Siga Resources Inc (SGAE) pump-and-dump spam

This pump-and-dump (P&D) spam for Siga Resources Inc (SGAE) follows a familiar pattern: it starts almost immediately after the close of trading on the Friday and the characteristics match several other recent spam runs which have been sent out by the Kelihos botnet. The spams look like this:

Are We having Fun Yet? THIS COMPANY IS UP TODAY ON LARGE VOLUME.

Trading Date: Monday, September 23th
Closed at: 0.015
Company: Siga Resources Inc.
Symbol traded: SG_AE
Target Price: 0.25

Our Watchlist Alert!!! This Stock is back up on strong VOLUME!

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This Stock IS RED HOT!!! Massive Breakout!

Date: Sep 23th
Target: .55
Company Name: SIGA RESOURCES INC
Stock: S G_A-E
Buy it at: $0.02

Strong news and a scintillating chart could spell breakout. Driving
towards a new breakout level!

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My New Monster Pick Is ... Most Active!!!

Date: Monday, September 23, 2013
Current Price: 0.015
Tick: S-GA-E
Name: SIGA RESOURCES CORP
Short Term Target Price: 0.20

This company had another strong day! We could see further gains
ahead tomorrow. One NOT to Miss.

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Take a look at your favorite stock charts. It is featured company ready to
pop!!!

Sym: S-G_A E
Current Price: .02
Date: Monday, Sep 23th, 2013
Company: SIGA RESOURCES, CORP
4-Day Target: $.50

It Broadens Target Markets! Its Time to Buy Again...

Sample subject lines:
Subject:     Potential Breakout Stock
Subject:     Are you missing this?
Subject:     This Company looks ready to explode!
Subject:     Do Not Miss This One, You Will Be Bummed If You Do!

As I posted last week, observation of similar P&D spams is that the share price often collapses completely when the spamming stops.

Siga Resources in involved in small-scale minerals exploration. I'm not a financial analyst, but this firm looks almost dormant with zero income and effectively no cash in the bank. There has been no significant news for over a year. Siga's own 10-K filing for 2013 is extremely bleak and uses phrases such as "we have not generated any revenues since our formation on January 18, 2007" and "We require additional cash to continue operations. Such operations could take many years of exploration and would require expenditure of very substantial amounts of money, money we do not presently have and may never be able to raise. If we cannot raise it we will have to abandon our planned exploration activities and go out of business" and "We have one joint venture project on the Lucky Thirteen Claim. The joint venture has to date defaulted on payments to keep the ownership in the Lucky Thirteen Claim intact. Consequently, we are at risk of losing our interests in the Lucky Thirteen Claim entirely."

In short, there is no news at all that would make you want to buy this stock. And it is very important to realise that any information contained in the spam messages is merely a lie to boost the price, sent out by unknown parties.

The stock has not done well since it started, trading at around $0.55 to $0.60 until mid-2011 when it peaked at $2.40. It has since fallen to levels between $0.01 and $0.02.

On a typical day, share trades in SGAE are close to zero and rarely exceed 100,000 shares. But on Friday alone, over a million shares were traded in SGAE with 1.7 million shares traded in total across the week a prices ranges from $0.0288 to $0.015. I believe that the majority of those share trades were done by the spammers themselves taking up a position, with speculators adding a small volume on top.

Do not be tempted to buy SGAE shares on the back of these spammed-out solicitations. They are simply the actions of someone trying to offload almost worthless stock at an inflated price, and past history with these spamvertised stocks shows that there is a high risk that the price will collapse completely afterwards.