The OTC Bulletin Board or OTCBB is an interdealer electronic quotation system in the United States that displays real-time quotes, last-sale prices, and volume information for many over-the-counter (OTC) equity securities that are not listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange or a national securities exchange. Broker-dealers who subscribe to the system can use the OTCBB to look up prices or enter quotes for OTC securities. According to the SEC, "fraudsters often claim or imply that an OTCBB company is a Nasdaq company to mislead investors into thinking that the company is bigger than it is."^[1]

FINRA runs and provides regulatory services to the OTCBB. The OTCBB formerly collected 100% of quotes, but that number has declined with the rise of its competitor Pink OTC Markets. In September 2009, FINRA announced that it would be selling the OTCBB.^[2] Pink OTC Markets was the leading contender for purchasing the OTCBB, but terms could not be reached between itself and FINRA.^[3] In September 2010, FINRA announced that it had reached terms for the sale of the OTCBB with well known investment bank Rodman & Renshaw. Along with the sale of the OTCBB and, in an effort to provide uniform regulation to all OTC issues and, subsequently, transparency to the OTC market, FINRA has proposed a "quotation consolidation system." Under the quotation consolidation system, FIRNA would require dealers to report all of their quotes to the quotation consolidation system, regardless of the market upon which they were originally quoted. This would enable FINRA to have access to all quotes in OTC issues and regulate the OTC market in its entirety. ^[4] Pink OTC argues this is anti-competitive and an abuse of FINRA's authority.^[3]

There are over 8,000 public companies quoted on the OTCBB^[5] and Companies quoted on the OTCBB must fully report (i.e. current with all required SEC filings) but have no market capitalization, minimum share price, corporate governance or other requirements to be quoted. Companies which have been "de-listed" from stock exchanges for falling below minimum capitalization, minimum share price or other requirements often end up being quoted on the OTCBB.

Stock of non-reporting companies (those without current SEC filings) may be quoted in the Pink Sheets. Most OTCBB companies are dually quoted, meaning they are quoted on both the OTCBB and the Pink Sheets.

Stocks traded in OTC markets such as the OTCBB or Pink Sheets are usually thinly traded microcap or penny stocks, and both retail and institutional investors generally avoid them, because of fears that share prices are easily manipulated and there exists a potential for fraud. The SEC issues stern warnings to investors to beware of common fraud and manipulation schemes. As such, most companies choose to list on more established exchanges such as the AMEX, NYSE, or NASDAQ once eligible. FINRA believes that the proposed "quotation consolidation system" would enhance transparency, thereby decreasing the potential for price manipulation or fraud.

See also[link]

• Microcap stock fraud

References[link]

External links[link]

• OTC Bulletin Board
• Microcap Stock: A Guide for Investors
• [2]

Douglas Lee Baker (born April 3, 1961 in Fullerton, California) is a former infielder in Major League Baseball player who played with the Detroit Tigers from 1984-1987 and the Minnesota Twins from 1988-1990. Baker played in 136 Major League games and had a .207 batting average with 51 hits, 38 runs, 22 RBIs, and 11 doubles.

External links[link]

Baseball portal

• Career statistics and player information from Baseball-Reference, or Fangraphs, or The Baseball Cube

This biographical article relating to an American baseball infielder is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Semyon Dukach is the CEO of SMTP, Inc., (OTCBB: SMTP) ^[1] and a former professional blackjack player with the MIT Blackjack Team.^[2] He played with Strategic Investments and later was one of the founding members and team leaders on Amphibian Investments whose exploits were chronicled in Ben Mezrich’s Busting Vegas and referred to in Mezrich’s Bringing Down the House.

Dukach was the main character in Busting Vegas and the only member of the team to be referred to by his real name in either book. Born on the 25th of October 1968 in Moscow, Dukach moved to the US in 1979. He completed a BS in Computer Science at Columbia University in New York in 1990 and a MS in Computer Science at MIT in Boston in 1993.^[3] While attending MIT, Dukach was trained as a player on the famous MIT Blackjack team whose exploits have been chronicled in the Hollywood movie 21. Starting out with Strategic Investments (SI) in 1992, Dukach was a major player on the team and enjoyed great success in those early years. After the end of the SI, Dukach continued to play with a few other team members.

At the end of 1994, Dukach and a few players split off and formed a second, independent team. This new team was referred to as the Amphibians and the team that they left was referred to as the Reptiles.

The Amphibians focused more heavily on more advanced playing strategies like card sequencing and steering while the Reptiles focused most of their playing time on card counting.^[4]

Since stopping play in the late 1990s, Dukach's involvement in blackjack has been limited, although he does offer seminars teaching the techniques that were used by the Amphibians to prospective players today at Blackjack Science. He has also been involved in many other notable ventures outside of his blackjack career:

• Authored work on virtual reality at IBM Research in 1988^[5]
• Authored a 1992 e-commerce paper on SNPP: A Simple Network Payment Protocol^[6]
• Founded Fast Engines in '97, sold in 2000^[5]
• Co-founded Vert in 1998
• Lead investor and interim CEO of AccuRev in 2001 ^[7]
• Chairman and CEO of SMTP, Inc.
• Co-founded PDFFiller
• Was a CEO mentor at the Cambridge Business Development Center^[8]
• Founded StartupHive.org^[9]
• Investor and board member of Terrafugia ^[10]

Dukach is the brother of Inna Dukach the opera singer married to Sean Altman, former front man of Rockapella.^[11]

References[link]