It's Easy To Steal Identities (Of Corporations) 140
jfruh writes "Two lawyers in Houston were able to exploit business filing systems to seize control of dormant publicly traded corporations — and then profit by pushing their worthless stock. In many states, anyone can change important information about a publicly registered company — including the corporate officers or company contact information — without any confirmation that they have anything to do with the company in the first place. Massachusetts requires a password to do this through the state registry's website, but they'll give you the password if you call and ask for it. Long focused on individual ID theft, state governments are finally beginning to realize that corporate ID theft is a huge problem as well."
How stupid are investors? (Score:4, Interesting)
"...the scammers took control of the companies and then obtained legitimate CUSIP numbers and stock trading symbols that were then used to push the worthless stock on unsuspecting investors...."
Hi, I have a stock to sell you. It's for a company that may appear to have been founded in 1975, but there is no history, no financial statements, no background, no product, and nothing really to back up what I'm telling you the stock is worth. How many shares would you like? But it has a legitimate stock trading symbol!
Seriously, this is only a tiny step away from selling the Brooklyn Bridge or land in Florida. If someone is so stupid that they would invest their cash in such a company with no research, I'd say they deserve to lose that money. If a hedge fund or something is stupid enough to invest in such a fund, that manager should lose his job at least, and the reputation of the fund should suffer by public announcement of their stupidity.
Really people, what part of 'caveat emptor' is too complicated to understand?