In the spring of 2005 Energy Source, Inc. (formerly Bancorp International Group, Inc.) was a non-trading Nevada shell corporation with 4,890,000 shares outstanding and 25,000,000 shares authorized, controlled by CEO, Thomas Megas and Secretary Martin Duffy. Mr. Megas had planned to bring the company current with its SEC filings to reverse merge his real estate holdings into the company, and had in fact contracted an accountant to start work on the filings.
Unfortunately for the London, UK based Mr. Megas, Mario Pino usurped control of his non-trading shell corporation in a case of corporate identity fraud. Unbeknownst to Megas, Mr. Pino and accomplice Pamela Thompson ultimately printed two series of counterfeit Bancorp certificates. After fraudulently filing documents at the Nevada Secretary of State to hijack control of the corporation, they flooded the market with 41 counterfeit certificates representing hundreds of millions of shares through their associates and various hired promoters.
The counterfeit Bancorp shares entered the public marketplace without a single eyebrow raised at the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, the behemoth private entity responsible for settlement and clearing of all equities. Amazingly, the DTCC cleared hundreds of millions of counterfeit Bancorp shares without discovering that Pamela Thompson, acting as “transfer agent” for Mario Pino had never registered with the SEC as such. In addition, the DTCC never contacted Energy Source's previous TA, Pacific Stock Transfer, to verify any TA change.
Despite Megas discovering the fraud, and then contacting the SEC, various regulators, and the DTCC, the invalid shares continued to trade for several months on the public markets. In fact the stock continued to trade for several weeks even after the DTC released a "Notice to Participants" suspending all services except custody as of 8/11/2005.
After trading northwards of two billion shares in just a few months, the SEC finally suspended trading on the stock on 8/31/2005. The DTCC has maintained its “Global Freeze”, or suspension of DTC services ever since, due to the unknown, but obviously immense number of counterfeit shares that they cleared through their system.