Where in the world is John Babikian? Probably in the UAE

It is time for another John Babikian update. And as always we must ask, where in the world is he? Lebanon, UAE, and Russia are all possible. My current bet is the UAE (United Arab Emirates). I will explain why below.


It turns out that Babikian’s Seychelles shell company Middlebay Trade Ltd. had purchased a vineyard in The Dalles, Oregon. See coverage of this in The Oregonian and The Dalles Chronicle. The SEC obtained a writ of attachment for that vineyard and for Babikian’s houses in California so that those properties will not be sold. See the SEC’s complaint (pdf) against Babikian. Here is the SEC press release from March 13th about obtaining an asset freeze against Babikian.

SEC v. Babikian Doc 6 Filed 13 Mar 14 by scion_scion

By the way, follow Scion_scion on Scribd to see updates to the legal case against Babikian.

Today the SEC filed a detailed declaration (PDF) in seeking a temporary restraining order and asset freeze. This document (also shown below through Scribd) gives some details not previously disclosed. It also shows that the SEC has relied a lot on Babikian’s ex-wife’s lawsuits, which goes to show that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Also, this document explicitly links Robert Kalfayan to Babikian — something that has been known by penny stock researchers for years but with the SEC stating it the odds increase that he will be named in a suit soon. It is also quite possible that he or others are cooperating with the SEC. Kalfayan’s company is directly linked to paying for some Awesomepennystocks.com (APS) emails (see page 6 of the declaration).

Other interesting tidbits include the fact that Babikian acquired his ASWR shares directly from the company in a PIPE and deposited them at John Thomas Financial and from there he transferred the shares to an account at Frankfurter Bank (Brown Brothers Harriman was the US custodian of the shares). On the day that AWSR was pumped he sold a number of shares from that account and also transferred some shares to an account held at Apex Clearing and sold some from that account. (On a side note, John Thomas Financial collapsed after being investigated by FINRA and the SEC for its involvement with AWSR.)

Getting back to the question in the title of this blog post, I believe that Babikian is in the UAE because NetJets recently agreed to repurchase the fractional jet ownership interest of Vertical International Relief Fund (Babikian’s front charity – see info PDF) for substantially below market cost. And:

Babikian has requested that NetJets wire the proceeds to an account in the name of “Elementos Ltd.” at a financial institution in the United Arab Emirates named Emirates NBD [page 17 of document below]

SEC v. Babikian Doc 15 Filed 21 Mar 14 by scion_scion

Disclaimer: No position in any stock mentioned above. I have no relationship with any parties mentioned above except that I am a paying subscriber of PromotionStockSecrets. This blog has a terms of use that is incorporated by reference into this post; you can find all my disclaimers and disclosures there as well.

4 thoughts on “Where in the world is John Babikian? Probably in the UAE”

  1. john babikian invested some money into my startup company. nockauf jeans,with the promise that when i was
    up and rollin he would continue to fund it. he never did and just left me hanging in the wind.now i understand
    why my gut feeling about him was that he had access to so much money. I thought he was a trust fund kid.

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