Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up? — Part 2
Have you ever wanted to be a billionaire? 11 easy steps to immense wealth.
September 5, 2023
Related posts in this series include:
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 1: Red flags
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 2: Have you ever wanted to be a billionaire? 11 easy steps to immense wealth.
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 2.1: Vivek responds to Kevin's allegations.
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 2.2: 2015 Happy Talk vs. 2023 Sad Talk
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 3: Levin & Hannity August interviews
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 4: Vivek vs. Irwin; Respecting the least among us. A classy guy.
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 5: The Murdoch connection; friends in high places
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 6: Numbers which don't add up
Rama Swamyisms — Impressing with empty rhetoric
Licensed Financial Advisor Kevin Paffrath walks you through the 11-step process to success. (For those unaware, in the 2021 California recall election to unseat Governor Handsome, Paffrath finished second — to Larry Elder — in a field of 53 candidates.)
Outlined below is the very same process a young attorney with a Yale Law degree successfully used to become fabulously rich and famous. With a little fast talk marketing acumen, you too can become rich beyond your wildest dreams and move on to greener pastures once your initial operation reaches the end of its rope. Comparisons between Mr. Ramaswamy’s business model and that of Elizabeth Holmes are entirely unfair and inappropriate. Her voice is a full octave higher.
Watch Kevin’s video or read the transcript below.
Past performance is not necessarily an indicator of future success. Past performance does not guarantee future results. The investment return and principal value of an investment will fluctuate so that an investor's shares, when redeemed, may be worth more or less than their original cost; and current performance may be lower or higher than the performance data quoted. Representations about past or future investment performance could be misleading because of statements or omissions made involving a material fact, including situations where:
(i) Portrayals of past income, gain, or growth of assets convey an impression of the net investment results achieved by an actual or hypothetical investment which would not be justified under the circumstances, including portrayals that omit explanations, qualifications, limitations, or other statements necessary or appropriate to make the portrayals not misleading; and
(ii) Representations, whether express or implied, about future investment performance, including:
(A) Representations, as to security of capital, possible future gains or income, or expenses associated with an investment;
(B) Representations implying that future gain or income may be inferred from or predicted based on past investment performance; or
(C) Portrayals of past performance, made in a manner which would imply that gains or income realized in the past would be repeated in the future.
Not all investments are suitable for every investor. Before investing, discuss your objectives with a registered investment advisor. Whatever you do, do NOT invest with a firm employing unlicensed sales representatives. The content below shall not be construed as tax, legal, insurance, financial advice, or any other and may be outdated or inaccurate; it is your responsibility to verify all information. This content is for entertainment purposes ONLY. If you need advice, please contact a qualified CPA, attorney, insurance agent, financial advisor, or the appropriate professional for the subject you would like help with.
The billion dollar question: Will Kevin Paffrath’s revelations of alleged violations trigger an SEC investigation and prosecution? Stay tuned. But don’t hold your breath. According to Charles Gasperino, politicized SEC head Gary Gensler is fixated on chasing other demons:
Gensler has chosen to ignore real malfeasance such as the obvious pumping and dumping we’ve seen in some “meme stocks,” costing generational wealth for small investors who believed the pumpers.
Unlike certain disreputable types, we are not going to take the low road and make comparisons with Elizabeth Holmes or wonder if the highly-placed Democrats Ramaswamy placed on his firm’s Board of Advisors to enable him to market his “product” (e.g., former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle or former HHS head Kathleen Sebelius) served to insulate the company from governmental scrutiny. Nor, like some might do, are we about to attempt to find correlations with his business model and that of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. We would never do that, because it would be wrong.
To summarize Kevin’s allegations — Ramaswamy bought an existing discarded drug candidate for $5 million; did nothing substantive to the drug other than hyping its potential; and convinced investors to pony up billions to get in on the ground floor. Guess who walked away with millions?
Ramaswamy’s firm acquired the rights to GlaxoSmithKline’s abandoned Alzheimer’s drug in December 2014 for $5 million. On June 11, 2015, the company filed with the SEC for an initial public offering of stock. The prospectus states:
No new chemical entity has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or the FDA, for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease since 2003.
. . . Based on preclinical and clinical data collected to date, we believe RVT-101, when used in combination with donepezil [Aricept], works additively to increase the concentration of acetylcholine and other neurotransmitters and thereby synergistically improve cognition and function in patients with Alzheimer's disease.
We believe RVT-101, which is being developed as a once-daily oral medication, has the potential to be a best-in-class 5-HT6 receptor antagonist for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease based on its safety, tolerability and efficacy for up to 48 weeks, as demonstrated in a 684-subject, randomized, placebo-controlled Phase 2b trial conducted by GSK. We believe this is meaningful, in part, because currently marketed Alzheimer's disease drugs were approved on efficacy data of 28 weeks or less. In this Phase 2b trial, subjects that received 35 mg RVT-101 in combination with donepezil achieved a statistically significant improvement in cognition and function, as compared to those receiving donepezil alone.
Pay close attention to the statement above, because billions of dollars hinged on it. Kevin discusses the 684-subject trial below. It would appear that nothing new was known at the time of the stock offering, beyond what was known when GSK sold it off. At the time of the IPO, no clinical trials were conducted beyond those conducted by GSK. Anyone who read the prospectus closely would have realized it was essentially a Seinfeld episode — about nothing. If the drug was worth potentially billions, why would GSK have parted with it so cheaply? The answer is, it wasn’t. That was the burning question Jim Cramer asked Ramaswamy in 2015. It has not, and will not, be satisfactorily answered. The table below from the prospectus summarizes the four GSK trials, before the company abandoned further research as impractical.
Have you ever wanted to be a billionaire? In this video I'm going to show you step-by-step how a presidential candidate gaining popularity today is believed to have [allegedly] tricked people out of billions of dollars to line the pockets of himself, his brother, his mother, all while [allegedly] robbing investors. So in this video I'm going to provide you the exact steps on how to replicate this potential scam. Now I want to be clear — I'm not personally coming to the conclusion that this is a scam. These are just the opinions of the information that I found and put together in this video. So it's important that everybody come to their own conclusion. So as I always like to say: don't sue me bro. And hypothetically, if you wanted to become a billionaire fast and quickly, here's a fantastic way to do so.
Step number 1: Identify the easiest way to get rich. You might think the easiest way to get rich is winning the lottery, becoming an internet sensation, or a musician, becoming the next Taylor Swift, or being an actor. Yet all of these are actually very rare ways to get rich. You need something that attracts a little less attention and is a little bit more guaranteed. How about Wall Street, like investing in a company that is going to IPO on a major stock exchange like the New York Stock Exchange? Frequently a near certain way to get rich, especially if you can sell before your hyped up stock crashes 99%. Okay, so we'll go with Wall Street.
Step 2: Identify a product with limitless potential revenue.
[Ramaswamy speaking]
“Actually I think the potential opportunity here is really tremendous for delivering value to patients. There's over 5 million patients who suffer from Alzheimer's disease in this country alone. And if you think about it, we own global rights to a drug that has already demonstrated — in a large phase 2B study — efficacy on the two parameters that the FDA has historically required for new Alzheimer's disease drugs. And actually, we're only one, we believe we're only one additional phase three study away from the approval of this drug.”
In other words, forever potential revenue and infinite hope, curing something that is good for humanity like Alzheimer's.
In the pharmaceutical world, well you'd be perfectly fit to make billions with such promises and of course there's infinite potential because ultimately everybody unfortunately might end up being subject to the terrible disease that is Alzheimer's. So why not support a company for the good of humanity with limitless potential to make money? And also [in] an industry in which most people have zero clue about drug lingo anyway.
[Ramaswamy speaking]
“The thing with RVT 101 is it's actually a neurotransmitter targeted therapy that actually in part works through the release of acetylcholine.”
So that way you could disclose your [alleged] fraud in plain sight, and investors wouldn't understand it, but you'd be legally protected. So far so good. Easy way to get rich, easy way to sell it, easy way to protect yourself.
But just to make sure, let's go to Step three and add a little bit more protection here and let's incorporate the company in Bermuda. Which is also a tax haven, so that when you get rich you pay as little money as possible in taxes.
Step 4: Just to kind of be a little unironic about it all — or maybe ironic — name your company — not after the lives that you're not going to save anyway — but instead name your company after getting rich: like Roivant or ROI, or Return-On- -Investment-vant.
Yes, that [Roivant] is going to be the parent company and your baby company is going to be called Axovant. This video is going to be about both and we'll show you how the [alleged] scam works. But the point is you're going to layer these companies to be a little confusing too.
Step number 5: Because so far all we've done is identified [that] we're going to get rich on the stock market, we're going to use a pharmaceutical with hopium, and we're going to incorporate it in Bermuda. Then we're going to pick a name for our company. But now we need some startup capital. So, we're going to call up our hedge fund friends for the company we used to work with, and we're going to fill them in on the [alleged] scam. We're going to raise some startup capital from them.
Step number 6: We're going to go to a major pharmaceutical [company], with an existing reputation like GlaxoSmithKline, aka GSK. We're going to offer to purchase one of their failed drugs for $5 million, along with some option revenue.
Would you buy a used drug from this guy?
Step number 7: We're going to change the name of the drug so you can escape the failed reputation of the drug that you just bought. Because the drug you just bought has already failed four clinical trials, but we don't want anybody to realize the drug that we're going to sell on the stock exchanges is the same one as the one that had previously failed.
Step number 8: We're going to have our mommy — who is a doctor — reinterpret the results of the failed studies to make the drugs seem like it's not a failure after all.
In other words, you're not even going to put on the doctor's jacket and pretend to conduct a new study. You're just going to use one of the old existing studies that failed and add some more clarity on how it's actually not a failure. So let me clarify that GSK, GlaxoSmithKline, conducted four studies: all of them failed. Let's go ahead and pick the one Vivek [Ramaswamy] and his mommy used, the study with 684 patients.
“In a large Phase 2 study, Phase 2B study with 684 patients”
And let's see if we can manipulate some of the data.
Okay, so we're going to take a failed study of 684 patients, we're going to try to make it seem good, but first let's actually confirm that this study did fail. Here's the study disclosed in Vivex SEC documents, making it clear that GSK conducted the study and that this was not actually a Vivek conducted study. Then we're going to be able to coordinate that study and trial number with these other sites to indicate that yes, indeed, this is the failed study of 684 patients conducted and concluded by 2010 — five years before Vivek ever even considered taking this product public, this failed product public. And then let's go to a neutral publication and make sure that it actually failed. Yes, it did. No statistical significance in the outcome of this drug's effects on Alzheimer's. In fact, the drug wasn't even tested on its own. It was tested in conjunction with an Alzheimer's drug that already worked anyway. In other words, the drug that Vivek is going to take public isn't even a drug that works at all on its own. It already relies on a drug that already works for Alzheimer's, but we're just going to add our own sugar water to it and IPO that. But even that failed. Okay, so now we know that the drug is a failure. How do we [allegedly] trick people using a study of 684 patients into making them think that this study that failed is actually a good study?
[Step 9]: Ah, well this is where you have to introduce completer analysis and responder analysis. Sounds confusing, right? That's the point. We need to be able to [allegedly] trick people, and these things sound official. Oooh analysis.
That's official, right? But you and I know the truth. You and I know that a completer analysis removes everybody from the study who didn't complete the trial. Who are the people most unlikely to complete the study? Well, people with adverse side effects or people the drug didn't work for. So in other words, let's remove the people who didn't complete the study, or people who didn't have all of their information in the study, or just people we didn't want included in the study. Potentially the bad results, right. And we [allegedly] cherry pick people out. And unsurprisingly, now you can make the drug look statistically significant as a success.
Oh, interesting! So with a different analysis hidden in plain sight you can take a failed study and make it look successful. A responder analysis does the same thing: looks at the average response of those who completed the trial. What’s important to remember here, is that by only looking at people who completed the study, or who had all their information and followed your rules exactly, you basically [allegedly] cherry pick your favorites, right. You can [allegedly] rig the data but you can [allegedly] trick people about this in plain sight because you could tell people about: “We did completer and responder analyses, and these were statistically significant to help. Well most people a) won't ever even read those filings. They'll just see stock that's going up and want to invest and be part of it because of momo and b), even if they read the filings they wouldn't understand anyway.”
So now that the [alleged] scam is set up let's have mommy and her friends issue press releases on how the drug is effective using new rigged analyzes. Here's a press release from mommy's friends who are also on the board of this [alleged] scam company — well, alleged scam — remember, don't sue us bro.
Okay, the company failed a long time ago but we still didn't want to get sued here. Anyway, you got to make your own conclusion. So mommy and her board member friends say via this completer analysis: “this drug is a success.” “In fact, it's statistically significant to show that it is a success, based on that same 684-person trial from five years ago on a trial they didn't even conduct themselves. They just reinterpreted the results for. But we're also going to publish a responder analysis in a journal somewhere to say: it's statistically significant, and we're not even going to be bashful about this. Mommy is going to put her name right on this. All right, cool. Now we got evidence that says this drug works.
So look at what we've got: we've got a failed drug that we're going to [allegedly] pretend works. We got a company incorporated in Bermuda. And we're going to market the crap out of this with our hedge fund buddies and we're going to IPO the sucker to make billions of dollars and that's it.
Step 10: File for [an] IPO to market the failed drug. Now raise $1.8 billion for the 8 people who work on your staff, including yourself, your mommy, and your brother. Make sure to give all of your hedge fund friends a hedge up, a heads up, tricky: hedge up or a heads up, that the drug is a [alleged] scam so they could sell after, you know, a certain period of time. The stock is public, so there's plenty of liquidity for you to sell and dump.
[Actually, the more correct financial terminology is “pump and dump.” Selling is the act of dumping. Pumping is the prefatory act of marketing, i.e., lying to misleading investors. After you pump, you dump to the chumps.]
Step 11: Since you're in control of the Phase 3 trial which you need to get through to actually make sure the drug can sell to people, you know exactly when the drug is going to fail. But since you're already going into the trial with a failed study, you pretty much already suspect that the drug is going to fail anyway. But you're conducting the Phase 3 trial, right. Vivek and his 7 friends, they're the ones conducting the trial and any new people they hire. So they could slow walk this. They could take as much time as they want. So in the meantime, the stock stays high because people have hope that the trial is going to be a success, after you make all your money though. And after waiting a couple years to do your trial, you can release your failed phase 3 study result, apologize that the drug failed and watch the stock lose 99% in a day.
Axovant changed its name to Sio Gene Therapies Inc.
But by then you've already long made your profit. Oh, and to cover up the history of the failure make sure to change the name of the company so that when people look up the historical stock ticker symbol from Axovant to Sio Gene Therapies. Yes, let's hide it all so nobody knows about this alleged scam. And since the [alleged] scam was so successful, and now you're on your way to becoming a billionaire, it would be a good idea to probably keep going with your [alleged] scam. Now again, who knows if it actually is, but Vivek today has somewhere between a 7% to 15% stake in a nearly $9 billion company called Riovant. Remember that was the mommy company to this baby company.
And this company is a company that shows $28 million in annual revenue but expenses that are absolutely mind-blowing. Yet this is a company that this presidential candidate is a major shareholder of. [Are] you ready for these numbers? Take a look at this: Roivant ROI, return on investment Sciences Limited. [i.e., in the name Roivant Sciences, the “Roi” stands for return on investment; “Sciences” is limited — or shakey — take your pick.] This was the mommy company to that scam company — well alleged scam company. Again I don't want to make that conclusion.
Maybe I'm missing something, but my opinion is [that] a lot of the information that we've put together here looks a little, sus[picious] it kind of feels like you plan to become a billionaire with a failed drug by marketing a failed drug. But only some people would say that. Other people would say no, you know they had hope it could work. Hey, it was a wildly successful IPO and it had a good cause, and forget about all the people who lost their life savings on the drug because of all this hope they were marketed. You know, it was a valiant attempt. Okay, so what do we have at Roivant Sciences, or ROI Advanced Sciences, whatever you want to call it. Well, what you have here is a company with annual revenues up about 10% from last year from about $55 million to $61 million. That sounds good, right? I mean, $61 million of revenue, that's fantastic, right? It is, except when you're spending $525 million on research and development. So you're spending nearly $10 on research and development for every $1 you bring in. But it's not just that. You're also spending nearly $10 on selling, general, and administrative, which is probably mostly stock-based comp for board members to write articles about how great all of these drugs are. Even though you're not bringing in any revenue, you're marketing the crap out of your drugs that mostly suck. And so here's a company that's literally burning [a] net loss of $1.1 billion that Vivek helped found. $924 million last year, massive money burn for drugs that they have either in development or are selling.
If you go to their website you can see: oh look at all this pipeline. All this pipeline of hope for drugs that they're creating. Here's one that's actually being commercialized, that's actually being sold. It's called VTAMA. It's for plaque psoriasis. Now if this VTAMA was so successful, or going to be so successful, then you might be surprised to find that Roivant or R-O-I-vant — or whatever you want to call it — actually sold off 75% of their ownership in VTAMA to another company. In other words, the one commercialized drug they have, they already promised to give away 75% of the revenue for. Yep, that is how to make a lot of money trying to sell drugs that might never actually be wildly profitable. And you do it all by starting your [alleged] scam on how to become a billionaire by taking a failed drug, changing its name, incorporating it in Bermuda, and renaming it, remarketing it, IPOing it with false hope, and then doing it over and over again.
Now I'd like to be clear: while I'm a Licensed Financial Advisor and I provide a lot of insight into how to actually build your wealth without being a scam, whether it's investing in real estate, going from zero to millionaire, investing in stocks, or building your wealth by increasing your income by learning how to make more money as an employee or an entrepreneur, and learning about the ins and outs of how to actually make money the right way and learn the tricks of the trade, well check out my programs linked down below but when it comes to something that smells pretty sus[picious]. I'd say hey, here's a way you can become a billionaire in a pretty sus[picious] way. Who knows, maybe it was all legitimate? But through my research there were a lot of red flags that just left me with more questions than answers. Maybe this was all a mistake, but let's just say if I were to interview Vivek I'd have quite a few questions about this history. Thanks so much for watching. If you found this helpful consider sharing the video and we'll see you in the next one.
If you have made it this far, you might find the Biotech Boy Wonder’s 2015 pronouncements difficult to swallow, especially in retrospect:
"It's an ethical problem of an underappreciated magnitude. So many drugs that would have been of use to society are cast aside. Certain drugs have gone by the wayside for reasons that have nothing to do with their underlying merits. This will be the highest return on investment endeavor ever taken up in the pharmaceutical industry. It will be a pipeline every bit as deep and diverse as the most promising pharma company in the world but with a capital efficiency that is unprecedented." Roivant will become the "Berkshire Hathaway of drug development."
This series continues:
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 1: Red flags
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 2.1: Vivek responds
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 2.2: 2015 Happy Talk vs. 2023 Sad Talk
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 3: Levin & Hannity - August interviews
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 4: Vivek vs. Irwin
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 5: Numbers that don't add up
To be continued . . .
LEARN MORE:
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 1: Red flags
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 2: Have you ever wanted to be a billionaire? 11 easy steps to immense wealth.
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 2.1: Vivek responds to Kevin's allegations.
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 2.2: 2015 Happy Talk vs. 2023 Sad Talk
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 3: Levin & Hannity August interviews
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 4: Vivek vs. Irwin; Respecting the least among us. A classy guy.
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 5: The Murdoch connection; friends in high places
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up— Part 6: Numbers which don't add up