SEC charges penny-stock broker
Move against Edward Williamson alleging stock fraud comes in wake of exclusive MSNBC.com report
OPINION By Christopher Byron <mailto:cbyron@optonline.net> MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR
Nov. 23 — Sixteen months ago, we reported exclusively on MSNBC.com about the activities of a convicted murderer named Edward Williamson, 53, whom we revealed as the alleged mastermind behind a network of dubious Internet penny stock promotions. Now, the Securities & Exchange Commission has acted on the matter.
ON NOV. 7, THE SEC charged Williamson and five companies linked to him with defrauding upwards of 1,000 investors out of as much as $1.3 million by the sale of securities over the Internet. The SEC announcement — which garnered little public notice since it came on election day — disclosed that a federal court in Wichita, Kan. had simultaneously issued an emergency order freezing the assets of the companies involved. They are: Fifth Avenue Communications, Inc., of New York, a Williamson-linked public relations firm: Net World Marketing, Inc., a Nevada company, headquartered in Wichita, Kan. that claims to operate an internet shopping mall and is headed by Williamson’s wife, Georganna; Andros Hotel And Casino, Inc., a Nevada corporation that is operated out of the same Wichita, Kan where Net World Marketing is located, and which claims to own two tracts of undeveloped land in the Caribbean; AutoAuction.com, Inc., a Nevada corporation that has been promoted by Fifth Avenue Communications as being in the internet car auction business; AGE Investment Co., which located in the same Wichita, Kan. office as the other defendants and is headed by Williamson. Three of the companies — Fifth Avenue Communications, Net World Marketing, and AutoAuction.com, Inc. — were identified in the original MSNBC.com story <http://www.egghead.com>, and Williamson’s alleged involvement with then was exposed for the first time.
The SEC action alleges that from April of 1997 to the present, Williamson organized and ran a fraudulent scheme that bilked investors of $1.3 million in the sale of Net World, Andros, and AutoAuction securities without disclosing his own ties to the companies and his own criminal past. Williamson’s rap sheet includes a 1967 murder conviction and a 1997 wire fraud conviction for attempting to bridge an FBI agent. These convictions were also disclosed in the MSNBC.com story.
At the time our story appeared, AutoAuction.com was selling for $8.75 per share; currently it is selling for 28 cents. Several other stocks linked to Williamson have also subsequently collapsed. |
