Thread by @calebhannan

Here's a long thread on $DATS, a recently IPO'ed NASDAQ stock that has rapidly gained meme status. No one at @sharesleuth is short the stock and no one has paid us to put together this thread.

It's just a company that deserves a closer look.

$DATS is essentially a social media app. The company's DatChat platform combines some elements of Discord's group chat and Snapchat's disappearing messages features into what is, IMO, a clunky, unappealing package.

$DATS only published 10-Q correctly states that the company's success hinges on its ability to get a "critical mass" of users. How many does it have? Unclear. But based on what I've seen, most of DatChat's users seem to be shareholders hoping to get rich, not organic customers.

OK, on to the important stuff: executives and ownership.

$DATS CEO is Darin Myman, whose previous company was an OTC stock called Wally World Media (WLYW).

Here is Wally World's historical price chart:

What Wally World did is less important than who was there at the beginning, because it's the same crew that is behind $DATS today: Myman, Alpha Capital Anstalt, Robb Knie, and Eric Weisblum.

Here's Wally World's original S-1 ownership breakdown:

Now here's the equivalent chart for $DATS:

Why are these three people/entities important?

Much of @sharesleuth's past decade has been spent painstakingly documenting the trail of investor carnage wrought by Barry Honig.

Honig is currently facing fraud charges in connection with three pump-and-dump schemes that the SEC says generated more than $27 million in illegal stock sales.

Knie, Weisblum, and Alpha Capital have worked or invested alongside Honig for years.

Wally World was also represented by Gregg Jaclin, Honig's former deal lawyer.

Last year, Jaclin was disbarred after getting three years probation for his role in setting up an alleged "shell factory" to defraud investors.

law.com/njlawjournal/2…

Alpha Capital was one of the many "microcap fraudsters" charged alongside Honig in the SEC's September 2018 complaint.

sec.gov/litigation/lit…

It settled with the SEC in 2019, agreeing to pay roughly $860,000 in disgorgement, interest, and penalties.

Robb Knie is the CEO of biotech Hoth Therapeutics ( $HOTH ), which is down 86% since its 2019 IPO.

Knie also figures heavily in the testimony of a former Laidlaw & Co. employee in a detailed filing submitted in California Superior Court this August.

Laidlaw is an investment bank that recently settled a long-running FINRA investigation by agreeing to pay a $1.5 million fine and suspending its Chief Compliance Officer.

law360.com/articles/14038…

In the filing, the ex-Laidlaw employee, who worked at the company for seven years, described Knie as a "scam artist" who along with Honig and Laidlaw's principals was receiving large quantities of stock for next to nothing in a handful of companies, including $HOTH and $DATS.

Weisblum is the principal behind Whalehaven Capital, an early investor Honig-backed companies like Octillion, now SolarWindow, which @sharesleuth wrote about earlier this year before its principal shareholder was charged with securities fraud by the SEC.

sec.gov/litigation/lit…

Spherix Corp., another company with ties to Honig, Knie, Weisblum, and Alpha Capital, announced a deal in early 2018 to acquire DatChat for Spherix stock valued at a little over $60 million. The deal was called off a few months later. Spherix was an early investor in $HOTH.

A recent $DATS 8K announced a "low seven figure" contract with an influencer marketing group called IZEA Worldwide.

sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archiv…

.@sharesleuth published this piece 5 years ago about a network of stealth promotion articles, some written by fake people, all bullish on Honig-backed companies.

sharesleuth.com/pretenders-and…

Unmentioned was that IZEA was the focus of roughly 40 of those 600 pieces.

More?

Spherix is now Aikido Pharma ( $AIKI), which earlier this year entered into a patent license agreement with another biotech, Silo Pharma ( $SILO).

sec.gov/Archives/edgar…

$SILO's CEO is...

Anyway, after today's 25% drop, $DATS is merely a $250M market cap company. It deserves scrutiny, I think, only because its ties to popular traders like @MrZackMorris have massively increased retail interest. And those investors deserve to know who's behind it.

Good luck!

Maybe I'm naive, but I only just now joined @MrZackMorris's Discord chat group, Atlas Trading.

Maybe this isn't indicative of anything, but I just did a search for $AIKI and $HOTH and...

And for those curious, there are even more search results when you look at $IZEA:

Caveat: as this even-handed review of Atlas makes clear, the Discord group is massive, so a few thousand search hits on a ticker isn't indicative of anything other than some interest, both among the mods and the users.