Tim Sykes Threatened By Shaquille O'Neal's Legal Team (NXTH)

It appears as if Shaquille O'Neal, a.k.a Shaq Diesel, a.k.a "The Big Aristotle," has gotten himself mixed up in a sleazy penny stock pump and dump scheme. According to Timothy Sykes, who Benzinga.com interviewed here, Shaq is a compensated spokesperson for NXT Nutritional Holdings (OTC:NXTH). The company has used Shaq's image as part of a $300,000 promotional campaign used to pump NXT's stock price up.

Furthermore, Sykes is claiming that at least a part of O'Neal's compensation is in the form of NXTH shares and that he was able to start selling his stock the same week that the promotional mailers were sent out by a company called Silicon Investor.

As a result of Sykes' accusations, he has received a cease and desist letter from O'Neal's general counsel Dennis A. Roach, who called the posts on Tim's site "defamatory." The letter demanded that Sykes remove the content.

Blogger, Gary Weiss notes that "It's a tough little letter with one deficiency: it doesn't point out anything inaccurate in Tim's blog posts."

I don't know all of the facts of this story, outside of what Sykes is reporting, but it does not look good for Shaq or NXT Nutritonals. On Monday, this stock rocketed to $3.19, more than doubling in a few days. At the close today, NXHT had completely collapsed down to $1.35. The stock was clearly MANIPULATED! And there are people out there that lost a bundle, you can be sure of that. I will stop short of calling Shaq any profane names for being involved in this, because I don't know all of the facts as they relate to his relationship with the company and he seems like a nice enough guy. But, I would like to publicly ask Shaquille to please sever all ties with sketchy little NXT Nutritionals and stay the hell out of the cesspool that is the penny stock world. Do you really need the money, Shaq?

Please stay tuned to Benzinga.com for the conclusion of this story.