A few years ago, I had some money invested in VOIP Inc (initially traded as VOII , then VOIC ) . It was about $500 initial investment, and became worth $0.01 and I have been holding on to it for a few years to save as a loss for tax purposes when I need it. This year I had some sales with a 50% gain so I figured I would sell the shares this year to cut back on the taxes I’ll have to pay for those profits.

However, when I tried to sell the stocks at sharebuilder.com, it says this "A security with the symbol VOIC is not recognized as a valid listed security. Use the Find Symbol option if you need help finding the symbol."

It still shows up in my portfolio as an open position, as VOIC . How am I going to be able to claim a loss if my broker is still calling it an "Open" position? It isn’t a realized loss until the position is closed.

It looks like the SEC revoked their registration on July 14, 2009. http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2009/34-60300.pdf

Yes – I know VOIP Inc was a bad investment – that’s a whole other story, so if you answer please stick to the topic of claiming a loss on a stock that had it’s registration revoked.

You need to sell it. Talk to your broker about how to do this. They may have a procedure for closing out positions like this.

Being removed from an exchange is meaningless for tax purposes because there was never any requirement that they be listed in the first place. They haven’t been doing SEC filings so they can’t be listed on an exchange, so, they’re trading in the pink sheets. As long as the company still exists and you have a position in it, then there is still a possibility of profit and you can’t claim the loss.

I bought property at a property tax auction in washington state in 2005. I put it up for sale and we have potential buyers.The buyer checked in on the property and found out that there is a litigation lean from some lawyer in 2001 and leans proir to us purchasing the property from some maintenance company witch shoudl have been cleared up before the tax auction sold the property.When we bought the property we were told that the purchase price was for all debts from past owner.The prior owner is dead.We never new anything about this until we put it up for sale.We called the treasury Dept and got the run around saying that none of the leans can be removed.We have been paying on the property and now the property is worthless we can’t sell it or do anything with it.Can someone direct me to what to do. and what kind of lawyer I need to help clear this up.

If you need an aggressive lawyer see http://locate-power-of-attorney.info
check out their FAQ to understand how they operate

Here is Madoff’s strategy:
1. He enticed charities, which are organizations, who would be less hostile if he were exposed, unlike individual investors who lost their all in all, who would be outraged to violence. To fortify his concealed fraud and theft, he got into the directorate of the particular charity, or one of his family did, so that if anything was brought up, he’d get ear of it and either silence it or cover it up specially.
2. He screened CAREFULLY every individual investor-to-be, for several purposes: (when I mean "SCREENING CAREFULLY" for these purpose he did extensive, and in depth checks of credit, family members and family backgrounds, court litigation records and even surveillances of activities of persons who wanted to invest with him, before accepting or rejecting their requests to invest. The purpose:
a. To create the appearance of exclusivity and class, so that whatever invester was accepted, would be grateful and less likely to look deep down and question what was going on.
b. To investigate the specific investor –
b. The reason he hired investigators to go into every detail of the potential investor’s business activity, credit background, marital involvements etc and if there were indications of tax fraud or divorce fraud, he’d take them in as investors to see if his financial activities were such that the money he was giving to Madoff was concealed tax fraud, or illegally obtained unreported income that plenty of monied people have, and who seek places where the monies can remain concealed in a larger fund composed of many investors. In applications to invest, Madoff asked where the funds the potential investor wanted to turn over to Madoff were situated at the time of the request, Madoff knew that if the fraud ever was found out, these investors with shady assets that the IRS would immediately check into if their names were brought up in any claims against Madoff, that these people would just go away and take their loss rather than face criminal or civil charges by the IRS or federal prosecutors. So Madoff rejected investors who had clean backgrounds but for those with questionable sources or sites of present wealth, he had a ready made gag over the mouths of many, many individual investors who he ripped off, knowing they would never open their mouths to regulators if his schemes were exposed.
crooks never get away with it. sooner or later their guise cracks, usually from a disgruntled insider who blows a whistle. Madoff knew the scheme was about to fall apart so he had his sons pretend to be whistle blowers so they wouldnt be charged with crimes and go down with him (fatherly love)
1 day ago

the support will show when the lists of claims doesnt match the amount missing. Then regulators will have to go into the day by day activity that can unearth to provide you with your demand for proof. Just be patient,. Only the tip of the iceberg is seen now

You also forgot to mention that he setup a shell accounting firm that had only one client, Madoff.