I believe that you are referring to Robert Simpson's purchase of Global Links (there's an article at Euromoney here about that case).
I took a look at the Edgar filings for Global Links, and I noticed an interesting follow-up to this; a gentleman who bought shares subsequent to Mr. Simpson's purchase actually bought enough so that he needed to file (he bought over 15% of the ostensible shares, but of course, Mr. Simpson already owned 100% of the company...)
The Edgar filing is here.
The gist of the filing is this section:
The Reporting Person acquired his interest in the Issuer primarily to point out the complete failure of government and exchange regulatory bodies to maintain honest, orderly markets, and the corrupt actions of market makers and securities clearing bodies, which facilitate the sale of unissued, unregistered, counterfeit, or simply nonexistent securities.
On February 3, 2005 a single investor reportedly purchased all the common shares issued by the company, plus 145 additional unissued shares.
Subsequent to that date, over 95 million shares, or over 82 times the total shares issued, were reportedly traded, none of which were reportedly sold by the 100% owner of the common stock.
On March 4 and 7, I purchased a total of 180,000 shares, resulting in my obtaining 15.54% ownership of a stock reportedly already 100% owned by another investor. I assume that there may be additional investors who may also claim ownership of common shares of this company.
I have requested that certificates be issued to me representing my full 15.54% ownership interest, to protect my right to vote and enforce any other claims that may accrue to an actual documented owner.
I understand that Reg. SHO was supposed to detect and prevent the fabrication of millions of nonexistent shares. It would appear that my securities purchases prove that Reg. SHO has been systematically violated by market-making brokers and securities-clearing firms.
From time to time I may continue to purchase additional securities on the open market to increase my ownership interest to up to 100% of the company's common stock to give me an ownership interest equal to that of the current 100% owner.
Sometime after he bought 100% of the shares, 50million were traded in two days.
It's guys stealing the American dream.
BTW, how hard would it be to add stock certificate numbers to electronically-traded stocks? I would expect that it would require reworking a lot of the computer systems, but such a change might do a lot to avoid the type of nonsense described here. If I claim to have twenty shares of stock, and I sell ten shares to two people, the shares should have distinct serial numbers. If the two people discover that some of their shares have matching numbers, they should recognize that something fishy is going on.
BTW, how is someone who holds fictitious shares supposed to receive his dividends? If my broker tells me I have 100 shares of AcmeCo, I should receive 100x the per-share dividend. If my broker doesn't actually have the stock, where is that dividend going to come from?
Couldn't they issue more? Isn't that part of the stock scam? "Oh, we need more money so we'll print more cetificates!"