by thomassmith65 on 10/11/25, 11:43 PM with 67 comments
by DuckConference on 10/12/25, 5:18 AM
EDIT: Oh damn it was far sketchier than I recalled and he wasn't a whistleblower. From wikipedia:
The fraud began to unravel rapidly beginning on March 19, 1997, when Bre-X geologist Michael de Guzman reportedly died of suicide by jumping from a helicopter in Indonesia.[11][12] A body was found four days later in the jungle, missing the hands and feet, "surgically removed".[13] In addition, the body was reportedly mostly eaten by animals.[14] According to journalist John McBeth, a body had gone missing from the morgue of the town from which the helicopter flew. The remains of "de Guzman" were found only 400 metres from a logging road. No one saw the body except another Filipino geologist who claimed it was de Guzman. One of the five women who considered themselves to be his wife was receiving monetary payments from somebody long after the supposed death of de Guzman.[13]
by FloorEgg on 10/12/25, 1:33 AM
One involved an argument with the prospective investor over the share price. In their view it had to be between 20 and 50 cents. They didn't care about the valuation, or typical investment terms, only the share price.
Another invited us to an IPO party for another company they invested in (TSX if I remember correctly). At this party we learned that the company that IPO'd had less than 100k revenue (and huge losses). They were out of business within 3 years.
I guess it is hard for old dogs to learn new tricks... They made their millions off pump and dumps in VSE days and just didn't stop playing those games even long after the exchange shut down.
by Tiktaalik on 10/12/25, 2:59 AM
I used to work in Downtown Vancouver and would on occasion get my haircut at a downtown barber frequented by office workers all around, and those barbers were a wealth of knowledge about the latest gossip from shifty junior miners and whatever they were into, which was increasingly not mining, but trendy startups.
Funny thing was when I was working in the area mining was going through a bit of a downturn, so a lot of the junior miners were shifting into other hot things they could fundraise for, like cannabis and crypto. From scam to scam to scam.
I stopped working downtown so stopped getting the gossip but I presume they swiftly pivoted to NFTs and onto whatever flakey thing they could still dubiously attach a .ai domain to.
by charles_f on 10/12/25, 5:36 AM
That line got me chuckling.
by ylee on 10/12/25, 2:00 AM
I was not told of any more details than that at the time, but I now wonder if the VSE contributed to this?
by andy99 on 10/12/25, 12:07 AM
Investors lose 84% of their money some of the time and all of it 40% of the time
by FiatLuxDave on 10/12/25, 1:33 AM
by kristianp on 10/12/25, 1:13 AM
by sbfeibish on 10/12/25, 11:20 AM
by yieldcrv on 10/12/25, 2:35 AM
I don't think there is any regulator quirk or shielding from doing it up there, people up there just do it
by Animats on 10/12/25, 2:37 AM
by grod423 on 10/12/25, 3:23 AM
The saying still holds, a mine is a hole in the ground with a liar standing next to it.
by missedthecue on 10/12/25, 1:56 AM
by anonu on 10/12/25, 6:51 PM
This still goes on today, to some extent, with the TSXV venture exchange. Listing standards are low and many mining companies go here to raise speculative capital. There are some successes, diamonds in the rough, so to speak.
by lutusp on 10/12/25, 2:42 AM
Nothing is more frustrating than an image-based PDF masquerading as text, especially now that, with little time or effort, OCR can convert most images into text documents.