It’s been a busy two weeks for everyone’s favorite retail owned pink sheet coronacrapper Cytodyn. As you may recall Cytodyn has been hyping its ancient CCR5 targeted antibody, leronlimab, for ages. As an AIDS cure, a cancer cure, and now, of course, a Coronavirus cure. All the while its retail shareholder base believes they are part of actively building a bright new future and SAVING LIVES!
Some of the stock promoters pushing this long running joke were exposed (here). Then large shareholders sued the company (here). Soon after, lots of insider sales were revealed (here and here and here).
Then CEO extraordinaire Nader “The Nadir” Pourhassan, made up some amazing baloney about why he sold stock (see STAT News article here). Finally, he was caught lying in his April 27th announcement about CYDY‘s long awaited BLA submission being completed (read about that in a STAT News article here).
The company and its paid shills have not been standing still, however. The Nadir’s hypsters have come out to support their beleaguered boss with more and more “imaginative” defenses of the company and the CEO’s actions.
One such piece recently appeared on a website called EmergingGrowth.com (a site which has promoted Galectin (GALT) in the past as well, which seems to be a common co-morbidity). This piece makes up wild accusations against Adam Feuerstein, the reporter at Stat News, and makes the silly claim that Cytodyn’s collection of anecdotes somehow constitute real clinical trial data (hint: the plural of anecdote is not data).
It also seeks to brush aside Cytodyn’s failure to include the complete clinical dataset for leronlimab in its April 27th BLA submission.
“The focus on “clinical datasets” is akin to someone making a mountain out of a molehill”
Recall that the company actually submitted “mock datasets” to the FDA.
“The clinical datasets are updated to address FDA comments for mock datasets from March 12 and March 20, 2020,”
For intellectually challenged CYDY shareholders, the definition of mock is:
Contrary to the suggestion that it was a meaningless oversight, the most important part of any approval submission to the FDA is the clinical data!
Only buried deep in the EmergingGrowth.com website will you find this disclaimer, revealing that it is nothing but a paid stock promotion website.
And what could this “additional compensation” be?
The EmergingGrowth tout piece references a piece on yet another site, Medical News First. This site parrots the absurd claims of The Nadir that he somehow sold personal stock to fund production of Cytodyn’s snake oil, instead of having the company sell stock or take out a loan, or pay for the production in shares, or do anything else that real companies do to pay the bills.
Instead, it is a selfless act to save lives! The piece winds down with this howler:
Dr. Pourhassan is a national hero, not a villain. His motivation was to save lives and prevent shareholder dilution. In fact, his selfless insider sales are tantamount to a $15.0+ million bet that this drug works and is going to be approved in short order.
Of course, the theory that the shills have been pushing, that The Nadir exercised his options to provide cash to the company to fund production of the magic snake oil, is obviously untrue. Nader used the cashless exercise feature of his options, meaning that no cash went into the company’s coffers, but plenty went into The Nadir’s bank account. From the Form 144:
Interestingly, nowhere on the Medical News First page is any disclaimer. Does this mean Medical News First is legit? Actually, no. Not in the least.
Follow the link in the upper right hand corner of the Medical News First page, and you will end up on the MN1.com site, with that same Cytodyn puff piece featured:
Digging deeper, it turns out that MN1.com is yet another stock promotion vehicle, offering paid promotion disguised as “news”. Pick your plan:
Although there is still no actual disclosure. Which plan did Cytodyn (or one of its backers) pick? How much was paid to MN1.com to promote CYDY shares? And who is behind MN1? For now we can only answer the latter question. An entity called Lankford Media.
Who is Lankford Media?
Two brothers, Gary and Joshua Lankford. And now for the payoff. Who is Joshua Lankford? A barred broker
convicted and sentenced for his role in a pump and dump ring.
Now an ex-con
Here is Lankford doing a Cytodyn promotional video from early March 2020.
Mr. Lankford seems to be very fond of promoting Cytodyn without the proper disclosure, which is especially odd considering he should not be promoting CYDY shares at all, given the court order in his case:
As for actively building a bright new future and SAVING LIVES, Cytodyn shareholders will only learn that they are being passively fleeced in the mundane present.
PS: Lankford also is behind the almost identical marketnewsfirst.com website.
Losing money on shorts sucks the more you know about these turds.
Thanks for the blog post though.
medicalnewsfirst.com also uses an author named Michael Shiekh, who has written one or more Cytodyn articles on the website. His website and LinkedIn listing identifies him as part owner of an investor relations company. He is a regular poster on Seeking Alpha Comments sections promoting the company including promoting links to medicalnewsfirst articles. He covers his tracks by deleting his posting history. He is also a favorite poster on another pumping favorite GALT. Worth a look for your next touting article.
There is another stock pumping website touting Cytodyn: microcapdaily.com
[Thanks Hygrogroup. Shiekh, when not trying to AirBnB out his condo in Breckenridge, is no stranger to pumping worthless bioturds! There seems to be tremendous overlap between sites and promoters who tout GALT and CYDY. – Editor]
Another paid touter is Proactive Investors, who does the faux vidoe news reports on YouTube. It is a regular venue for the CEO to pitch the latest storyline. Here’s the disclosure from their website:
“In exchange for publishing services rendered by the Company on behalf of CytoDyn Inc. named herein, including the promotion by the Company of CytoDyn Inc. in any Content on the Site, the Company receives from said issuer annual aggregate cash compensation in the amount up to Twenty Five Thousand dollars ($25,000).”
[It is very likely that Proactive is running afoul of FTC rules (at a minimum) on paid social media content. The FTC requires disclosure on each and every tweet and video. Check out this for more on Proactive and their undisclosed paid touting of Innovio (INO). – Editor]
There is more false statement here than what trump has made in his entire 4 years in office. You should be ashamed to be called a journalist. There is zero facts to substantiate your lies. You and Adam firestorm are much alike.
[OK, then, how about you point one, just one, error of fact out, specifically. – Editor]
I think this guy might be one of the “others” the SEC/DOJ had in mind when they recently set subpoenas to the company.
But yet, the Cytodyn 10Q/10Ks have specified that the subpoenas were for the company and management about CoV, HIV, mTNBC and the “investor relations” vendors. They said it was a company directed investigation (that’s why they reported it), NOT a “short” of some other investigation. But you can spin it however you want for you own convenience. But it doesn’t seem to fit with the facts.