Even though Facebook has not yet taken its stock offer public, one woman has been selling shares of the social-networking giant online for nearly four months. In fact, she paid for $13,980 worth of home improvements using the shares and ripped her contractor off for another $10,000 in cash for ?additional stock.? And before you get worried that you missed the boat: It was all fake[1]. Marianne Oleson told would-be investors that her daughter was acquainted with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg and had received early access to $1 million worth of shares in the company. She sold nearly $45,000 worth of fake stocks before being caught due to lying about her name and ?various oddities on documents referring to the transaction.?
Facebook will offer a share sale this spring and is hoping to raise $5 billion[2]. Some analysts project that the actual number will near $10 billion, while others say that this ?craziness? is disturbingly reminiscent of the dotcom bubble in the 1990s. If the IPO is successful, many Facebook employees will become ?instant millionaires? because nearly a third of the company is owed by its employees. Facebook is presently undergoing the SEC?s mandatory ?quiet period? for IPOs, during which federal securities laws limit the release of information about a company and the SEC evaluates the true validity of the IPO[3].
Would you have been tempted by this fake, early stock offering? Are you going to invest in real Facebook stock?
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[1] http://www.cnbc.com/id/46245288
[2] http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-2095569/Facebooks-stock-market-float-technology-giant-avoid-IPO-dangers-shares-hold-value.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
[3] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-files-for-5-billion-ipo/8320
Category: Financial Markets
Source: http://investing.bryanellis.com/629/market-news-prosecutors-shut-down-facebook-stock-scam/
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