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Legal fund to help me fight Saleen

This originated from Reddit, so bellow you'll find the Reddit post and link to the thread. People suggested a GoFundMe campaign and after talking to a few lawyers, it is clear that I need all the help I can get. 

Reddit Post
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I never thought I'd be lucky enough to one day have my reddit comments delivered at my house in a nice binder  but that's what happened today!

I'm on vacation so I was mowing my lawn this afternoon when a nice bailiff entered my driveway to give me a 1-1/2" thick binder which happens to be something called:

"MOTION TO INSTITUTE PROCEEDINGS FOR INTERLOCUTORY AND PERMANENT INJUNCTION, NOTICE OF PRESENTATION, NOTICE TO DEFENDANTS, AFFIDAVIT OF STEVE SALEEN, AFFIDAVIT OF DANIEL WEBSTER AND EXHIBITS P-1 to P-19"

In short, they claim that my posting on various websites and blogs were defamatory and impacted negatively Steve Saleen's reputation AND "impacted the trading volume and price of Saleen Automotive's stock".

For those of you who don't know, Saleen is a company that tunes cars, meaning they buy stock cars or cars owners give them their cars, and they turn them into "Saleen cars" with their body kits and sometimes performance upgrades. We know them here for their "Saleen Tesla", now known as the "GTX", which is a modified Tesla Model S.

**Really brief history of Saleen**:

Saleen Inc started in the 1980's and they got very popular through their famous Saleen Mustang, but the company went bankrupt in 2008. Steve Saleen, the founder of the company left a few months before the bankruptcy to be the CEO of ZX Auto (part of Chamco), a company setup to import Chinese trucks and sell them through US dealership. That barely lasted a year and the company went bankrupt, leaving in the dark 37 dealerships who each paid franchise fees of up to $300,000 .

Steve Saleen then went back to car tuning, but he lost his "Saleen brand name" in the first bankruptcy so he started his new tuning company under the name "SMS Supercars". A few years later (2012), he won back his brand name and started using it again for his tuning business.

A year later (2013), we learn through SEC filings that Saleen, until then a private company, was again in financial difficulties with millions in accumulated deficit. So they go public on the OTC market through a reverse-merger with a publicly traded shell company owned by David Weiner.

This Mr. Weiner is not new to bringing private companies public through reverse-mergers. Here is a Bloomberg article on how he does business (mainly in the legal marijuana industry). It's a long read, but it's interesting if you want to know how shady rich people make easy money.

Now Saleen is public in pennyland. They start issuing a bunch of PR promising great things, including a "Saleen Tesla". They burned through the cash they got from the reverse-merger pretty quick and last summer had to issue toxic convertible notes to shady lending companies.

*This is important for the case*: Through all that mess, Saleen's stock lost a lot of value, but even more so during the last few months because of the convertible notes maturing and diluting the stock.The stock was still at $0.01 in April before the note started converting, and now it is at only $0.0006.

Here is the stock's performance in the past 2 years: https://i.imgur.com/j3jaxUg.png

Now Saleen filed their 10K  last week, the company is down to their last $21,000 as of July 8th and they said they don't have enough money to continue their operations as of the time of the filling and that they are seeking more financing.

Also their bank is suing  them because they have been defaulting on a loan for years and refuse to turnover collateral.

**Now what's my involvement in this mess?**

I'm a small time Tesla investor and I researched Saleen as an investment opportunity when they announced they were doing the "Saleen Tesla" early last year. After pretty standard due diligence it became clear to me that it was a bad investment (that was early last year when the stock was at $0.30 now at $0.0006). I posted my general thoughts and findings on iHub, a website with message boards mainly for the OTC market. I was met with a barrage of critics and attacks, mostly empty arguments. I started responding to these critics, which were clearly meant to pump the stock, and started digging more into the filings, the history of the company and more especially on the claims they were making about Tesla. I started posting on here (Reddit) because posts about Saleen came up a few times. And also on blogs.

Here's the reddit thread they included as an exhibit (P-9) in the motion: Is Saleen lying in order to sell its version of the Tesla Model S?

They say that in this thread I "urged potential buyers of the Saleen Tesla vehicles to reconsider their decision in a disparaging comment which started with the following statement: "Saleen is running something closely resembling a Ponzi scheme/pump&dump".

And you know what? I don't know if this can have an impact on the case, but I never said that in that particular thread. Meaning the whole exhibit P-9 is a printout of the thread and it missing that particular quote.

I did say that in another thread though, but almost a year apart and I stand by it.

Like I explained in the comment, Saleen is taking deposits from customers, but they don't use the money to build cars or at least only a fraction of the money, therefore they always depends on more people giving deposits, but if they all come back wanting their cars, Saleen doesn't have the money to build them - not unlike a ponzi scheme.

They mention this reddit thread and a few blogs  I wrote, but in each case, all my statements are backed by valid sources.

One of the most outrageous claims they make in the motion is that my posting on iHub increased in April this year, then the volume on Saleen's stock increased and the price crumbled. They are implying that my increased posting on the stock incited people to sell and therefore the volume increased and the price decreased.

But this is complete bullshit. Like I said earlier, Saleen's convertible notes started maturing in April which brought a ton of new shares on the market at a 38 to 40% discount so of course the price would fall. Blaming that on me is ridiculous. And yes, although I don't have the statistics, I assume my posting increased during that period, but that's because the whole board became flooded by pumpers, presumably from the noteholders trying to unload their newly converted shares. What I do on this board is respond to the pumpers with facts, so of course more pumpers = more posts to respond to.

**Conclusion**

I'm letting you know guys in case any of you have any experience with these kind of things and could give any advice. I'm a bit lost here. It's not clear if they are asking for money for damages, but they say that they are evaluating the damages they claim my comments cause them. I'm told hiring a lawyer would be around $200-$300 an hour, that's not in my budget and my fear is that if I just comply with the injunction (not that I think it is right), they will then come back asking for money for damages.

As anyone heard of someone defending themselves for these sort of complaints? I mean, I confident I could defend myself against each one of their claims, but I'm lost in the whole legal process. I'm in Quebec, Canada BTW, I assume jurisdictions can change the legal process...

If you read all the way down here you are a champion! Thanks.

Fred.

Organizer

Fred Lambert
Organizer
Shawinigan, QC

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