Here's the announcement re: lawsuit on bad stock quotations
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., March 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Ben Ezra Weinstein and
Company, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: BNEZ) sued America Online, Inc. in The
District Court of Bernalillo County, Albuquerque, New Mexico Tuesday, March 11
seeking undisclosed damages for the Company following America Online's
repeated distribution of erroneous stock price and reported stock volume for
shares of Ben Ezra Weinstein. The suit alleges that AOL knew a problem existed
for weeks but failed to correct it or warn its subscribers.
Ben Ezra Weinstein Chief Operating Officer Michael Weinstein said,
"Although AOL now claims that it was not previously aware that there was a
problem, Ben Ezra Weinstein has a transcript of a recorded telephone message
left by a key AOL employee who admitted AOL had been aware of the problem for
several weeks and that AOL determined it was a software malfunction affecting
some OTC stocks. AOL termed it a decimal truncation error."
Jack Ben Ezra, Ben Ezra Weinstein's Chief Executive Officer, said, "We
have not yet determined the full extent of the damages and it may take weeks,
or even months, through the discovery process for us to ascertain the damages
both to us and the shareholders of the Company."
Weinstein added, "New Mexico State District Court procedural rules mandate
that no dollar value be attached to these cases, but we suspect damages could
reach the multi-million dollar range. We feel like Tokyo after Godzilla just
trampled through it."
Despite repeated attempts on March 4-5 Ben Ezra Weinstein was unable to
get America Online to stop reporting lower than actual price quotes and higher
than actual volume of its stock. The Company said that the errors caused great
confusion among its investors and resulted in the stock losing more than one
third of its value on March 5.
AOL quoted Ben Ezra Weinstein's last trade for March 4 at 17 cents per
share and volume at 1.3 million shares while the actual last trade was about
$1.84 and reported volume was approximately 30,500 shares. Despite numerous
conversations with officials at AOL, Ben Ezra Weinstein said that for most of
March 5, AOL continued to report lower than actual stock prices for the
Company. At the close of the market March 5 AOL reported the stock price
accurately at about $1.30. However, it reported volume of more than 20 million
shares. Actual closing volume was approximately 205,400 shares.
As part of a temporary fix, AOL claimed it was installing a "splash
screen" to warn viewers of the problem before they were able to access the
stock quote system.
No "splash screen" was ever installed, according to Ben Ezra Weinstein.
Instead, AOL issued a warning on its Help screens. "In order to access that
help screen, however, the user had to click through three windows. In other
words, the user had to click more times than Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz,"
said Ben Ezra.
Ben Ezra Weinstein develops and markets an innovative Internet-compatible
program which assists companies in the procedure of filing public or private
offerings, eliminating up to 85 percent of the cost associated with a
traditional Wall Street or venture capital based offering. Marketed under the
name CapScape (with a toll free sales and marketing phone number of
888-VCGOAWAY), the program consists of a multimedia software package and
optional Internet-based advisory service which makes it possible to complete
85 percent of a Regulation A filing with the Securities and Exchange
Commission as well as to complete similar portions of related public and
private offerings.
SOURCE Ben Ezra Weinstein and Company, Inc.
CO: Ben Ezra Weinstein and Company, Inc.; America Online, Inc.
ST: New Mexico
IN: CPR MLM
SU: |
