VIRTUAL KEYNOTE Q&A with Jonathan Uretsky, Partner and Co-Director of Litigation at PULLP,
Summary
Firm Specialization: PULP specializes in micro cap litigation, setting itself apart by handling complex cases involving the SEC and Justice Department, particularly in defending companies and individuals in high-stakes legal battles.
SEC Enforcement Shift: The SEC has shifted focus from aggressive dealer cases to more traditional enforcement actions, such as insider trading and securities fraud, under the leadership of Paul Atkins, resulting in fewer new cases but maintaining focus on core violations.
FINRA Challenges: FINRA's corporate actions department has become increasingly obstructive, delaying routine corporate actions like name changes and reverse stock splits, which can severely impact micro cap companies' operations and strategic plans.
Legal System Delays: The procedural delays in legal actions, exemplified by the Glendale case, highlight the significant financial and operational harm caused to micro cap entities due to prolonged legal processes.
Market Liquidity: The withdrawal of SEC dealer cases has restored some liquidity to the micro cap market, allowing companies reliant on certain types of financing to access necessary funds.
Investment Environment: Investors and companies in the micro cap space should be vigilant about the procedural slowdowns in regulatory actions, which disproportionately affect smaller entities compared to larger corporations.
Future Outlook: As the regulatory landscape evolves, stakeholders in the micro cap sector should prepare for continued challenges related to regulatory delays and focus on strategic legal defenses to protect their interests.
Transcript
Welcome everyone to the Planet Micro Cap Showcase Toronto happening October 21 through 23, 2025. I'm your host Robert Craft and I'm very excited to introduce our virtual keynote here. Joining me is John Uritkis, the original founder and partner at PULP, PUL LLP P, the micro cap litigator. Uh, John, thank you for joining me today. How you doing, man? >> I'm doing well. How are you? >> Oh, you know, we are uh we're we're just getting very pumped for the Toronto event and thank you for for doing this virtual keynote to, you know, give us kind of an update. What's going on, your background, what you do, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, I wanted to get this keynote start off first for those that aren't familiar with Pulp and what you do. What would you say sets Pulp apart from other law firms in the microchem space? So there's definitely an aspect of us that is very similar to every other law firm that you're going to see at the conferences that you know of from the micro cap space and even some of the big firms although compared to those we're a lot cheaper but the main thing that sets us apart is that in addition to the transactions in addition to be able to we do an uplist we do an IPO we can do corporate filings but we're the micro cap litigators and that's really the specialty that we've become known for over the years. If you're getting sued, you want us in there saying objection. If the SEC is coming after you, you want me to go in there and do an opening, to do a closing, to be that guy you see on TV, to be the guy you see in the movie. That the real lawyers. It's not that everybody else isn't a real lawyer, but when you picture one, having just seen a TV show or watched a movie, that's us. >> Very cool. I mean, real quick, I have to ask, you know, I recall you micro cap litigator both me and you, you know, a couple times. Where did the nickname come from? I didn't make it up. I wish I did. It's a great nickname. It's a long story, but I'll try to make it quick. So, what happened was I got this micro cap case. It was the SEC versus AVL. AVL was a Canadian company actually from Sarnia, Ontario, uh, which is kind of right near Toronto. And I had to just defend this company and its officers and its directors. And there was two other defendants in that case. The SEC and the Justice Department was both going after them. And they were both lawyers. Can't make this stuff up. One guy's last name Stalker. The other guy's last name awful. So you literally have a case about awful stalker and it's a micro cap case. Not making that up. With that said, they both think they know what they're doing. I was a younger kid at the time and I just didn't know how to say yes to a settlement because I was cocky, because I was young and I just wanted to go to trial against the SEC. Both of them lost pretty badly. They both went to prison. One for 10 years, one to eight years. After I gave my opening statement, the guy from the SEC actually just took me aside, said to me, "John, can we please get this done? Just have your company do me 25,000." Naturally, being an idiot and young, I said, "No way. I want to keep going." My client was like, "Are you kidding? How much are you going to charge me for the rest of the trial?" I said, "A little more than 25,000." He made the deal. He settled for 25,000, which to be clear, he never actually gave to the SEC. I had already made the Justice Department go away. And I was pissed. I wanted to do my trial. I went home. I'm back in New York. I'm sitting at my desk, furious at everything that had happened. And what I didn't realize yet was everybody else saw it the huge victory and the most important people, all of the corporate clients of those other two lawyers who did all those transactions. Ton of issuers. And what did those issuers do? They were looking for a new lawyer because theirs was in prison. They found my name from the website on the court. They called up. My phone rings. They didn't know my name. Um, I need to talk to that micro cap litigator. I go, "Who?" I didn't know what they were talking about. Phone rang again. Another issuer. Hey, uh, can you put me in touch with that micro cap litigator? It happened over and over and over again. After a month of this, I adopted the name. I love it. It gave me a nickname that I never would have thought of myself and I've run with it ever since. It's the best corporating and, you know, marketing you could come up with outside of Planet Micro. I hope that you know it'll be on your tombstone like John the the microc litigator and you just be smiling down just like yeah that was there. >> And I just admitted I didn't come up with it but on my tombstone it's going to say his idea. >> Very cool. And uh real quick who do you represent? I'm assuming pretty much anyone that >> you name. >> I'd like to say that we're a full service firm, but let's be honest, if we had a trip and fall case, I wouldn't know what to do with it. If I had to write you a will, you should really, really go somewhere else because I'd commit malpractice. There's a lot of things we don't know how to do. Those involve what I call people. If it involves a business, especially in the securities world, especially within micro cap, yeah, that's who we represent. But that doesn't mean just issuers. We represent a whole lot of funds. We represent a whole lot of investors. We represent a lot of the the tertiary people within the industry, brokerage firms, for example. We just had a very big case, maybe we'll get to talk about it, involving one of the brokerage firms that serves the industry by providing liquidity. Uh we also work, you know, with a lot of the accounting firms. There's the accounting guys, they get sued, too. Everybody that you know of from the entire micro cap space, we are the people that they go to when there's any kind of regulatory or really litigation work that needs to be done. And yeah, again, the transactions too, but it's the whole industry. It's not just the issuers. Some people think it is >> 100%. All right. So, when you were on the legal panel in Vegas, our Las Vegas event, you you predicted that the SEC would back away from its dealer cases. Could you follow up on that? And if Yeah. Did Did that happen? >> I didn't know how much it would be. I undersold that. And I remember the look. Everybody kind of gasped when I was saying that at the panel. I actually undersold it. What had just happened last year right at the time of Vegas was a decision came out from this Texas judge and what he had done, he actually just said that the SEC's new rule was a problem and wasn't going to be enforcable. That was just the new rule. Now, what I then predicted was, hey, you know what? They've got these cases out there. Some of them are over. I don't think they're going to bring any new ones. But what was interesting was what about the four that are currently pending in the courts right now. And what was really interesting, there was one case where they had already hired an expert and the expert hadn't testified yet, but we knew what his opinion was because he was going to be representing the defendant against the SEC. The expert in that case is named Paul Atkins. As you may have heard, he had just been tabbed at the time to become the new chairperson of the SEC. Pretty important position in and of itself, but also decisive vote. There's only five commissioners. When they make these decisions, you need three and they already had two. What happened is once he actually got put in, they the SEC had to go into each and every one of the courts, tell the judge for each and every one of those pending cases, yeah, that lawsuit we filed, um, we dismiss it. We dismissed this, too. We dismissed this, too. We dismissed this, too. And the judges were like, you can't do that. It's been like four years. you've been beating this like it's, you know, illegal, illegal, horrible, toxic financing, everything. But eventually the SEC withdrew the Adam Long case. It withdrew the Tribridge case. It withdrew the LGB Capital case and it withdrew River North equity. It's also not going ahead with its appeal to challenge the Texas judge's rule. It hasn't brought a single dealer case ever since. what this has done and it's a certain kind of liquidity. It is toxic liquidity but it does allow certain companies that rely on loans from those type of lenders actually have some available funds to do things in the market. The SEC really didn't know what it was doing. They had an idea, you know what, toxic financing is bad. And I think a lot of people would agree it is. There's other types of f financing. Look, I represent, you know, some of those lenders. You're probably not going to like to hear me say that. There are better ways, more stable ways to do financing, but it certainly shouldn't be the SEC and not with an SEC rule, but with an SEC series of enforcement actions based on not a rule at all. This was the right decision, and it reestablished some more liquidity in the markets. This is undoubtedly a win and a huge win for the entire micro cap space. >> That is really interesting. I I had no idea that was happen. So, what I mean, just a quick followup. I mean, what is the SEC focused on right now then? >> Well, they've been doing their best to sort of, you know, undo things as much as they can. Uh, you know, they had been more interested in crypto. Now they're less interested in crypto. What they're actually doing, and I got to give them credit. I It kills me to say this. I'm I'm like one of their primary adversaries. They've gone back to plain vanilla cases. What we've seen a whole lot more is, hey, you know what? Insider trading still bad. Securities fraud, plain vanilla, putting out a press release that's false, still bad. People, yes, they still do them, believe it or not. Pump and dump still bad. uh wash trading cases. That's where you know you effectively find three or four friends of yours and you just trade amongst yourselves to make the appearance of volume be there. Still bad. So it's not that oh Paul Atkins equals you can get away with anything which is literally what a lot of my clients they call me up. They're like Paul Atkins is in charge now. Tell the SEC to drop the case. And I'm like well no they think that you committed you know basic fraud. They say that you lied when you raised $22 million. So no, they're not just going to drop that case. But actually, as their adversary, I think that's what they're for. I think SEC enforcement exists so that when somebody puts out a false press release and raises money based on that or something like that. Or there's insider trading. Yeah, those those are laws. They've been around for decades if not longer and they should be enforced and they're not proper and that's what the SEC enforcement, you know, lawyers really should focus on. But I will say there's also a lot fewer of them. >> So like I I want to maybe take us back in time to, you know, sorry, another quick followup on that because, you know, it's a bit of a frothy moment that we're at in the markets. you know, as a result, you see certain fads or trends, you know, that, you know, you can go out and raise, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars for stuff like that. you know, how has the SEC reacted to, you know, some of the like post frothiness in things when things like this do, you know, when little fads and trends pop up, you know, talking everything from when, you know, crypto has had like four of them, it feels like, you know, cannabis for a minute, you know, psychedelics, you know, all all that stuff. So, I'm curious as to what historically SEC has reacted to it post the frothy craze. So some chairmen are more reactive than others. If you go back, yeah, just one administration, Gendler was extraordinarily reactive. And in fact, some would say, you know, proactive, which was a big problem. And in fact, he's the guy who created all the dealer stuff. But he would react to anything. If something was in the news, he went after it. If something was frothy, he immediately would find an excuse to launch a few cases based on that. Atkins is just not like that. Atkins is very deliberate. There hasn't been anything like that now. There's been a real focus on what are we actually here for? And yeah, there's been fewer overall cases, but there's been no reaction to anything froy lately whatsoever. Historically, it depends on the I think just the personality. It's not really people's really put too much insight into the political party that's in charge. It doesn't work that way. As you at least go further into the past, as you go further into the past, you can actually see that whether someone is a Democrat or a Republican is seemingly irrelevant. It's their personality. Some people like the frothiness and they want to be in the news. Uh, and that actually holds true not just for the SEC. If you guys are old enough, you'll even remember Elliot Spitzer, who was the attorney general of New York. Um, not that predated, but you know, was right before Enron. There's the reactionary stuff when something is in the news almost irrespective of your political party. I don't know that it's because Gendler was a Democrat and Atkins is a Republican. I think Atkins is just a very deliberative person and he's not going to chase things. >> Absolutely. All right. So, I mean, going back to my line of my line of questioning, your honor. Um, but you know, on that on that same legal panel, you also mentioned uh this a Supreme Court case, and I'm going to probably butcher this. Mari Mari, did I say that right? >> Yes. >> Um, that tried to distinguish between inactionable pure omissions and actionable halftruths. What happened with that? By the way, for full disclosure, this is a question that John gave me to ask him. So, if I sounded like I read it, I did. I'm just being straight up honest on this one because I'm I that I have no idea on. So, John, help me educate me. >> Yeah. So, I mentioned >> straight up on that. >> This was the other thing that I mentioned during the Vegas panel that had just happened. your timing for that Vegas panel was either perfect or seriously about a week too early. If I could have just waited one week and I would have been able to like really like get a better sense, I could have read the decision. But yeah, right around the time of the Vegas conference last year, uh the Supreme Court, weirdly, I'm I'm surprised they did it, but they effectively just said, "Okay, those omissions, you've probably generally heard you're not allowed to lie because that's fraud, but you're not allowed to make a material omission." Meaning, I'm just not going to tell you. Now according to you know what Supreme Court effectively said in writing that's cool omit away and that's what I said on the panel there were a lot of gasps people were like looking at me like I had five heads John you cannot give these people legal advice to go do that I wasn't giving anybody legal advice what I was doing was telling everyone what the Supreme Court said their goal which didn't work was to then limit the amount of plaintiff's cases is brought against issuers for, you know, because they make up cases all the time. Plaintiffs bar when they go and they sue an issuer. Don't make up anything just to have a case because they're not about the case. They're about making up a class action and just getting a settlement and hitting the insurance, which is what it's all about from their perspective. So the Supreme Court to its credit I think they were looking for a way how can we limit those class action securities cases they came up with this. Let's make it a real lie not an omission. They thought that would work. They were wildly wrong. The amount of class actions based on securities filings based on omissions has barely decreased. They're still there. It's that now they're being packaged with oh and they also lied and as long as you package it with an oh and they also lied. There's still that case. So what has really resulted from it is a lot more confusion because now if you get one of those honestly I benefit from it too is a defense. I can now say yeah but you know what the Supreme Court says it's okay to omit and they didn't really want us to do that. companies who are making omissions, they can get away with it. We haven't seen a decrease in the amount of lawsuits. So, Supreme Court tried, the Supreme Court had a good idea, a good intent. Um, it was an epic fail. >> Got it. Next question. What about FINRA? You know, do micro cap companies have problems with FINRA or just the SEC? >> Yeah, a lot of people think that it's just the SEC and a couple of the states. I wish. Um, unfortunately it's never that simple. Just because they're not bringing a lawsuit doesn't mean that they can't really really make things difficult um for the investors, the shareholders, you know, the company itself, everyone. Uh, FINRA, this is lesser known. They have what's called the corporate actions department. Recently, they, and I don't actually know why, they've been acting up a lot recently. Um, we have several different clients affected. We have one client that just put through, hey, we want to change our name. You know, our old name uh is not reflective of what we do anymore. It seems pretty innocuous. FINRA didn't like it because they said one of the note holders, which was a fund, has a minority investor who eight years ago was the subject of a settled SEC investigation. No, I'm not making that up. The guy is not in any way involved. He doesn't even really run the fund that made the loan. It's just a small note. It's not a convertible note. There's so it's so far attenuated, but now a company that just wants to change its name, FINRA is saying no. And they've said no for about 18 months, and I'm now bringing a case based on that. Uh we have a company that's trying to do a reverse stock split. Those are kind of important and happen a lot, not even just in micro cap, but you know, at all levels. There's nothing wrong inherently with a reverse stock split. But same thing if they look at anyone and I don't mean anyone meaning a director or an officer. I don't mean anyone even meaning an equity holder. I mean even a note holders minority you know owner. That's about as far as as attenuated as you can get. This isn't a consultant who's running the show without actually being a director when they should be. This is for virtually anything at all. PINRA feels like they now have complete veto power to take a board's decisions and override them. So you have stockholders, they want something done. The board makes it happen and then says I don't like some of the people who you have who lent money to you and there's really nothing you can well there is something you can do. he come to me, I sue FINRA. But the fact that I've now had to sue FINRA itself and this two companies have sued them within the SEC. We have one note holder who sued in federal court. But none of that should be necessary. These are the tiniest little corporate actions that we take for granted. And to be honest, even somebody like me, I haven't realized how much power the FINRA corporate actions department has over these little things. But these little things can wreck a micro cap company. If you need to have a reverse merger and you're waiting on that for a transaction and suddenly you have to wait two years, you don't have two years. That money's gone. That transaction is gone. Investors, they've moved on. In FINRA corporate actions department, don't know why they're acting up, but they're causing a lot of problems similar to that right now. >> Interesting. But the other FINR departments are fine. >> Oh, of course. Yeah. They're just the they're just the same as they've always been. None of them are fine. Obviously, FINRA enforcement has always been, you know, a thorn in everyone's side, but at least that's their job. You know, they expect that. The same way I've made a living out of fighting FINRA enforcement and fighting uh SEC enforcement and fighting the state regulators. It's part of the game. That's okay. It's when what is theoretically a rubber stamp to just regular corporate actions that happen on a given day-to-day basis where there's no obvious bad activity. There's a board of directors that got together and had a meeting and said, "Let's do this." And they documented it properly with a vote and some minutes. the same way every single one of the companies who you know are coming to your events and seeing this. Why are they doing it? Because that's what the investors want. They have investors. They have stockholders. And that's where it bothers me a lot more where where it's the same old same old. Sure, FINRA has presented problems. It always had. That's a part of being in business. This it's new and it's unfair. So, John, to you know, we've covered a lot here today and, you know, I I always enjoy our our uh our little catch-ups and and and doing all this, but I mean, to close us out, what are some things that you think folks who, you know, across the board, whether they're micro cap investors, issuers, fellow service providers, what's something from your perspective, your expertise that you think they should be paying attention to for the duration of 25 going into 26? >> There's actually a lot. Uh there's one example that occurs to me and uh my guess is he'll even be in Toronto although I haven't asked him but uh if you look um look it up what the SEC and FINRA collectively did to Glendale and it's public so I'm not going to hide it. Uh Eric Fleshy uh full disclosure we represented Eric in this this action. What bothered me most there wasn't the eventual result. We got a great result. Um it was the time the amount of harm that can be done while legal actions are going on. You know, yay, I won. I don't feel good about what happened. I don't feel good because Eric was effectively stuck in the hotel California. And it's not the specifics of his case. I don't think there's any one thing that FINRA or the SEC or anybody's doing any differently right now that you need to be on the lookout for more so than their procedural uh antagonistic issues which is getting back to what they did to Eric. They kind of kept him boxed in for about five years. FINRA started a case. There was a bad result. It was appealed to the SEC. Eventually the SEC got gave a good result and eventually after it went back down to FINRA we got the whole thing dismissed. It's the five years that bothers me. It's the procedural limbo that everybody it can be a broker dealer like it was here. It can be an individual. It can be an investor, stockholder, a company, whoever it is spending that much money on legal and I know I'm the beneficiary. But also just how many different deals do you lose out on if you suddenly have to wait five years, go sit on the sideline for that long? You miss out on opportunity after opportunity. And the SEC, they don't blink. But to them, what they're doing is normal and they think, "No, John, you got a good result for your client, so nothing went wrong here. We, you know, utilized a process. There's a process. We both put our arguments together and you got what you wanted. No. Anytime this happens, and this is just one example, again, the substance of these isn't what bothers me. What's bothering me that people really need to be aware of, they're slowing down the process. They're finding ways to hurt the entire industry because they're not doing this to the larger companies. They're not doing this to larger investors. There's a general antagonism towards micro cap and it shows up like I just said in corporate actions department issues. It's been showing up. Yeah, I just mentioned Eric Flesh. Everything is taking a lot longer. I don't know when they realized that merely slowing everybody down would be a problem, but it does hurt smaller companies and investors a lot more than it does bigger ones just by definition. Think about it this way. If you're invidia right now, you're a company, right? And if you, I don't know, can't do a certain deal for a while and you what want that money, you won't miss it. It's a rounding error to you. You're invidsuer. You can't do a deal for five years. Well, you're out of business. You know, I don't know where your next job is coming from, but it's not with that company. That's what's going on, and it's being weaponized. So what people really need to look at now is just what we can do to try to fight back against the weaponization of simply slower actions and and that's really what they're doing now that's hurting the most. It's not a specific action. Like I said, we're actually doing better on those ever since Paul Atkins took over. But the speed at which the processes are happening going much more slowly, that's the killer. >> Absolutely. All right. All right. Well, John, I think that's a good place to end it. Um, with that, where can our audience go and find more information about PULP? >> Well, they can certainly always call me. My number, uh, it's on the website. The website is pulp.com. pulllp.com. Happy to, you know, give a free consult to anyone who wants. >> Very cool. Well, John, thank you so much. >> Also, one more thing, they can also meet me in person. I'll be there at Toronto. >> There you go. All right. Well, John, thank you so much for joining me today. Really do appreciate it. And I will see you in Toronto. Can't wait for it. Thanks for the opportunity. >> Oh yeah. Thank you, John.
VIRTUAL KEYNOTE Q&A with Jonathan Uretsky, Partner and Co-Director of Litigation at PULLP,
Summary
Transcript
Welcome everyone to the Planet Micro Cap Showcase Toronto happening October 21 through 23, 2025. I'm your host Robert Craft and I'm very excited to introduce our virtual keynote here. Joining me is John Uritkis, the original founder and partner at PULP, PUL LLP P, the micro cap litigator. Uh, John, thank you for joining me today. How you doing, man? >> I'm doing well. How are you? >> Oh, you know, we are uh we're we're just getting very pumped for the Toronto event and thank you for for doing this virtual keynote to, you know, give us kind of an update. What's going on, your background, what you do, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, I wanted to get this keynote start off first for those that aren't familiar with Pulp and what you do. What would you say sets Pulp apart from other law firms in the microchem space? So there's definitely an aspect of us that is very similar to every other law firm that you're going to see at the conferences that you know of from the micro cap space and even some of the big firms although compared to those we're a lot cheaper but the main thing that sets us apart is that in addition to the transactions in addition to be able to we do an uplist we do an IPO we can do corporate filings but we're the micro cap litigators and that's really the specialty that we've become known for over the years. If you're getting sued, you want us in there saying objection. If the SEC is coming after you, you want me to go in there and do an opening, to do a closing, to be that guy you see on TV, to be the guy you see in the movie. That the real lawyers. It's not that everybody else isn't a real lawyer, but when you picture one, having just seen a TV show or watched a movie, that's us. >> Very cool. I mean, real quick, I have to ask, you know, I recall you micro cap litigator both me and you, you know, a couple times. Where did the nickname come from? I didn't make it up. I wish I did. It's a great nickname. It's a long story, but I'll try to make it quick. So, what happened was I got this micro cap case. It was the SEC versus AVL. AVL was a Canadian company actually from Sarnia, Ontario, uh, which is kind of right near Toronto. And I had to just defend this company and its officers and its directors. And there was two other defendants in that case. The SEC and the Justice Department was both going after them. And they were both lawyers. Can't make this stuff up. One guy's last name Stalker. The other guy's last name awful. So you literally have a case about awful stalker and it's a micro cap case. Not making that up. With that said, they both think they know what they're doing. I was a younger kid at the time and I just didn't know how to say yes to a settlement because I was cocky, because I was young and I just wanted to go to trial against the SEC. Both of them lost pretty badly. They both went to prison. One for 10 years, one to eight years. After I gave my opening statement, the guy from the SEC actually just took me aside, said to me, "John, can we please get this done? Just have your company do me 25,000." Naturally, being an idiot and young, I said, "No way. I want to keep going." My client was like, "Are you kidding? How much are you going to charge me for the rest of the trial?" I said, "A little more than 25,000." He made the deal. He settled for 25,000, which to be clear, he never actually gave to the SEC. I had already made the Justice Department go away. And I was pissed. I wanted to do my trial. I went home. I'm back in New York. I'm sitting at my desk, furious at everything that had happened. And what I didn't realize yet was everybody else saw it the huge victory and the most important people, all of the corporate clients of those other two lawyers who did all those transactions. Ton of issuers. And what did those issuers do? They were looking for a new lawyer because theirs was in prison. They found my name from the website on the court. They called up. My phone rings. They didn't know my name. Um, I need to talk to that micro cap litigator. I go, "Who?" I didn't know what they were talking about. Phone rang again. Another issuer. Hey, uh, can you put me in touch with that micro cap litigator? It happened over and over and over again. After a month of this, I adopted the name. I love it. It gave me a nickname that I never would have thought of myself and I've run with it ever since. It's the best corporating and, you know, marketing you could come up with outside of Planet Micro. I hope that you know it'll be on your tombstone like John the the microc litigator and you just be smiling down just like yeah that was there. >> And I just admitted I didn't come up with it but on my tombstone it's going to say his idea. >> Very cool. And uh real quick who do you represent? I'm assuming pretty much anyone that >> you name. >> I'd like to say that we're a full service firm, but let's be honest, if we had a trip and fall case, I wouldn't know what to do with it. If I had to write you a will, you should really, really go somewhere else because I'd commit malpractice. There's a lot of things we don't know how to do. Those involve what I call people. If it involves a business, especially in the securities world, especially within micro cap, yeah, that's who we represent. But that doesn't mean just issuers. We represent a whole lot of funds. We represent a whole lot of investors. We represent a lot of the the tertiary people within the industry, brokerage firms, for example. We just had a very big case, maybe we'll get to talk about it, involving one of the brokerage firms that serves the industry by providing liquidity. Uh we also work, you know, with a lot of the accounting firms. There's the accounting guys, they get sued, too. Everybody that you know of from the entire micro cap space, we are the people that they go to when there's any kind of regulatory or really litigation work that needs to be done. And yeah, again, the transactions too, but it's the whole industry. It's not just the issuers. Some people think it is >> 100%. All right. So, when you were on the legal panel in Vegas, our Las Vegas event, you you predicted that the SEC would back away from its dealer cases. Could you follow up on that? And if Yeah. Did Did that happen? >> I didn't know how much it would be. I undersold that. And I remember the look. Everybody kind of gasped when I was saying that at the panel. I actually undersold it. What had just happened last year right at the time of Vegas was a decision came out from this Texas judge and what he had done, he actually just said that the SEC's new rule was a problem and wasn't going to be enforcable. That was just the new rule. Now, what I then predicted was, hey, you know what? They've got these cases out there. Some of them are over. I don't think they're going to bring any new ones. But what was interesting was what about the four that are currently pending in the courts right now. And what was really interesting, there was one case where they had already hired an expert and the expert hadn't testified yet, but we knew what his opinion was because he was going to be representing the defendant against the SEC. The expert in that case is named Paul Atkins. As you may have heard, he had just been tabbed at the time to become the new chairperson of the SEC. Pretty important position in and of itself, but also decisive vote. There's only five commissioners. When they make these decisions, you need three and they already had two. What happened is once he actually got put in, they the SEC had to go into each and every one of the courts, tell the judge for each and every one of those pending cases, yeah, that lawsuit we filed, um, we dismiss it. We dismissed this, too. We dismissed this, too. We dismissed this, too. And the judges were like, you can't do that. It's been like four years. you've been beating this like it's, you know, illegal, illegal, horrible, toxic financing, everything. But eventually the SEC withdrew the Adam Long case. It withdrew the Tribridge case. It withdrew the LGB Capital case and it withdrew River North equity. It's also not going ahead with its appeal to challenge the Texas judge's rule. It hasn't brought a single dealer case ever since. what this has done and it's a certain kind of liquidity. It is toxic liquidity but it does allow certain companies that rely on loans from those type of lenders actually have some available funds to do things in the market. The SEC really didn't know what it was doing. They had an idea, you know what, toxic financing is bad. And I think a lot of people would agree it is. There's other types of f financing. Look, I represent, you know, some of those lenders. You're probably not going to like to hear me say that. There are better ways, more stable ways to do financing, but it certainly shouldn't be the SEC and not with an SEC rule, but with an SEC series of enforcement actions based on not a rule at all. This was the right decision, and it reestablished some more liquidity in the markets. This is undoubtedly a win and a huge win for the entire micro cap space. >> That is really interesting. I I had no idea that was happen. So, what I mean, just a quick followup. I mean, what is the SEC focused on right now then? >> Well, they've been doing their best to sort of, you know, undo things as much as they can. Uh, you know, they had been more interested in crypto. Now they're less interested in crypto. What they're actually doing, and I got to give them credit. I It kills me to say this. I'm I'm like one of their primary adversaries. They've gone back to plain vanilla cases. What we've seen a whole lot more is, hey, you know what? Insider trading still bad. Securities fraud, plain vanilla, putting out a press release that's false, still bad. People, yes, they still do them, believe it or not. Pump and dump still bad. uh wash trading cases. That's where you know you effectively find three or four friends of yours and you just trade amongst yourselves to make the appearance of volume be there. Still bad. So it's not that oh Paul Atkins equals you can get away with anything which is literally what a lot of my clients they call me up. They're like Paul Atkins is in charge now. Tell the SEC to drop the case. And I'm like well no they think that you committed you know basic fraud. They say that you lied when you raised $22 million. So no, they're not just going to drop that case. But actually, as their adversary, I think that's what they're for. I think SEC enforcement exists so that when somebody puts out a false press release and raises money based on that or something like that. Or there's insider trading. Yeah, those those are laws. They've been around for decades if not longer and they should be enforced and they're not proper and that's what the SEC enforcement, you know, lawyers really should focus on. But I will say there's also a lot fewer of them. >> So like I I want to maybe take us back in time to, you know, sorry, another quick followup on that because, you know, it's a bit of a frothy moment that we're at in the markets. you know, as a result, you see certain fads or trends, you know, that, you know, you can go out and raise, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars for stuff like that. you know, how has the SEC reacted to, you know, some of the like post frothiness in things when things like this do, you know, when little fads and trends pop up, you know, talking everything from when, you know, crypto has had like four of them, it feels like, you know, cannabis for a minute, you know, psychedelics, you know, all all that stuff. So, I'm curious as to what historically SEC has reacted to it post the frothy craze. So some chairmen are more reactive than others. If you go back, yeah, just one administration, Gendler was extraordinarily reactive. And in fact, some would say, you know, proactive, which was a big problem. And in fact, he's the guy who created all the dealer stuff. But he would react to anything. If something was in the news, he went after it. If something was frothy, he immediately would find an excuse to launch a few cases based on that. Atkins is just not like that. Atkins is very deliberate. There hasn't been anything like that now. There's been a real focus on what are we actually here for? And yeah, there's been fewer overall cases, but there's been no reaction to anything froy lately whatsoever. Historically, it depends on the I think just the personality. It's not really people's really put too much insight into the political party that's in charge. It doesn't work that way. As you at least go further into the past, as you go further into the past, you can actually see that whether someone is a Democrat or a Republican is seemingly irrelevant. It's their personality. Some people like the frothiness and they want to be in the news. Uh, and that actually holds true not just for the SEC. If you guys are old enough, you'll even remember Elliot Spitzer, who was the attorney general of New York. Um, not that predated, but you know, was right before Enron. There's the reactionary stuff when something is in the news almost irrespective of your political party. I don't know that it's because Gendler was a Democrat and Atkins is a Republican. I think Atkins is just a very deliberative person and he's not going to chase things. >> Absolutely. All right. So, I mean, going back to my line of my line of questioning, your honor. Um, but you know, on that on that same legal panel, you also mentioned uh this a Supreme Court case, and I'm going to probably butcher this. Mari Mari, did I say that right? >> Yes. >> Um, that tried to distinguish between inactionable pure omissions and actionable halftruths. What happened with that? By the way, for full disclosure, this is a question that John gave me to ask him. So, if I sounded like I read it, I did. I'm just being straight up honest on this one because I'm I that I have no idea on. So, John, help me educate me. >> Yeah. So, I mentioned >> straight up on that. >> This was the other thing that I mentioned during the Vegas panel that had just happened. your timing for that Vegas panel was either perfect or seriously about a week too early. If I could have just waited one week and I would have been able to like really like get a better sense, I could have read the decision. But yeah, right around the time of the Vegas conference last year, uh the Supreme Court, weirdly, I'm I'm surprised they did it, but they effectively just said, "Okay, those omissions, you've probably generally heard you're not allowed to lie because that's fraud, but you're not allowed to make a material omission." Meaning, I'm just not going to tell you. Now according to you know what Supreme Court effectively said in writing that's cool omit away and that's what I said on the panel there were a lot of gasps people were like looking at me like I had five heads John you cannot give these people legal advice to go do that I wasn't giving anybody legal advice what I was doing was telling everyone what the Supreme Court said their goal which didn't work was to then limit the amount of plaintiff's cases is brought against issuers for, you know, because they make up cases all the time. Plaintiffs bar when they go and they sue an issuer. Don't make up anything just to have a case because they're not about the case. They're about making up a class action and just getting a settlement and hitting the insurance, which is what it's all about from their perspective. So the Supreme Court to its credit I think they were looking for a way how can we limit those class action securities cases they came up with this. Let's make it a real lie not an omission. They thought that would work. They were wildly wrong. The amount of class actions based on securities filings based on omissions has barely decreased. They're still there. It's that now they're being packaged with oh and they also lied and as long as you package it with an oh and they also lied. There's still that case. So what has really resulted from it is a lot more confusion because now if you get one of those honestly I benefit from it too is a defense. I can now say yeah but you know what the Supreme Court says it's okay to omit and they didn't really want us to do that. companies who are making omissions, they can get away with it. We haven't seen a decrease in the amount of lawsuits. So, Supreme Court tried, the Supreme Court had a good idea, a good intent. Um, it was an epic fail. >> Got it. Next question. What about FINRA? You know, do micro cap companies have problems with FINRA or just the SEC? >> Yeah, a lot of people think that it's just the SEC and a couple of the states. I wish. Um, unfortunately it's never that simple. Just because they're not bringing a lawsuit doesn't mean that they can't really really make things difficult um for the investors, the shareholders, you know, the company itself, everyone. Uh, FINRA, this is lesser known. They have what's called the corporate actions department. Recently, they, and I don't actually know why, they've been acting up a lot recently. Um, we have several different clients affected. We have one client that just put through, hey, we want to change our name. You know, our old name uh is not reflective of what we do anymore. It seems pretty innocuous. FINRA didn't like it because they said one of the note holders, which was a fund, has a minority investor who eight years ago was the subject of a settled SEC investigation. No, I'm not making that up. The guy is not in any way involved. He doesn't even really run the fund that made the loan. It's just a small note. It's not a convertible note. There's so it's so far attenuated, but now a company that just wants to change its name, FINRA is saying no. And they've said no for about 18 months, and I'm now bringing a case based on that. Uh we have a company that's trying to do a reverse stock split. Those are kind of important and happen a lot, not even just in micro cap, but you know, at all levels. There's nothing wrong inherently with a reverse stock split. But same thing if they look at anyone and I don't mean anyone meaning a director or an officer. I don't mean anyone even meaning an equity holder. I mean even a note holders minority you know owner. That's about as far as as attenuated as you can get. This isn't a consultant who's running the show without actually being a director when they should be. This is for virtually anything at all. PINRA feels like they now have complete veto power to take a board's decisions and override them. So you have stockholders, they want something done. The board makes it happen and then says I don't like some of the people who you have who lent money to you and there's really nothing you can well there is something you can do. he come to me, I sue FINRA. But the fact that I've now had to sue FINRA itself and this two companies have sued them within the SEC. We have one note holder who sued in federal court. But none of that should be necessary. These are the tiniest little corporate actions that we take for granted. And to be honest, even somebody like me, I haven't realized how much power the FINRA corporate actions department has over these little things. But these little things can wreck a micro cap company. If you need to have a reverse merger and you're waiting on that for a transaction and suddenly you have to wait two years, you don't have two years. That money's gone. That transaction is gone. Investors, they've moved on. In FINRA corporate actions department, don't know why they're acting up, but they're causing a lot of problems similar to that right now. >> Interesting. But the other FINR departments are fine. >> Oh, of course. Yeah. They're just the they're just the same as they've always been. None of them are fine. Obviously, FINRA enforcement has always been, you know, a thorn in everyone's side, but at least that's their job. You know, they expect that. The same way I've made a living out of fighting FINRA enforcement and fighting uh SEC enforcement and fighting the state regulators. It's part of the game. That's okay. It's when what is theoretically a rubber stamp to just regular corporate actions that happen on a given day-to-day basis where there's no obvious bad activity. There's a board of directors that got together and had a meeting and said, "Let's do this." And they documented it properly with a vote and some minutes. the same way every single one of the companies who you know are coming to your events and seeing this. Why are they doing it? Because that's what the investors want. They have investors. They have stockholders. And that's where it bothers me a lot more where where it's the same old same old. Sure, FINRA has presented problems. It always had. That's a part of being in business. This it's new and it's unfair. So, John, to you know, we've covered a lot here today and, you know, I I always enjoy our our uh our little catch-ups and and and doing all this, but I mean, to close us out, what are some things that you think folks who, you know, across the board, whether they're micro cap investors, issuers, fellow service providers, what's something from your perspective, your expertise that you think they should be paying attention to for the duration of 25 going into 26? >> There's actually a lot. Uh there's one example that occurs to me and uh my guess is he'll even be in Toronto although I haven't asked him but uh if you look um look it up what the SEC and FINRA collectively did to Glendale and it's public so I'm not going to hide it. Uh Eric Fleshy uh full disclosure we represented Eric in this this action. What bothered me most there wasn't the eventual result. We got a great result. Um it was the time the amount of harm that can be done while legal actions are going on. You know, yay, I won. I don't feel good about what happened. I don't feel good because Eric was effectively stuck in the hotel California. And it's not the specifics of his case. I don't think there's any one thing that FINRA or the SEC or anybody's doing any differently right now that you need to be on the lookout for more so than their procedural uh antagonistic issues which is getting back to what they did to Eric. They kind of kept him boxed in for about five years. FINRA started a case. There was a bad result. It was appealed to the SEC. Eventually the SEC got gave a good result and eventually after it went back down to FINRA we got the whole thing dismissed. It's the five years that bothers me. It's the procedural limbo that everybody it can be a broker dealer like it was here. It can be an individual. It can be an investor, stockholder, a company, whoever it is spending that much money on legal and I know I'm the beneficiary. But also just how many different deals do you lose out on if you suddenly have to wait five years, go sit on the sideline for that long? You miss out on opportunity after opportunity. And the SEC, they don't blink. But to them, what they're doing is normal and they think, "No, John, you got a good result for your client, so nothing went wrong here. We, you know, utilized a process. There's a process. We both put our arguments together and you got what you wanted. No. Anytime this happens, and this is just one example, again, the substance of these isn't what bothers me. What's bothering me that people really need to be aware of, they're slowing down the process. They're finding ways to hurt the entire industry because they're not doing this to the larger companies. They're not doing this to larger investors. There's a general antagonism towards micro cap and it shows up like I just said in corporate actions department issues. It's been showing up. Yeah, I just mentioned Eric Flesh. Everything is taking a lot longer. I don't know when they realized that merely slowing everybody down would be a problem, but it does hurt smaller companies and investors a lot more than it does bigger ones just by definition. Think about it this way. If you're invidia right now, you're a company, right? And if you, I don't know, can't do a certain deal for a while and you what want that money, you won't miss it. It's a rounding error to you. You're invidsuer. You can't do a deal for five years. Well, you're out of business. You know, I don't know where your next job is coming from, but it's not with that company. That's what's going on, and it's being weaponized. So what people really need to look at now is just what we can do to try to fight back against the weaponization of simply slower actions and and that's really what they're doing now that's hurting the most. It's not a specific action. Like I said, we're actually doing better on those ever since Paul Atkins took over. But the speed at which the processes are happening going much more slowly, that's the killer. >> Absolutely. All right. All right. Well, John, I think that's a good place to end it. Um, with that, where can our audience go and find more information about PULP? >> Well, they can certainly always call me. My number, uh, it's on the website. The website is pulp.com. pulllp.com. Happy to, you know, give a free consult to anyone who wants. >> Very cool. Well, John, thank you so much. >> Also, one more thing, they can also meet me in person. I'll be there at Toronto. >> There you go. All right. Well, John, thank you so much for joining me today. Really do appreciate it. And I will see you in Toronto. Can't wait for it. Thanks for the opportunity. >> Oh yeah. Thank you, John.