.

CEP News (Canadian Economic Press)

I never did manage to find out who was behind CEP News and why. The latest rumour is that CEP News was set up by Trade the News after TTN got into trouble for pilfering news stories. That makes sense to me, as much of the original CEP News promo material strongly resembled that of Trade the News.

I never got to the bottom of Need to Know News either, although it was confirmed to me by an inside source that they have no customers.

Needless to say, I would still love to know just what business it is that is so profitable it makes it worthwhile to set up a fully staffed fake news agency. Be sure to let me know if you figure it out.

Funnily enough, whoever's behind CEP News has not stopped buying lots of Google AdWords ads on their key search terms. Either someone forgot to cancel the account or the former backers want to do everything they can to ensure that those with information don't make their way to this site. Alas, AB.com is now ranking high for CEP News in organic search so -- who knows? --maybe a knowedgeable source will eventually fill us all in on what really went on.

For whatever reason, all these "news agencies" are very interested in Frankfurt these days if that's any help.

• Read all posts tagged CEP News and NTKN and please let me know if you've got any new information to share

DexTV (Brookshire Media and Brookshire Raw Materials)

This was a transparent story compared to CEP News. A bunch of cads used the proceeds from a Ponzi scheme to set up a vanity internet TV station. None of the reporters working for this business news operation figured out the story beneath their noses. For some reason, Billy O'Connor seems to be backing them as they start another TV station. Maybe it's because he's 23 years old. There are all sorts of comments about what John Marshall and team are now up to.

• Read all posts tagged DexTV and please let me know if you've got any new information to share

Geosign

I'm still curious about that deal with American Capital and the continuing use of more sophisticated forms of ad arbitrage. When hockey.com failed as a content site, I had a good laugh at the expense of all those silly direct navigation types. It's just another one of those familiar Geosign arbitrage sites now although I can't figure out if the ads are from Geosign's old friend, Yahoo, or another company. Meanwhile, Tim Nye continues to try and portray himself as a reclusive inventor who used to be known as Einstein as opposed to the Willy Loman clone who got lucky.

• Read all posts tagged Geosign and please let me know if you've got any new information to share

Ex-CEP News staff starts a new site, the Overnight Express

According to Twitter, Paula Midena is the owner of this much-needed new site.



Erik Franco is also involved. Check out the domain name.



But not this Erik Franco Gomez. There's no John that we know of.


Hmm.

Ex-DexTv staff start a new TV station, Inside Business TV

Honestly, you really do have to wonder why anyone would give money to a bunch of business "journalists" who failed to spot the ponzi scheme under their noses. But someone has. Check out www.insidebusinesstv.net and its staff including Chris Henry and Rick Crabb.


Update Aug. 26th: At the request of Billy O'Connor, who got in touch with me to emphasize that his father William O'Connor has nothing to do with Inside Business TV, I have removed all links to O'Connor Senior. Billy said his father was an investor in DexTV and had his money stolen by John Marshall. Billy, 23, worked in production at Dex thanks to his family connection. He emphasized that he himself started the new TV station and it has absolutely nothing to do with Dex other than employing a few of the people who used to work there and who were in no way involved in the Ponzi scheme. He also said the latest business plan has nothing to do the with the Dex model.

Billy felt I was bad mouthing former DexTV staffers who couldn't have been expected to sniff out the ponzi scheme happening at Brookshire Raw Materials. I told him that I disagreed and thought that a journalist should, at the very least, suspect something's up.

I also invited him to submit any further information he wants to about Inside Business TV.

I would, however, like to make it clear that I do not think that Billy, his father, Chris Henry or Rick Crabb had anything to do with the Ponzi scheme. And while I do believe that due diligence was not done, there's a lot of that going around these days. Why, some of my very own investments suck!