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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
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Penny Stock Calissio|Accused of Fraud

OMAHA (CN) - Calissio Resources, which claims to have a copper mine in Mexico, exploited a weakness in the dividend payment system to defraud investors of $4 million, a clearinghouse claims in court.

COR Clearing sued Calissio Resources Group fka Amarium Technologies, its president Adam Carter, of Las Vegas, and Signature Stock Transfer, of Plano, Texas, on Aug. 26 in Federal Court.

COR claims Calissio exploited a weakness in the dividend payment system of (nonparty) Depositary Trust Clearing Corp. by "surreptitiously" issuing hundreds of millions of new shares after declaring a dividend, then buying them back without distinguishing between them and shares not entitled to a dividend.

COR says Calissio and its "affiliates" thereby got the DTCC to pay them dividends taken from the selling shareholders' accounts.

"Calissio's feigned mistake hardly serves to conceal what the facts show to be its conscious effort to deceive its shareholders into selling their shares of Calissio stock back to the company unaware that DTCC would charge them for the amount of a dividend on shares not so entitled, and then to claim substantial, yet unwarranted, dividends from unwary sellers and their clearing firms, such as COR Clearing," the company says in the lawsuit.

COR claims that one of its clients bought 327 million shares of Calissio stock on the open market and resold the shares to Calissio with the understanding that no dividend was owed. After the sale went through, COR says, the clearinghouse charged $3.3 million in dividends on the transaction. It says another client lost $700,000 the same way.

When called out on it, Calissio president Adam Carter claimed there was "a huge glitch/error on how the dividend was supposed to be paid out" and promised to make it right, COR says - but he didn't.

"Calissio was the one who authorized the dividend and knew which shares were eligible and which were not eligible," the complaint states. "However, Calissio, Carter, and transfer agent [defendant Signature Stock Transfer] intended to defraud the sellers, the clearing system, and indeed the marketplace by failing to provide this information to the sellers of those shares."

Calissio made finance headlines this summer as a penny stock darling when it announced and executed the massive stock buyback. But investment sites have posted warnings about Calissio and predecessor Amarium for years, such as: "Multiple red flags around this promoted company" - still posted this morning on MarketWatch.

Calissio claims on its website that it buys and develops Mexican mines, including a Jovita copper mine in Michoacan.

But along with warnings and red flags, all the top 20 results of a Google search for Calissio Monday morning were statements from the company itself, or its predecessor Amarium, or PR handouts from them.

COR Clearing, of Omaha, says it serves 90 brokers and holds more than $7 billion in assets.

It seeks restitution and punitive damages for fraud and unjust enrichment.

It is represented by Michael Hilgers with Gober Hilgers.

Neither party could be reached for comment.

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