Anson Funds Naked Short Fraud with MMTLP – The Full Story

Important Reading:

I: Anson Funds Full Lawsuit Files Revealing Their Criminal Business Practices (Court docs)
II: All Documents of email between Hindenburg Research and Anson Funds – Securities Fraud
III: Canntrust Fraud and Manipulation – Whatsapp Conversations (Court docs)
IV: Andrew Left & Anson Funds – How Two Crooks Conned Investors out of Billions
V: Anson Funds Throwing Everyone Under the Bus & Moez Kassam Charity Con
VI: Genius Brands – The Story Anson Funds Doesn’t Want you to Read
VII: Anson Funds and the Great Con
VIII: Moez Kassam & Anson Funds: The Big Secret

Many of you have probably seen how a federal judge approved document discovery subpoenas for Anson Funds and a host of other bad actors that were all involved in the destruction of MMTLP (Meta Materials)

We learned about this update from a post on X and for those of you who are interested all of the court subpoena’s can be found here:

There are lots of rumors going around about what Anson’s involvement was with the MMTLP trade. Anson, of course, is denying any wrongdoing. We imagine Anson will argue that the Fund accidentally tripped over some regulations, similar to its argument with respect to American Airlines.

But that won’t work this time.

We have the full story for regulators to see below. Also all the evidence they will need to prosecute is easily obtained.

But before we get into that, we note that on X, ‘Drew Diligence‘ has just posted a copy of a letter that has officially been sent to a Senator by a State Representative. This letter urges the Senator to send a letter to DOGE requesting an investigation into the SEC’s handling of MMTLP. This letter highlights the lack of transparency and unexplained trading halt, and demands answers to questions that have remained elusive for quite some time.

https://x.com/karmacollects/status/1899563373081338156?s=48&t=0xbwf3h8ubav-j_UEUf0xw

Our readers can help spread the word by sharing this story, speaking to state representatives and bringing more attention to the issue to pressure regulators and force transparency. We appreciate all efforts by our readers to bring this story of criminal manipulation into the wider public realm. We need this story out there.

Here is what happened

Torchlight Energy was an oil and gas company in the process of merging with a Canadian company called Metamaterials in June 2021. But something strange happened right before the merger: The reported short interest went from 5 million to over 50 million shares short. And Anson Funds was a large part of this (north of 10 million shares) and even admitted to people that the Fund was naked short. (As you will see later)

So how did Anson get caught out?

As part of the merger, the company issued a dividend called the Series A Preferred to all shareholders of record of Torchlight the day before the merger. In other words, if you were a Torchlight shareholder, you would receive the Series A preferred (which later became Nextbridge). As a holder, this gave you all the oil and gas rights, whether the company was going to sell them or spin them out at a later date.

Now, when Anson started to really grow its naked short position, the stock was very liquid so Anson didn’t think there would be any difficulty covering. And this assumption was correct. Anson covered the short in the combined entity in the market, but it was POST DIVIDEND.

The problem is that Anson didn’t have any means to cover the dividend because it was naked short through the merger and naked short through the dividend day. So, having covered the naked short position of the common, Anson was faced with a bigger problem: how to cover the dividend short (that was not supposed to trade).

But Anson Funds has friends in high places, and the Fund’s partners in crime went to OTC Markets and asked to trade the preferred A shares. Somehow, because of these connections, Anson managed to get both OTC and FINRA to approve it and the preferreds started to trade.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This happened without a registration statement and there was NO company involvement in the process. This should be impossible. So how did it happen?

Who has this sort of influence? We now have the answer, and it helps explain why Anson Funds has not been shut down by the DOJ or the SEC yet:

Citadel
TD Ameritrade
Charles Schwab
Tradestation
Nasdaq
DTCC,  Etc… Just look at the subpoenas

Capital market corruption. Remember what Moez Kassam said years ago? “No one goes to jail for this.” And he has been right so far.

What is also interesting is that during this time period, the OCC (Options Clearing Commission) came out with a memo stating that if you were trading options and you were going to be short the series A preferred (now Nextbridge), they were not going to make you settle that. They were going to allow you to not settle that activity prior to the merger and they were going to give it a four-month delay to see if they could get it to trade and funds could cover their naked short position. HOW IS THIS LEGAL???

Then, in October of 2021, the stock began trading and people started investigating the oil and gas assets and many liked what they saw and started buying the stock. Driving it up to $12,50. Shortly before it was halted.

So if you’re Anson Funds, you now have a debit on your books of a hundred and twenty two million dollars.

Anson Funds admits it was naked short 10 million shares

What happened 6 months later (after Nextbridge was halted) was also interesting: Anson Funds contacted Roth Capital seeking to buy shares of Nextbridge. 10 million shares at $0.30 cents a share to cover their short position. This is all documented

Roth’s response was, wait a second, don’t you have a borrow?

Anson’s response was “no”. And the Fund claimed that it wasn’t necessary to have a borrow because it was doing an arbitrage play. (This is utterly meaningless and doesn’t even make sense, but it was their excuse.)

Anson Funds openly admitted it had a 10 million share naked short position that had been failing for years, without a borrow.

Anson pretends to be naïve and fumbling its way through the markets, which couldn’t be further from the truth. The Fund has top law firms representing it in every endeavor, and is well aware of the legality or illegality of every action. Quite simply, Anson believes it is above the law and can get away with it. And so far, the Fund HAS been operating above the law, with high-level collaborators.

Anson’s standard argument is that it didn’t understand the rules correctly, and this is what it did with the American Airlines trade, claiming the Fund merely made a mistake on the understanding of the rules which it was subsequently fined for.

https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/admin/2023/34-98775.pdf

But there is no misunderstanding here–just greed. Anson was naked short and got caught. That’s it! WAKE UP REGULATORS

So the problem Anson have is that there is no way to buy shares in NextBridge Hydrocarbons to cover their problem. Unless they do a private transaction with someone. And that’s why we imagine that the company has its phone ringing off the hook with these bad actors trying to get a deal of some kind.
It is possible that they have done this but that doesn’t erase the fact that they were naked short and this is soon to be exposed.

Here’s a fund fact to end on: This was not the first time Anson shorted TRCH. The Fund also did so ahead of an offering that the company did with Roth four months prior to the merger.

TRCH was looking to raise a minimum of $10 million in capital to consummate the deal, and eliminate all $17 million in debt, which it did ahead of the Roth raise. The stock was trading very liquid and most likely being shorted, as well as new retail names coming in the stock, around Feb. of 2021.

On superbowl weekend, it is rumored that the company received a call from Roth Capital saying they had demand to do an overnight for upwards of $50 million depending on structure. The company agreed, but said it would choose who took place in the deal. Roth then told them that Anson Funds wanted the entirety of the deal, $25 million plus the shoe.

Knowing Anson’s MO and the fact that it likely shorted the company down ahead of the proposed deal, Roth was told that Anson would receive ZERO allotment. The deal closed the next morning, and was priced at $1.20 after closing at $1.50 ish on the Friday before.

The stock momentarily traded lower to about $1.25 then immediately recovered as ANSON got no stock and likely had to cover its naked short.

The above is just an example of how Anson Funds operates.

If you have proof or evidence of Anson Funds wrongdoing please do send it into us. We will make sure it receives wide distribution and makes its way to the regulators.