Former NSA Chief Keith Alexander Accused of Pump-and-Dump Investment Scheme on NYSE

[Emily]

A few decades ago, organized crime would pull scams like this on the pink sheets. (Penny stock garbage.) They would buy a defunct company that was still listed and run the pump and dump on that. They didn't have to go through the scrutiny a real company would go through to get listed. Naive young professionals would get taken with these schemes.

It's frightening, but not totally unexpected, to see that this might be happening with what most would consider to respectable companies on the NYSE run by the highest echelon of our security state. - E.


https://theintercept.com/2022/09/12/...stment-scheme/
Former NSA Chief Keith Alexander Accused of Pump-and-Dump Investment Scheme
A lawsuit alleges that retired Gen. Keith Alexander misled investors while selling off over $5 million in IronNet stock.
Lee Fang
September 12 2022, 6:54 p.m.


Retired Gen. Keith Alexander, a highly connected former intelligence agency official who once oversaw mass surveillance programs, is the latest high-profile executive to be accused of taking advantage of the “meme stock” craze to defraud ordinary investors.
Alexander, a current board member for Amazon who previously served as the head of U.S. Cyber Command and as director of the National Security Agency under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, allegedly misled investors through a pump-and-dump scheme that enriched him with at least $5 million.
In a securities lawsuit filed in April, investors in IronNet, a cybersecurity company co-founded by Alexander after he left the Obama administration in 2014, claim that the former general gave false promises of government contracts and inflated revenue numbers, all while selling off his shares in the company.
...

...(Matthew Olsen, a co-founder of IronNet now serving as the assistant attorney general for the National Security Division of the Justice Department, was not named in the lawsuit.)...

 

[Emily]

Sure...'to save money.'

https://www.crn.com/news/security/ironnet-lays-off-35-percent-of-staff-raises-going-concern-red-flag
IronNet Lays Off 35 Percent Of Staff, Raises ‘Going Concern’ Red Flag

Jay Fitzgerald

September 16, 2022, 12:06 PM EDT

The cybersecurity company, founded by the former director of the National Security Agency (NSA), said “management believes that the company may not have sufficient cash and cash equivalents on hand to support current operations for at least one year.”
A year after going public at a valuation of $1.2 billion, the once-high flying IronNet is now laying off 35 percent of its staff and warns that it may not have enough cash to support operations for the next year.

In a recent federal filing, the McLean, Va.-based cybersecurity firm, which laid off 17 percent of its staff in June, said it will undergo yet another round of layoffs, eliminating nearly 90 jobs, or 35 percent of its workforce. It also is replacing its CFO and eliminating one of its co-CEO positions as a way to save money...