Avon Products, Inc. (NYSE:AVP) Products skyrocketed as much as 20% to $8.00 per share in Thursday's market trading. The spike was caused by regulatory filing from a certain PTG Capital Partners indicating its intention to buy the company for $18.75 per share.

The trading of the shares of Avon Products was temporarily halted. The stock closed $7.07 per share, up 6.00%.

Approximately $91 million worth of shares of Avon Products were traded within 25 minutes after the fraud buyout offer for the company, according to Bloomberg

Following the sudden spike in the stock price of Avon Products, the management of the company issued a statement indicating that it “has not received any offer or other communication” from PTG Capital Partners. The company also stated that it was not able to confirm that such entity exists.

Obvious signs buyout offer for Avon Products is a hoax

Some of the market observers immediately noticed that the buyout offer for Avon Products is not real because PTG Capital Partners is very unfamiliar—probably because it does not exist. The purported fraudulent London-based firm did not even spell its name correctly on the SEC filing.

Based on the indicated buyout offer, Avon Products would be valued more $8 billion— almost three times its current market valuation. Obviously, the buyout proposal was a hoax.

RBC noted in a report sent to clients at 12:27PM EST today:

Based on our fundamental work, it is hard to see how a buyer could value AVP at $18.75. Our take out math gets us to $8-$9. In our view, any outfit looking to buy AVP would have to consider the $500-$1 bn in spending required to fix the business (which will likely take 3 years at a minimum).

Also, getting the funding to buy AVP for $18.75 will be a challenge for sure.

If the offer from PTG is legit (which at this point it seems suspect to us), we believe the current take out price of $18.75 will surely come down.