UBS Research and Other Dendreon Critics Revisited -07/27/09 at 2:13 PM CDTby Mark Mitchell

Adam Kidan was named as a suspect in the murder of Gus Boulis and was questioned, but never charged. Instead, he went to jail for his dealings with Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Washington lobbyist. Moscatiello, the alleged Mafia bookkeeper, was arrested and charged with the murder. When he was released on parole, he disappeared. Lately, he has been featur...

The Dendreon Fraud: Joel Sendek of Lazard Research and ProQuest Inves... -07/24/09 at 12:10 PM CDTby Mark Mitchell

It is easy for executives of public companies to know that they are “battleground” targets of the Milken network because the members of this network have quite distinctive characteristics. Whether they be journalists tied to Cramer, financial analysts, or hedge fund managers, they are unusual among financial professionals in that they take ove...

Jim Chanos, Jonathan Aschoff and More on the Dendreon Saga -07/22/09 at 5:46 PM CDTby Mark Mitchell

When the FDA’s advisory panel voted in favor of Provenge, most Wall Street research analysts were predicting a bright future for Dendreon. But as naked short sellers piled on with ever increasing gusto, hedge fund managers continued to whisper in reporters’ ears. And two Wall Street analysts did more than whisper – they shouted, day afte...

Dendreon & Deceit: Jim Cramer, Pequot Capital -07/19/09 at 12:02 PM CDTby Mark Mitchell

“SELL! SELL! SELL!” shouted Jim Cramer on March 28, 2007. The CNBC “journalist” assured his viewers that the FDA advisory panel would vote that Dendreon’s treatment for prostate cancer was neither safe nor effective (notwithstanding the fact that the FDA had given the treatment “priority review” status because Pro...

Profiting From Demise: Steve Cohen, Millennium Management, and Dendreon -07/09/09 at 11:55 AM CDTby Mark Mitchell

D.H. Blair, the Mafia-affiliated brokerage founded by Lindsay Rosenwald’s father-in-law (the so-called “king of stock fraud”) and managed for some time by Rosenwald and Michael Milken’s former national sales manager, received much of its finance from the family of a man named Zev Wolfson. Mr. Wolfson was also closely involved with...

Bernie Madoff, D.H. Blair, Michael Milken, and the Story of Dendreon ... -07/06/09 at 7:36 PM CDTby Mark Mitchell

The first of the seven “colorful” hedge funds that held Dendreon put options (right when Provenge was on the fast track to FDA approval) was Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, managed by the Mafia-connected criminal who orchestrated a $50 billion Ponzi scheme while helping the SEC write a naked short selling loophole that came to be know...

No Such Thing As Bad Press For Goldman Sachs -07/03/09 at 3:42 PM CDTby Perry Rod

Matt Taibbi has written a scathing piece in Rolling Stone magazine about how Goldman Sachs (GS) is the "Great American Bubble Machine."  He basically makes yet another case that Goldman Sachs makes money by controlling America's politicians and regulators.  He is not the first to make this case. For example in 2006, Kyle Pope, a former writer a...

The Madoff Exemption and the Story of Dendreon (Chapter 2) -06/30/09 at 5:32 PM CDTby Mark Mitchell

In January 2007, some 15 months after CNBC’s Jim Cramer announced that the FDA had rejected Provenge (even though the agency had not yet reviewed Provenge), the FDA assigned “priority review status” to Dendreon’s application to have the drug approved. Such status is typically granted to drugs whose trials suggest that they can sign...

Michael Milken, 60,000 Deaths, and the Story of Dendreon, Chapter 1 -06/24/09 at 1:38 PM CDTby Mark Mitchell

This story, like too many others, begins with Jim Cramer, the CNBC personality, making “a mistake.” On September 26, 2005, Cramer announced to his television audience the sad news (punctuated by funny sound effects – a clown horn, a crashing airplane) that Provenge, an experimental treatment for prostate cancer, had flopped. Thousan...

Bank Of America Corp's Preferred Trusts Continue to Trade at Irration... -03/04/09 at 10:21 PM CSTby Perry Rod

In my first installment of this issue on February 20th, I highlighted an unusually enormous spread between the yields of nearly identical Merrill Lynch and Bank of America preferred trusts.  In particular, MER-C on that Friday closed with a yield of 26.79% while BAC-U closed with a yield of 15.58%.  It turns out that on that parti...

With Citigroup and Bank of America Leading The Way, The S&P 500 Is Ha... -02/23/09 at 6:45 PM CSTby Mahyar Hashemi

Things are getting ugly in an unprecedented way.  Last month, The New York Times reported that the S&P 500 was having its worst decade yet as of the end of January 2009, with a 5.1% ten year drop after accounting for inflation and reinvested dividends.  That beat the previous record of 1974 when the S&P 500 dropped 4.7% in a ten year per...