Who is Porter Stansberry?

Answer 1

Frank Porter Stansberry, resides in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the editor of two of Agora's internet financial newsletters: Porter Stansberry's Investment Advisory and PirateInvestor.com. Stansberry's compensation is based in part, on a percentage of the revenues realized by those on-line publications

Nov 2007 - U. S. JUDGE FINES AGORA SUBSIDIARY AND EDITOR $1.5 M FOR SECURITIES FRAUD:

An investment newsletter's publisher and its editor have been hit with $1.5 million in financial penalties after a U. S. federal judge determined they defrauded their own subscribers in a securities scam.

In its complaint, the SEC describes Agora as a Maryland corporation that publishes "books, magazines, newsletters and operates at least 15 financial web sites in the United States and Europe. Agora's publications include The Cutting Edge, Penny Stock Advisory, The Red Zone, Taipan, Rogue Trader, The Flying V Lockup Trader, CSX Trader, Fleet Street Letter, Options Hotline, Outstanding Investments, Richebacher Letter, Daily Reckoning Investment Advisory, Carpathia Letter, Strategic Opportunities, Jim Davidson's Vantage Point Investing, and the Contrarian Speculator. Agora publications have well over 21,500 paid subscribers."

In 2007, Stansberry and Pirate Investor LLC (renamed Stansberry & Ass. Investment Research LLC in 2005,) but not Agora, Inc., were convicted of stock fraud by the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, (Civil Action No. MJG-03-1042; filed 08/03/2007).

Publisher and company appealed the sentence as a First Amendment issue, but judgment, maximum fines, and injunctions levied by the Circuit Court were upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th District in 2009. The defendants' appeal against the Appellate Court's judgment was not accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2010.

In fairness, it must be noted that in this case, no pump & dump, undisclosed ownership of stocks and options, or direct gain from the buying or selling of the respective securities ever was at issue. Stansberry still insists: "I had no incentive to lie, I gave my source a complete copy of my report, and the deal I was predicting did in fact materialize three weeks later, which helped the stock to nearly triple over the next three years. Knowing these facts makes it difficult to accept the government's case. As a fan of the newsletter industry, I'm surprised you're not more critical of the government's case and its attempts to regulate disinterested speech about securities."

(For the sake of balance, let us include Appellate Court's footnote 8 on that claim: "In the proceedings before the district court, Stansberry adhered to his claim that W. did, in fact, suggest that approval of the pricing agreement would be announced on May 22. The district court found, however, that W. made no such statements. Stansberry and Pirate do not challenge this particular factual finding on appeal.")

Overall, we hold that this case is too complex to be easily shoe boxed one way or the other. We recommend that readers interested in an accurate summation of the issues underlying this case carefully study both court documents before arriving at a conclusion. Green Laser Reviews provides direct links.