"I know almost every rule," said Greene, "and we haven't broken a rule."
The Securities and Exchange Commission never confirms who it is investigating, but its resources are extremely limited. Pump and dump cases are notoriously difficult to prove. A securities lawyer who read Greene's news releases was impressed at how the second had legally squared the misimpressions of the first. He even wanted a copy of it. There was really no way to prove anything, he said, unless something showed up on the record of stock transactions.
When asked for that, Greene began squirming. He said a Form B4 would show the same thing, but there's actually no such form. He said it would probably take weeks to get the report from the transfer agent, and it would probably be very expensive. "I mean I think we're talking twenty or thirty thousand dollars, but if you want to pay that, go ahead."
The transfer agent charged $20 for copying. The time between request and receipt was one hour. The report showed again the kind of negotiating Greene has done to stay in business -- the 85,000 shares paid to a law firm, the 85,000 to a marketing specialist, and even 125 to the transfer agent. The directors of North American Natural Resources had been paid well, too. "Not that I know of" have they sold their stock, said Greene, but chief financial officer David Loev confirmed they had, at the peak of the frenzy.
Most names in the transfer list were hidden under group names. There was no proof that Greene had cashed in his stock, nor any that he hadn't. But Greene had certainly benefited.
He insisted the run on his stock was all a meaningless paper event -- "If that stock went up to 100 tomorrow, it would probably be more trouble than it's worth" -- but the stock had demonstrated its potential, and what it had done once, it might do again. On that basis, Greene sold a chunk of the company to private investors for 2.5 million real dollars. It was the stake he needed. He was back in the saddle again, on top of the world. The $50,000 renovation of his home began at once.
"We had to fix it up," he explained, "because we have a lot of people coming down here now, a lot of people from New York. And we had to make it nice."
Greene occupied himself with "mergers and acquisitions" -- doing big business, just like the old days. He became close with his Web site developer, Houston InterWeb Design. President Harry White was made a member of the PinkMonkey board. After PinkMonkey's public debut, Houston InterWeb became interested in a similar coming out. The company claims to have created 40,000 Web sites, among them AT&T's, but AT&T has never heard of Houston InterWeb, and the company has disclosed life earnings of only $3,100. A shell of a company turned to a shell of a company: In exchange for 750,000 shares of stock, Greene found another loophole through which Houston InterWeb could be publicly traded.
"It's one of the things, being an old investment banker, that I did for my shareholders," Greene explained with a grin. "Let's just say it sells at $5 a share. That's a $4-million dividend. That ain't bad, from the garage."
Something was always happening at the Monkey House. On April 12, in a PinkMonkey chat room, someone under the name Bobsugar posted a message that read: "From what I'm hearing, a run to $17 may be low!" The user profile of Bobsugar showed that he shared several interests with Pat Greene: from PinkMonkey.com to golf to Wal-Mart. In one message, he mentioned he was in Texas. "Tomorrow will be a busy day on this thread!" Bobsugar wrote. In another chat room, he predicted, "This stock will be Huge on news tomorrow!"
Whirlybird wrote back: "Bob, where are you hearing about news? I have owned some of this for a while, and I just don't find much talk about it anymore."
"Hey, Bird," Bob replied, "the information is from a source I consider pretty reliable."
And then the next day, the news was that PinkMonkey.com had hired a management company to make it profitable. It would be operated out of a San Francisco office by a company called Anila Systems. Anila's founder had been on PinkMonkey's board of directors, but the release didn't mention that.
"I hope it's more than just this that is supposed to cause all the excitement today," wrote one investor. PinkMonkey's stock, which had climbed about 50 percent the day before, fell that far again, to about $2.50. News of solid ground beneath PMKY was not good news to the daytraders.
There was something else he wanted to show me in the garden shed. We walked back there, and Greene opened the door onto a pleasant redheaded woman seated at a table. His "Director of Visionary Sales," he said, having her visions, apparently. Greene closed the door gently.
It has to do with the diversification of PinkMonkey, he explained back in the garage. The Monkey is expanding. The latest subsidiary is Twink Inc., "a Web site with a spiritual, metaphysical ambience." Basically, something to meditate by, for a fee. Here, I'll show you, he said, and he reached up to pull the light cord. In the darkness, a great vortex appeared on the wall, and the garage was filled with the sounds of wind, of birds, of a woman breathing, "aaaahh."
And it looked like something that just might work. Certainly, it was easy to see how you could get caught in Pat Greene's spell.
