Porter Stansberry
Frank Porter Stansberry is an American financial publisher and author. Stansberry founded Stansberry Research, a private publishing company based in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1999. He was the author of the monthly newsletter Stansberry's Investment Advisory, which covers investments and investment theory in commodities, real estate, and the stock market. Stansberry was also the creator of the 2011 online video The End of America, in which he predicted the imminent collapse of the United States. In 2002, the SEC brought a case for securities fraud, and a federal judge fined him $1.5 million in 2007.
Career
In 1999, Stansberry founded Stansberry Research, a private publishing company based in Baltimore, Maryland.SEC case
In 2002, Stansberry sent out an email offering to sell for $1,000 the name of a company purportedly about to obtain a contract to dismantle nuclear weapons for Russia. The Securities and Exchange Commission sued him in 2003 on this basis and for his newsletters containing "nothing more than baseless speculation and outright lies", accusing him of a "scheme to defraud public investors by disseminating false information in several Internet newsletters." The case went to trial in 2005, and a federal court found that Stansberry had sent out a newsletter to subscribers predicting one company's stock, USEC Inc., would increase by over 100%. Stansberry maintains his information came from a company executive; the court ruled he fabricated the source. The verdict was upheld on appeal. The court rejected Stansberry's First Amendment defense, saying "Stansberry's conduct undoubtedly involved deliberate fraud, making statements that he knew to be false." In 2007, U.S. District Court Judge Marvin J. Garbis ordered Stansberry and his investment firm, then called "Pirate Investor", to pay $1.5 million in restitution and civil penalties for defrauding "public investors by disseminating false information in several Internet newsletters."At the time of the trial, many media outlets spoke out due to their views that the case was relevant to First Amendment rights. A group of newspaper publishers urged the Supreme Court to reverse the decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that Stansberry was liable, and signed an amici curiae in defense of Stansberry. They claimed that a guilty verdict was "a significant threat to the free dissemination of news about the financial markets and specific investment opportunities" and could lead to a situation that "would be contrary to the spirit of our system of a free and independent press." When the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, a New York Times editorial column noted that "the implications of the S.E.C.'s action are potentially profound: newspapers or Web sites promising their paying readers stock information that later turns out to be untrue suddenly leave themselves open to fraud charges. Any financial commentator who passes on bad information in good faith could be sued."
Continued career
Stansberry was also previously the editor of the internet financial newsletters Porter Stansberry's Investment Advisory and Porter Stansberry's Put Strategy Report.He became the first American editor of the Fleet Street Letter, Britain's longest-running financial newsletter.