Make sure you read the actual report to get an idea of the depth of analysis they've performed, it's not really given enough promenance in the linked article.
I didn't read it until I saw this comment - the report is remarkably in-depth and demonstrates an intimate knowledge not only of the company but also of accounting/audit principles.
Anonymous (if it's correct to refer to them as a unified organisation) is certainly diversifying from DOS attacks…
This work is so far out of left field for anon, I'd be surprised if it was more than one person. The report is concise and coherent, a step above previous missives left by the group. I'm almost certain it's the work of a single young analyst at an established firm. Otherwise they've made a very structured entrance into financial analysis, impressive given their usually decentralized and distanced nature.
I'll say that even my engineering team technical reports in university, among students who met face to face during the week, usually did not sound as cohesive as this report.
On the last page of the report it mentions many people working on it, but unaware of the final product, but with the team being rewarded. It also mentions a codeword to decrypt source information that they'll release should the team be threatened. As the team met with the company, the company may well have identified them by now, or narrowed it down.
Add:
The team obviously (re)branded themselves Anonymous to take any heat off their own identities or firm, whilst also giving the report a publicity boost within the context of the newly setup http://anonanalytics.com/ - they also have some technical know-how to encrypt the data: that may have come from more conventional Anon members. Also, being part of Anonymous may scare the target firm's executives into not retaliating - that's smart.
Disclaimer: I know nothing of Choada, and for all I know, they'r a fraud. However, I have some problems with this report.
1) So they think they spotted a fraud. This has been happening a LOT lately in China. These days, it's not so hard for bears to do this to a good company and force delisting, even if the company is actualy solid.
2) Ok, so some auditors left, and some executives left. This happens to companies. Certainly cause for some investigation, but not necessarily red flags.
3) There's heavy insider trading happening. This is less regulated/enforced in China. That's bad, but commonplace.
4) The statistical analysis on page 13/14 is extremely weak. On p 14 they've done little more than turn the chart on p13 sideways and throw on some confidence intervals. Smoothing profit margins is something that good management often does. I wouldn't say that it points to fraud.
5) Inflated capital spending can be a sign of growth (lease acquisitions, etc.)
The descriptions of "shell companies," that follows all strike me as sensational, and not necessarily substantial.
This has been done in the past but by digging through CEOs' history. For example a good number of them put fake school credentials on their resume.
Someone would go to the university and search their records and sometimes find CEOs lied. He then would take a short position in company's stock (if publicly traded) and release the info. Sure enough, the stock would drop, and he would gain. SEC didn't like but I think the was nothing they could do as it was technically public information.
It's still being done - see e.g. http://www.muddywatersresearch.com - and there's no reason an outfit like that couldn't publish a report as Anonymous...
It looks like they took short positions in the firm before releasing the report. They may gain a significant profit from this, which I think is perfectly fine as all of the information here is public (but not necessarily easily accessible) information.
I suppose whoever matched their bet is going to whatever lengths they consider necessary to find out who they are so they don't offer them any new shorts!
The headline is a little awkward, but the interesting thing here is that Anonymous is now doing analysis on the books of corporations. It's unclear how much of this is based on public information vs. leaked information, or really what the goals are.
However, the twitter tag line "Taking down corporations for the lulz" reads as though it's indiscriminate, and not just targeting organizations deceiving the public or breaking the law.
It's worth mentioning that the value of releasing a properly timed anonymous analysis report on a company could be enormous for a properly positioned market player. If you research a company, discover fraud like this, take a massive short position, then release the information you gathered to someone like Anonymous for them to disseminate, you could potentially make billions, depending on the liquidity of the stock.
In short selling, one of the great risks is that the company you have identified as troubled will not collapse during the window of time for which you have shorted it. Something like this would completely solve that problem -- and better yet, without any direct, traceable links between you as the investor and you as the research originator, so the risk of being caught on some kind of insider trading charge is minimized.
Where is there any evidence of the stock being delisted? All I can find are stories related to suspension of trading yesterday, a far cry from delisting[1][2].
So, anonymous is now in the business of giving - accurate - investment advice. That's an interesting development. So, did they clean up on this or did they not trust their own judgment?
If they keep making predictions like that they're going to be watched a lot more closely than they already are.
"So, did they clean up on this or did they not trust their own judgment?"
The answer to this is one that is oft-repeated: there is no "they" here.
The people behind this new Anon Analytics faction probably had no involvement with anon before this, my guess is that they are people who have been working with/in the markets for years and have wanted to do something like this, and have decided now to do it under the banner of anonymous, for whatever reasons.
I understand why you might say that, on the surface it does look cheesy. But the "miracle vitamin" site is blog run by an optometrist and the article references a per-reviewed study.
"A recent study in the journal Archives of Ophthalmology concludes that high vitamin D intake reduces the risk of developing age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in women under 75 years of age."
Is there reason to think this is one of the same anonymous people as in any other news stories? This sounds like a lower-case-a anonymous person, probably an investor who's taken a short position on this company, or an insider.
The possibility of them being the "same anonymous people" is inconsequential, and very unlikely. The very point of Anonymous is that anyone can be them.
Is this how one might build a vapour startup corporation and cash out. I am not advocating this. I am curious.
I start by listing a vapour startup corporation. People who like to gamble, I mean invest, buy stocks in the corporation. I pay the "brass" (CEOs, etc... and me the founder) high wages and pensions, just like most other corporations. Then the corporation, having no revenue (other than those "investments") declares bankruptcy and delists.
This is pretty interesting, however, one thing to note is that the company is at 2.50HKD, which is roughly $0.30 USD, so it's not much of a leap to suggest this is going to get delisted.
But I'll be interested to see what other things this site comes up with. If they become like Muddy Waters, which uncovered the biggest Canadian fraud with Sino-Forest, since Bre-X, that would be pretty interesting.
what strikes me as kind of strange is that anonymous uses google analytics to track their stats. I'm sure setting up a google account with a fake phone number isn't that much of a hassle, still I would have expected differently from such an allegedly high profile organization.
Hopefully Anonymous will use their new capability to destroy morally bankrupt companies, such as the financial companies that refused to handle funds for Wikileaks.
If it's published OTI, you can make a pretty safe claim that it's public. Otherwise, people who short a company based on a newspaper article accusing the CEO of gross misconduct would be guilty of insider trading.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/66444803/Chaoda