Securities Industry Commentator by Bill Singer, Esq.

Given the current dearth of reporting and disclosure of short positions, the resulting information vacuum is manipulated by persons seeking to peddle inaccurate data and unfounded rumors (often unverifiable) in order to maximize their own financial gain at the expense of the investing public. Companies are often left defenseless in the face of well orchestrated media "distort" attacks. These practices are particularly damaging for biotech and life science companies - the favored prey of so-called "wolfpacks" engaging in "short and distort" schemes. These schemes often prove devastating to the company and its investors, and worse, deprive our society of potential advances in lifesaving technologies, resulting in costlier or fewer products and services for patients and consumers.

For the above reasons, we petition the Commission to promulgate rulemaking pursuant to its authority under Sections 10 and 13(f) of the Exchange Act to set up a pilot program to require the periodic public disclosure of short-sale positions in securities of biopharmaceutical companies by investment advisers.

In our view, the appropriate disclosure of short positions would:

• Require the periodic reporting by investment advisers ofthe name of biopharmaceutical company and the title, class, CUSIP number, aggregate amount of the number ofshort sales of each NMS security, 34 and any additional information dete1mined by the Commission; 
• Require public disclosure of the reported information, including the investment adviser's identity and the short-sale transaction and position information for of each NMS security of a biopharmaceutical company, on no more than a two-week delayed basis; and 
• Address the disparity between long-position and short-position reporting requirements.

DeShetler convinced an 83-year-old client to liquidate an existing trust account and transfer $187,699 to himself. The woman's husband had died in 2015, and in May 2016 she allowed DeShetler to stay at her home while she visited her son.

When she returned six weeks later, all her investment documents were missing. DeShetler was gone as well.

Another client, aged 64, cashed out her individual retirement account (IRA) and sent DeShetler a check for $726,985. DeShetler told her he would deposit it in a new IRA.

Instead, he deposited the full amount into a bank account over which he had sole authority. DeShetler did the same thing with money he received from four other clients.

DeShetler spent some of that money on run-of-the-mill expenses like restaurant and bar tabs, country club fees, clothes, and pool cleaning services.

He also had grander plans for his clients' money, using funds to make a down payment to begin construction on a house in Nicaragua, where he spent part of 2016.

DeShetler never saw his house completed, however. He returned to Texas in mid-2016 after local law enforcement authorities seized his bank accounts.

• Bill Singer
• Securities Industry Commentator
• BrokeAndBroker
• RRBDLaw