Andrew Left & Anson Funds – How Two Crooks Conned Investors out of Billions

Andrew Left was a big name in the short-selling world for many years. Not too long ago, he was parading himself around as the white knight of the markets, gallantly exposing corporate fraud and serving as the champion of the retail investor. Recent revelations, however, have shown him to be quite the opposite:  A criminal and a con man who destroyed good companies for profit, conspiring with his business partner, Moez Kassam, of Anson Funds.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, he portrayed himself as a broken man, living in fear of losing his freedom. The problem for Andrew left is that the DOJ and SEC already know he is guilty. They have everything they need to throw the book at him.

And in a recent CNBC interview (7th June 2024) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvQ82M_vnlU, when probed by the interviewer about the DOJ investigation, Left responded that he wasn’t able to comment. The speculation is that this typically means the person in question has cut a deal with regulators, turning evidence in return for their own immunity. This may also be the reason he was not mentioned when the SEC penalized Anson Funds earlier this month.

Everyone on the street knows that Left was the analyst involved in the two trades Anson was fined for, but as a co-operating witness he has been left out of the limelight – for now.

This has other members of the Wolfpack very nervous, with Marc Cohodes visiting Moez in Toronto some weeks ago to discuss how they can all move forwards safely.

People should also understand how seriously the DOJ is taking this as their California division is one of the most powerful and accomplished within the body. One of the reasons it is believed this was handed to them is because of the racketeering nature of what Anson Funds and its partners such as Andrew Left are doing.

They behave like a mob, and they engage in wire fraud, money laundering, market manipulation, as well as a host of other crimes that potentially fall under RICO (the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act). Citron Research and Muddy Waters might be the headline names, but Anson Funds is the head of the snake and the main target.

People need to understand that the DoJ has a 97% conviction rate, and anyone in their crosshairs isn’t getting away lightly.

In this piece we will look at a number of transactions Andrew Left worked with Moez Kassam of Anson Funds that the DoJ might not know about. We detail how their partnership thrived and made both of them a great deal of money. We also have voice recordings of Moez Kassam talking about his relationship with Andrew Left – all information we believe the DOJ has in its arsenal for this investigation.

The following companies are covered (where Left worked for Anson Funds)

Tilray

Cronos

Aphria

Genius Brands

(Moez Kassam voice recordings)

Dirty Partnership:

Moez Kassam has been doing business with Andrew Left for years, with Left tipping off Moez before the release of any reports, both positive and negative. Sources on Bay Street have told us that Anson used to run money for Left and that they also had a balance sheet arrangement, though we have not been able to independently confirm this with documented evidence.

As our investigation continues, we have been fortunate enough to have developed a former Anson Funds source who maintains insider access to vet and confirm intelligence. The new information below on Tilray comes from this source.

How Insider Tilray Trading Came to Haunt Moez

Moez was an original investor in Tilray. He got the second largest allocation when the stock went public. Undeniably, it was a good call.

The stock started trading on July 19, 2018. Less than a month later, on the afternoon of August 15, Andrew Left published a positive report on Tilray: https://citronresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Tilray-Next-in-line-in-a-Budding-Cannabis-Industry.pdf

Left has since scrubbed this report from his website in an attempt to remove any proof of his illegal insider trading. Fortunately for readers and regulators, the Wayback Machine captured the report, which you can read here: https://web.archive.org/web/20201109043426/https://citronresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Tilray-Next-in-line-in-a-Budding-Cannabis-Industry.pdf

Immediately after Left published his Tilray report, the market jumped on it. By early afternoon, Marketwatch reported that the stock was up over 21% because of Left’s report and his large following: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/pot-company-tilray-stock-on-rampage-soars-21-2018-08-15

The Tilray chart tells its own story: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TLRY/history?period1=1531958400&period2=1709164800&interval=1d&filter=history&frequency=1d&includeAdjustedClose=true

What the casual observer does not know, however, is that Left tipped off Moez hours before his report came out. Moez bought 150,000+ shares of Tilray in the market just hours before the report went live. This is a clear violation of insider trading rules.

Left’s call and Moez’ purchase of Tilray stock happened at the low point for the stock, and just before it started its huge run. Anson made an illegal profit off this inside information, and not for the first time. This is a relatively easy one for regulators. You need to look at Anson Funds trading records in Tilray and see where and when they purchased Tilray shares on the 15th of August 2018.

The purchase volume was rumored to be somewhat north of 150,000 shares, and the trade will have taken place a few hours before the report came out.

But the story gets better or worse for Moez, depending on how you look at it.

Tilray then started flying higher and higher. Now we don’t know when Moez decided to sell his position, but it is believed to be in the $40 to $50 range.

However, he not only sold the 130k+ shares he recently bought off Left’s illegal tipoff, but he got greedy and went naked short the stock in a huge way, north of 1.5 million shares.

Moez was convinced the stock was going to fall, but it didn’t. It kept climbing. To get out of this situation, Moez Kassam then apparently approached the CEO of Tilray and tried to persuade him to do a raise. He said, “You’re never going to see this price again. I’ll be the lead buyer in your round. You can put me in for a big number and lets get this going. The price is so inflated here.”

The Tilray CEO knew that Moez was short, so he told him “no”. Moez Kassam made money on the way up, but at this point he was also attempting to make big money on the way down. We have heard from various sources that Moez believed he could net a $10-million+ profit from this trade.

Things started to spiral out of control for Moez Kassam, who now had to contend with the CEO of Tilray, who was onto his game and not willing to play ball. The stock rallied further, jumping from $100 to $160 in a single day.

This became an existential crisis for the firm, and one they only barely survived. Regulators should be speaking to their bankers about how they actually managed to pull this off. A good starting point would be determining who had the borrow? (Here is a tip – no one did. Not Anson nor the banks.)

Aphria: The Full Shocking Story

Moez Kassam’s modus operandi in inflicting severe damage upon cannabis company Aphria, with the help of Nate Anderson at Hindenburg Research, is already well-known, and we have published extensive information on this case.

Anson’s staff put together the majority of the short report/hit piece on Aphria that Kassam had obtained from his close relationship with Aphria management, passing that information along to Nate Anderson, who claimed credit for the research (it also needs to be noted that Anderson was paid for his work but failed to disclose this in his report.) Prior to the release of the report, Anson sold its positions and took a large naked short.

When the stock went too far the other way they employed the help of Andrew Left to help pump the stock back up again. We believe that a thorough investigation of Anson’s various funds, LPs and off-book structures would turn up the necessary hard evidence of this paper trail. Most likely, DoJ investigators are already combing through this as part of their forensic sweep.

But the story of Moez Kassam and Aphria is much bigger than most people know.

For years, Moez had been getting close to Aphria management, trying to insert himself into their inner circle in order to obtain inside information that could be used to his advantage. We believe Aphria’s managers were unwitting pawns in his plan.

This inner relationship burgeoned when he learned, on 10 October 2018, that Altria was close to investing $1.8 billion into Aphria, valuing the company north of $26 a share.

The chart below shows the sudden reversal in Aphria’s share price and the increase in volume. However, it is also necessary to look at the options markets. Anson always loves to leverage up to the max when trading on insider information, and this time, the Fund purchased a large amount of call options to maximize their gains from the deal.

If you look at Aphria historical option trading, there was a big jump in contracts traded on October 10th 2018 – 13,572 contracts traded. The average for the pervious month was around 3,000 contracts.

Then, in mid November, Anson learned that the deal with Altria had fallen apart due to some missteps on the part of Aphria management, and Cronos was to win the deal. Kassam was reportedly furious until he saw a great opportunity to make even more money.

Thus, the plan to attack the company was born. Moez started selling the stock that Anson held in Aphria on the market, but he was also going naked as he knew the report was coming soon and there was little risk to him.

Anson also loaded up on put options. We believe the below contract purchases are Anson Funds alongside other large options trades on the days running up to the publication of the Hindenburg/Anson hit piece:

APHA CN 12/21/18 P8 – 11/26/2018 – 2,836 contracts
APHA CN 12/21/18 P9 – 11/26/2018 – 2,127 contracts

Up until this time, there had been very few out of the money put purchases in the options market.

This was how Anson was to maximize its gains on the inside information it had on the Altria deal. This, combined with the huge short-and-distort campaign it had planned with Hindenburg and Quintessential, made them confident that the stock was going to fall hard.

As we have detailed previously, on the morning the Hindenburg report was released, Moez Kassam was calling all the banks, brokerages, and everyone with a serious position to tell them the stock would never open again as it was under investigation by the fraud squad and a host of other lies that he knew could cause serious damage.

The Anson network also hit the forums and chat rooms hard in a coordinated effort with various groups to take Aphria down. This effort also resulted in Quintessential Capital Management founder Gabriel Grego, working alongside Anson, calling Aphria stock “worthless”. We believe that a DoJ investigation into Grego’s communications with representatives of the Anson Funds network would demonstrate this connection.

At the same time, class action lawsuits against Aphria were launched upon Anson’s initiation: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181207005457/en/ScottScott-Attorneys-Law-LLP-Files-Securities-Class

The Andrew Left Con

The next steps in Moez Kassam’s operation against Aphria, however, would land Anson Funds directly within the sights of an ongoing RICO investigation in the United States.

When Aphria stock plunged, Moez Kassam saw an additional opportunity to gain from the upside precisely because the stock had dropped lower than planned.

To ensure additional gains on this scheme, Moez Kassam contacted someone close to the company with his own offer. His offer was sinister and posed a lucrative question: “What would happen if the biggest short seller in the world became a long buyer of Aphria?” The answer was just as lucrative: The stock would go up. To make this happen, Moez Kassam PAID Andrew Left of Citron Research to get in touch with Aphria management and initiate positive coverage on the stock.

On 7th December 2018, Left wrote the following Tweet:

Congrats to $CRON. A floor has been established- time to rethink all valuations. $APHA is compelling on all metrics. Cdn footprint too large to ignore. Look past the noise – stock should see US$10. More details to come.

That Tweet sent Aphria stock soaring, as noted by Capital markets follower Benjamin Smith:

Wow, @CitronResearch moved $APHA up 9.37% in seconds with this tweet.

Following that Tweet, Left released his report just a week later, on December 18th. Over the course of the next month, the stock moved up with the help of the Anson’s fine-tuned promotional machine.

During this time, Moez sent the following messages to various people in management and large investors in Aphria:

“my boy Andrew Left to the rescue”.

“See I told you I’m your biggest supporter. I’ve hired Citron to pump this stock, watch it go.”

He was bragging to everyone that Left was working for him and he was saving their asses (his words).

During this time, those who are familiar with Left and his focus on short report writing began to wonder why he suddenly shifted to long reports. That led to initial speculation that he was working directly for Moez Kassam and Anson Funds. That speculation has since been confirmed with a DoJ investigation and the recent SEC fines of Anson Funds.

The inclusion of Andrew Left in the Aphria deal led to a falling out between Moez Kassam and Nate Anderson. The money shifted to Left and Moez Kassam failed to fully pay Nate Anderson for his initial work on the short aspect of this scheme.

Anson’s Purchase of Aphria Founders Stock that was NOT Disclosed to the Market

This is just in from our insider at Anson Funds who managed to obtain email evidence:

Shortly after Aphria went public the stock was trading in the $2 to $3 range and it is believed that Moez promised he would be able to help the company raise money with a financing, but he needed to be taken care of before he did.

So it was arranged for him to buy 100,000 founders shares in the company at a price of $0.10 per share.

This transaction took place over 4 months from September to December 2015.
The purchase was made by Anson Investments Master Fund.
The transfer agent was Computershare.

Sunny Puri was heavily involved in this alongside Moez – so if regulators want to speak with someone else in Anson Funds then Sunny is your man. (And don’t think about deleting the mails – it’s too late for that as we already have copies)

Anson involved in fleecing Aphria investors by selling worthless assets

Many of you may already be aware of the class action lawsuit against Aphria by Scott+Scott law firm. We have been told they were sent most of their information by Anson Funds. The main thrust of the lawsuit is that Aphria overpaid for worthless assets. What isn’t known is that Anson Funds was a major holder of one of these assets and made a huge amount of money off the sale. We know from sources within Anson that they participated in early-stage financings in at least 1 of 3 Latin American assets that were ultimately purchased by Aphria.

Anson owned 22% of Colcanna, the Colombian asset and a major part of the class action lawsuit. (Anson Funds made a fortune here whilst other investors lost out.)

Regulators should be looking closely here.

Naked Short-Selling Aphria

On the 28th of June 2018, Aphria announced the closing of a bought deal financing for $258,750,794. Our sources believe that Anson wrote a check for $50 million into this deal. This is a move Anson Funds would not make without downside cover, which was achieved through selling stock they did not own. That is the definition of “naked short-selling” and is also calling “front-running” a placement (Private placements can be shorted before in Canada but not short form prospectuses or free trading financings) which this falls into.

A thorough examination of Anson’s positions and trading up to six weeks prior to this financing and through their long list of structures, would provide the authorities with evidence they need to demonstrate naked short selling and shorting ahead of a bought deal.

Where Investigators Need to Look

There is a clear pattern to Anson’s modus operandi, and Aphria is the textbook example, but there are dozens more.

In order to shore up additional evidence of Anson Fund’s orchestration of the Aphria manipulation, our sources suggest that the DOJ looks into the trading and holding paper trail left by Andrew Left six weeks prior to the Hindenburg report release. They should also look at Left’s companies and offshore structures to examine any short positions at that time.

Finally, the DOJ should look at any covering and buying activity that took place four weeks after the Hindenburg report release. This is where investigators will see if he covered and bought more before his own, long report was released.

This same investigative procedure must be followed with all Anson structures: For all, the paper trail should be examined for positions in Aphria prior to the Hindenburg report following the downside and prior to the Andrew Left report following the upside. That will provide clearest evidence of market manipulation.

As a result of the DOJ investigation, which has significantly raised fears and upped the ante in the short-selling world, more people have been willing to come forward to work with the authorities on the Aphria fraud investigation. This is a great start, but it also represents only one of dozens of cases of manipulation by Anson Funds.

Genius Brands and the Fraud of the Year

Genius Brands was a huge trade for Anson and it’s rumored they made north of $100 million off the back of the fraud and manipulation they pulled off there. But Anson didn’t operate alone, both Andrew Left of Citron Research alongside Nate Anderson of Hindenburg Research (members of the Wolfpack) also helped Moez pull off this heist on investors and the company.

But before we get into the pump and deliberate dump Anson pulled off we need to understand why and how Anson positioned themselves to actually make $100 million.

The pump:

The recent Augenbaum lawsuit sheds a lot of light on how Anson managed to position themselves for the trade and also how they burrow into companies, making friends with management that they always knew they were going to betray. 

It’s amazing that no one has written about how the stock went from $0.23 cents in April 2020 to $6.00 on the 5th June 2020. Anson is very good at pumping stocks higher, as well as destroying them.

According to the lawsuit: On March 17, 2020, Anson Funds purchased Senior Secured Convertible Notes issued by Genius Brands and warrants to purchase substantial additional shares of common stock. Anson bought these at $0.21 per share. Now because of the size of the transaction and the large number of shares acquired Anson became an affiliate of the company. As an affiliate, Anson is not allowed to sell the stock for a period of 6 months. On June 11, Anson reported that it owned 9.9% of the common stock.

But between May to September, we believe Anson sold most of its position via short sales – pledging their locked-up stock as collateral (yes we know that is illegal and that banks and brokers wouldn’t allow that – but they do.

All the brokerages care about is the commission $ and Anson pays a lot – so they get away with fraud. There are dozens of documented SEC cases every year where brokerages get fined for just this exact sort of behavior.)

It is believed Anson sold this stock for over $2.00 per share and possibly much higher.

We would be interested in knowing how many shares of Genius Brands Anson Funds owned on 30 July 2020. And what Anson’s trading was from March to July across all of its funds. Regulators should be asking for this information. The Augenbaum lawsuit might also help us get this information if it becomes public record.

Background: How Moez Kassam and Anson Funds defrauded GNUS investors:

Anson Funds was the driving force behind the manipulative long-short campaign for entertainment company Genius Brands – GNUS.

A strategic plan was initiated by Anson Funds to make the stock price adhere to their long-short rule of “Elevator up, Stairs down” with the addition of a ‘safety net’. They would do all of this while giving GNUS and regulators the impression they were “long” the stock.

In early June 2020, out of the blue, social media pundits start calling Genius Brands the next Disney. But this wasn’t your typical short squeeze like everyone thought. This was Kassam setting up his manipulative Long-Short strategy by creating unsubstantiated rumors, according to our sources close to Anson. GNUS turned into the most popular stock added to Robinhood accounts during the first week of June.

The move created the liquidity demographic required to cover Anson’s and other associated short sellers’ massive positions.

When GNUS stock was peaking above $8+ USD a share, many investors will recall that some anonymous pumpers on social media were speculating that Genius Brands cartoons would become more popular than Disney’s.

On June 5th, at the peak of the GNUS share price madness, Hindenburg Research (Nate Anderson) entered the picture on cue. Hindenburg is a prominent short seller, and according to a lawsuit filed by Catalyst Capital, it has a direct working relationship with Kassam’s Anson Funds.

Nate Anderson, of course, has denied the allegations, but we know from multiple sources that he is directly associated with Anson Funds. The pattern is clear to see without source confirmation: The days before the Hindenburg report on GNUS was published, significant short positions were taken by Anson Funds and/or its associates.

And to the outside world there is perfect cover: In his report entitled ‘A Bagholder’s Guide to Why We Think Genius Brands Will Be a $1.50 Stock Within a Month’, Nate Anderson argues that the GNUS-Disney social media postings included a bunch of falsehoods.

He even suggested that investigators dig deeper into a situation that Moez Kassam manufactured in the first place. (It’s important to note that Nate was paid by Anson Funds for the report – something he did not disclose on this short report – another violation). It is unlikely he was paid directly – it would have been trough a third party as a consulting fee. The amount is believed to be in excess of $300,000 USD.

The timing of the release of the report was impeccable. It was also put together, complete with an ostensible investigation, in a matter of a few days. That sort of turnaround time, of course, is impossible, so it is clear that Nate Anderson was given vital facts of vetted information by an insider (in this case, Moez Kassam or one of his close associates, Sunny Puri).

But there are more details of the Hindenburg report that are worth mentioning here. The report was premised on the knowledge that retail investors were completely oblivious to the fact that 131 million shares and share equivalents issued from GNUS’ recent financing rounds would become available to trade within an estimated 2-4 weeks. And Anson Funds directly and indirectly participated in these financing rounds or advised GNUS in these rounds.

On June 5th, at the peak of the GNUS share price madness, Hindenburg Research published a report entitled ‘A Bagholder’s Guide to Why We Think Genius Brands Will Be a $1.50 Stock Within a Month’, In the report they argued that the GNUS-Disney social media postings included a bunch of falsehoods.

And focused heavily on the knowledge that retail investors were completely oblivious to the fact that 131 million shares and share equivalents issued from GNUS’ recent financing rounds would become available to trade within an estimated 2-4 weeks. And Anson Funds directly and indirectly participated in these financing rounds or advised GNUS in these rounds. (Please see this post to find out more on how Anson were even dishonest here: https://marketfrauds.to/augenbaum-v-anson-investments-master-fund-lp-et-al/ )

GNUS has generated losses every quarter for almost 10 straight years. Despite this, the self-proclaimed street savvy Anson Funds was GNUS’ biggest institutional investor and supporter for many years.

People also need to ask themselves why on the 4^th June one day before the Hindenburg report came out, Andrew Left of Citron Research (a good friend of Moez’s and who has worked with Anson on multiple occasions to defraud investors and break companies) suddenly puts out a negative tweet on Genius Brands: https://twitter.com/citronresearch/status/1268535667811708928?s=21

Does this not seem strange to people when his best buddy was apparently long the stock and a big supporter of what they do?
After the Hindenburg report came out, GNUS stock plummeted, causing Moez to panic because he likes the stairs down approach as it allows him to disguise his actions much more cleanly.

To do this, his team and people linked to Anson created the www.DisneyGuide.com website with the sole purpose of pumping the GNUS stock to stop the slide and make it a more manageable descent.

Our investigation has uncovered that the owner of the DisneyGuide.com domain is a used car salesman and realtor from Minnesota by the name of Josh Flo.

While the authorities are already likely looking into Josh Flo, what they will find is this: An individual who has little understanding of markets or market rules. This individual does not appear to fully understand with whom he was working or the extent of the crime he was committing…

He was most likely simply an instrument used by Moez, and possibly someone whom he came into contact with through a close associate or during an Anson Funds visit to Minnesota when they cut a deal with a company called CNH.

They talked Flo into purchasing the domain and even convinced him to use his personal Twitter account which has since been closed down to talk up the fake Disney news. They also convinced him to register an account on Stocktwits to pump it further, along with another Twitter account registered to the DisneyGuide.com website.
(The Wayback Machine thankfully captured this fraud before Flo could delete his Twitter account. So we are still able to see his post history: https://web.archive.org/web/20201025231946/https://twitter.com/JoshFloRealtor )

Flo started posting on the new Twitter account on June 13th and then stopped on June 16th.

On his personal Twitter, Flo also suddenly shifted from Tweets strictly related to real estate to (last post in 2018) …. GNUS, with zero explanation.

On June 9^th, Flo suddenly posts something about a random oil stock to make it look like he is now interested in equities; and then on June 11^th, all attention shifts to GNUS.

On June 15^th, he posted the following:

Josh Flo
@JoshFloRealtor
Jun 15

$GNUS

Is this legit?  I just saw it.

https://disneyguide.com/f/is-disney-pursuing-genius-brands-we-are-hearing-rumors The link is still there but the contents have been cleaned up …

The entire social media back-and-forth has Josh Flo talking to himself and commenting on his own posts on different platforms.

Flo has not yet moved to delete his Twitter content, but we suspect that will follow soon when he realizes the amount of trouble he is in.

A Toronto-based source close to Anson Funds has told us that Josh Flo and the DisneyGuide.com website details are the one loose end that has Moez Kassam very concerned. Flo is intended to be the fall guy when the SEC comes knocking, but he is also the weakest link.

If Flo believes that Kassam will betray him as he has betrayed others, Flo may run to the authorities himself to avoid prosecution and turn himself into a whistleblower.

Then we also have Flo’s Stocktwits account. https://stocktwits.com/Oilguy2020 in which a used car salesman and real estate agent suddenly becomes an “Oil Guy”.

It is all the same copy that he posted on Twitter in June and then it mysteriously disappeared on June 26^th. Fortunately, someone at ADVFN managed to copy the text: https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=156225025

It is our assessment that Josh Flo—a low-level real estate agent—is not in a position to “hear rumors” of this level. He was fed this information and hired to publish it as a fall guy.

TheFly also covered this: https://thefly.com/landingPageNews.php?id=3109307&headline=GNUS;DIS-Disneyfocused-blog-circulates-Genius-Brands-rumor

When Josh Flo wrote this piece–https://disneyguide.com/f/is-disney-pursuing-genius-brands-we-are-hearing-rumors—GNUS stock suddenly halted its downward trajectory and moved from $3.45 to $4.52. It traded hundreds of millions of shares and has never been that high since. Then, on June 15^th, after Josh managed to seed the forums and chat rooms, he pulled the piece off the website and since then it has been showing a “404 page” error.

The stock was in freefall, falling from $7.93 on the 3^rd of June to $3.97 on the 9^th June. Then on the 10^th June Josh publishes his report and the downtrend immediately stops and reverses and closes the day at $4.51, trading 113,550,664 shares.

The next day, the stock falls a little but still trades 151,898,954 shares.

Then, on the 12^th, it recovers to $4.16 with 95,905,448 shares traded.

The next day of trading is the 15^th where Josh hits social media and pushes the report hard to people. The stock rallies to $4.52 and trades 118,788,498 shares. Josh then knows he has done his work and the rumors are out so he does the wise thing and pulls the report down (likely on instructions from Moez Kassam/Anson).

Please take into account the above numbers are very impressive as the average volume for GNUS is 30,000,000 shares a day.

Obviously, the media picks up on this and the stock starts falling. But what is important to note here is that this rumor stopped the downward movement, as it was not to Moez Kassam’s liking.

NOTE: readers must understand one thing. Reports alone do not send stocks into a nosedive on their own. They need help from the markets and this is where Anson Funds are very strong with their sophisticated trading techniques which include wash trading, layering, spoofing and other forms of manipulation normally using algorithms that are designed to create weakness in the company’s share price by manipulating the bid/ask.

They use multiple brokerages and banks who are all in on the game. Through sheer brute force they move the stock lower and with the whole short and distort campaign in full swing the negative momentum causes panic amongst investors who just want to get out of the stock. That is when we see the share prices fall off the cliff. Hindenburg and Citron are all part of the wolfpack and partners with Anson Funds. Their co-ordinated attack works 9/10 times

But Josh didn’t stop there. Seeing the success of his handiwork a plan was put in place by Anson to do something else. This time it was 100% fraudulent.

On July 6^th, Josh Flo published the below piece on DisneyGuide.com (again, the content was removed from Disneyguide.com)

This was again covered by TheFly: https://thefly.com/landingPageNews.php?id=3123795&headline=GNUS;DIS-Genius-Brands-rallies-after-report-of-Disney-stake-in-POW-Entertainment

Then, later in the day on July 7^th, TheFly spotted that something was very wrong in this post:

https://thefly.com/landingPageNews.php?id=3123811&headline=GNUS;DIS-Genius-Brands-gives-up-gains-after-Disneyfocused-blog-pulls-POW-report

Let’s put this into perspective: On the 6^th, the stock traded 170,176,462 shares, and on the 7^th the stock traded 135,704,257 – remember the average volume for GNUS is 30,000,000 shares a day. This is a huge increase and hundreds of millions of dollars have been siphoned off from investors with this fraud.

The piece did not stay up long because it did not need to, and the share price did not go up much – but that was never the intention. The goal here was volume. It is this volume that allowed Moez Kassam and Anson Funds to do exactly what they needed to and disguise their actions from everyone around them.

This led to a revolt from shareholders and investors online, as well as a flurry of negative commentary from traders and followers:

https://stocktwits.com/_Dreamer_/message/226803527

It was also covered on Benzinga: https://www.benzinga.com/news/20/07/16589312/genius-brands-pops-and-drops-on-sketchy-rumor

More coverage:

https://www.reddit.com/r/gnus_stock/comments/hosv84/disney_set_to_buy_5_percent_stake_in_pow/
https://www.benzinga.com/news/20/07/16589627/genius-brands-ceo-andy-heyward-discusses-recent-circulation-of-report-suggesting-disney-could-buy-5
https://stocktwits.com/Vegas1/message/226783189

So, now what happens?

For Moez Kassam and Anson Funds, the weak link is … indeed weak.

We have reached out to Josh Flo and he has confirmed that he is the owner of DisneyGuide.com. He also confirmed that he published the reports.

When confronted about market manipulation and fraud, Josh Flo responded: “Look I didn’t do any market manipulation on purpose, I’m not nearly smart enough for that. I was just playing around with my new blog site.”

Below is a copy of the mail where Josh admits to making the posts:

Flo did make a half-hearted attempt to hide the ownership details of the domain – but this is very easy to uncover and here is Josh Flo applying for a trademark on the name: https://uspto.report/TM/88960638

We also have the e-mail conversation in which he admits to owning the domain and publishing the fake information. We believe that one of two things can happen now with regard to Josh Flo: 1) Either Moez Kassam will offer him additional hush money; or 2) Flo will come to understand that it is in his best interest to cooperate with the authorities.

We’ve also archived the Twitter and StockTwits posts in case there is an attempt to remove them as this investigations gains momentum:

Stocktwits archive 1
Stocktwits archive 2
Twitter archive 1
Twitter archive 2
Disneyguide.com archive

SEC – I hope you will be having a conversation with Josh Flo on this illegal activity, fraud and deliberate manipulation of a NASDAQ listed stock. This is serious and needs to be investigated.

Also what is the relationship between Anson Funds and Nate Anderson of Hindenburg Report. Has Nate ever received a payment from Anson or any of their affiliates? Have there ever been any “consulting agreements” between the two of them? Maybe somewhere else for the regulators to look.

Moez Kassam Voice recordings:

We are pasting below some of the more interesting sounds bites from that 30+ minute recording:

Moez Kassam Soundbite 1

“A lot of times if I’m working with Ben Axler (Spruce Point Capital) or doing this kind of stuff then we can create our own catalysts right because we’re putting out a report. So I know when stuffs gonna go down and I’ll buy puts. It’s very easy to know…a lot of people know when something is coming so they’ll buy puts and you know he makes 50 puts per day so I’ll make 2000 trades today and that hurts the stock the next day when the report comes

Wow – this does not look good at all. Very little to say here. I think we can let the regulators deal with what this means. Fraud, market manipulation – all very bad. How many companies have been the victims of Moez Kassam’s “catalysts”?

A recent one that comes to mind is Reconnaissance Energy Africa as mentioned above. Take a look at this thread on Reddit that explains how moez creates his catalysts: https://web.archive.org/web/20210611191009/https://www.reddit.com/r/BurnedByAnsonFunds/comments/nxnprb/anson_funds_disgusting_plans_for_recon_africa/ (This is the archive.org thread as Anson bullied Reddit into taking the post down)

Moez Kassam Soundbite 2

“I loved what he did on TOS by the way. That was awesome.  (Moez) Where do you think all that came from? It’s all us. We don’t publish anymore.” (sadly we couldn’t have the recording of the other speaker to protect his identity. But we have listed what he said and the regulators have the full recording).

At the heart of it, Moez is a coward. Anson no longer puts out its own short reports for fear of legal repercussions. Now, the Anson team just does the research and feed it to various stooges out there such as Ben Axler, Viceroy and others who carry all of the risk. These reports always have an element of truth – but are also filled with lies. For example, the GFL report put out by Axler and Spruce Point was all Moez and Anson.

He was even bragging about it last summer when he was drunk, commenting on what a bunch of idiots they all were. We don’t know if he was talking about Axler for being the stooge or the people behind GFL. (Moez also provided all of the pictures that appeared in that report as well).

Anson regularly engages in wire fraud with other short sellers and writers – so a thorough look at their various entities and where money is being sent needs to be undertaken. Often, Anson will use a “consultant” to filter funds to these various groups (WIRE FRAUD).

Also look to Winston Miles at 8 Capital. He would likely be able to help regulators with a number of offshore entities (British Virgin Islands) he controls (or might have recently shut down).

Here are a few people Moez works very closely with that should be investigated:

1. Winston Miles – Trader Tony: https://viiicapital.com/institutional-sales-trading-team-2/ – We all know Tony for the bottom feeder he is. As one of Moez’s stooges, he gets access to all of the good stuff first. All payments to Winston need to be looked at closely. He also has some British Virgin Island entities that need investigating. You will find some very interesting payments here.

2. Ali Zamani – Used to work for Anson Funds and recently resigned. He knows a lot about their illegal activities in the United States and ran because of what he knows is coming. He absolutely needs to be questioned by the authorities.

Moez Kassam Soundbite 3

“Because we’re short a lot of these names I’ll still buy into a lot of them, right. If I’m already short I’ll buy it (the private placement) to sell to get the warrant. I’d do debt (to equity) with warrants…Every company comes through here, we meet every single marijuana, every single crypto comes through our office. Cos we’re writing the biggest…”

So he buys into private placements that he is short (don’t the regulators have an issue with this?)
Here’s how the shakedown works: You announce a private placement or let it be known that you are interested in raising funds. Anson gets wind of this and starts selling hard. They then have you over a barrel as they know you need funds and at the lower price they re-negotiate and take you to the cleaners.

This has happened too many times to count, but regulators should take a look at Harvest Health. Interesting things happened there with Anson in January 2020 – you will see a sudden fall in the share price. Anson and Harvest should be able to provide more details.

Moez Kassam Soundbite 4

“we’re making our money on these converts to longs, like converts on the marijuana and I’m short a ton of marijuana and buying a bunch of these broker deals”

Is this legal? Not anymore and hasn’t been for some time.

Moez Kassam Soundbite 5

“So you want to go to the places that are lending out, that’s what we do, but it’s very hard for retail. We’re putting up big numbers and paying massive borrow rates. We’re as important to a prime broker as a 10-billion-dollar fund because we’re paying 50, 70, 100 for some of these names and no one pays anything”

What Moez is saying here is that the banks are in on the fraud and market manipulation because they get paid big fees. Regulators should be looking at RBC, CIBC, TD Bank, National, among others. You would have thought they would be more careful following the large fine Scotiabank received.

Moez Kassam Soundbite 6

“And don’t mention (to Sunni) that we give the stuff to (Andrew) Left or (Ben) Axler (Spruce Point Capital).”

Moez lets others do his dirty work for him. He talks a big game but when confronted, he tucks his tail in and has been known to beg and plead, blaming everyone from his colleagues to his father-in-law. Anson were sued once and now he lets braver men take all of the risk.

Moez Kassam Soundbite 7

“We have the luxuries I can at least use these nine different prime brokers and I’m all over these retail guys in the US. All these guys who buy shit so we have all these prime brokers in Florida.”

SEC – somewhere for you to direct your investigations.

Moez Kassam Soundbite 8

“You know, I can bring in Sunni to talk about SHAW, we think it’s overvalued, but again like could it affect the stock price? that’s the objective, and Andrew doesn’t work schemes anymore”

Anson Funds and Andrew Left – Insider Trading & The Secret Partnership

Anson Funds and the Great Con

New Lawsuit Against Anson Funds – Sentia Wellness

Anatomy of an Anson Funds Short & Distort Attack: Recon Africa

Moez Kassam & Anson Funds: Panic as DOJ Widens Investigation