Sorry if this has been posted here before. I don't follow this thread.
Notice the bold again.
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quote.bloomberg.com
Christopher Byron
Commentary. Christopher Byron is a columnist for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.
08/23 00:01
Penny-Stock Pusher Baldridge Has Odd Resume: Christopher Byron
By Christopher Byron
Weston, Connecticut, Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Would you take investment advice from a man who's been arrested for driving under the influence? Big deal, you say, happens all the time.
Then what if your stock guru's rap sheet also includes an arrest for carrying a concealed firearm? What if he's been arrested for burglary, criminal mischief, petty theft, violation of probation, sexual battery, flight from justice, and lewd and lascivious acts in the presence of a minor? What if he's been branded under Florida state law as a sexual offender? Still want to buy what this man is selling?
Well, this is your lucky day, folks, because we've come up with a whole list of publicly traded companies that have lately been promoted by one Orville Baldridge, 55, of Casselberry, Florida, whose qualifications as a stock genius are listed in the two paragraphs above.
Baldridge says he hasn't been in the stock promotion business for over a year. But a number of recent press releases from a company Baldridge claims to control -- WorldVision Financial Group -- say otherwise. More about that in a minute, but first a brief update on who Baldridge actually is.
Baldridge says that these days he's involved in ``a little real estate and that sort of thing.'' He also claims to run a charity called All God's Children Ministries Inc. -- all from his home at 1154 Galahad Drive, in Casselberry. Documents obtained from the Florida Secretary of State show him also to have been recently involved in an extensive stock promotion and investment business in and around Casselberry.
Registered
What's more startling is that Baldridge turns out to be listed as a registered felon and sexual offender at the Seminole County, Florida, sheriff's office, which maintains a Web site showing a mug shot of the man and giving his ``last known address'' as Galahad Drive, where he currently resides.
In an interview for this column, Baldridge said what the Web site states about him isn't true, but declined to say what specifically is false -- whether he was convicted of any crimes, simply arrested or anything else.
One encounters more and more of such characters these days in a new and growing arena of abuse on Wall Street -- the so- called pink sheets sector of the old Over The Counter market.
In an effort to crack down on fraud in the penny stock market by companies that make grandiose claims about their business prospects but don't file any audited financials to back them up, the National Association of Securities Dealers last year began requiring all companies quoted on Nasdaq's OTC Bulletin Board to file audited financials or lose the right to be quoted on the Nasdaq-maintained system.
Yet nearly 5,000 penny-stock companies have escaped the crackdown by simply refusing to file audited financials. In so doing they've become so-called non-filers that are now publicly quoted over the Internet on an electronic system maintained by the National Quotation Bureau, which recently renamed itself Pink Sheets LLC.
Oversight?
This has become the new, anything-goes market where stock promoters have migrated en masse because oversight is lax-to-non- existent, making it almost impossible to check out the validity of their claims. It's a market where stocks soar overnight to unimagined heights, then crash in minutes in convulsions that have all the earmarks of classic pump-and-dump operations, fleecing millions from those gullible enough to believe what they learn via press releases and Internet message boards.
Baldridge, the registered sex offender, comes up in all this in connection with a number of different companies that have lately been jumping in the ``pinks.'' One is an outfit bearing the name Biofiltration Systems Inc. It has soared in value since January, from one-tenth of a penny to a peak of $2.28 on August 16, before collapsing to its current price of around $1 per share.
With 512 million shares outstanding (the result of a 100-for- 1 stock split in April), the company reached a momentary market value of more than $1 billion, and at last look was still worth something in excess of $500 million.
The company, which claims through press releases to be in the pollution control business, is not worth even a fraction of that amount. In an attempt to become quoted on the OTC Bulletin Board, the company filed a registration form in February that describes Biofiltration as a ``development stage'' company with $2,000 of revenue in its entire lifetime and only $3,000 cash in the bank. Since then it has raised some $800,000 from investors and booked about $150,000 of business.
Soar and Collapse
Orville says he hasn't written press releases for the company in over a year, but acknowledges that he recently held 6 percent of Biofiltration through a Galahad Drive-based company called The Baldridge Group. Orville says he sold his stake back to Biofiltration in a ``private placement.''
Biofiltration's chief executive, Alpha Keyser of Longboat Key, Florida, says the company sold Baldridge the shares at 25 cents each so that Baldridge could resell them to the public at a markup and ``get the stock going.'' But, says Keyser, Baldridge ``never did a damned thing, and just wasted eight months of my life so we bought them back.''
Keyser and his wife Victoria have been big sellers of their own stock, dumping 6.6 million shares since June, for $1.2 million.
Orville's company, WorldVision Financial Group, appears on other recent press releases for penny stock companies. There's Academy Resources Inc., which claims to be in the Internet business. The stock soared from 50 cents to $1.80 earlier this year, then collapsed and is now selling for 30 cents. The latest press release from WorldVision on this company is dated June 8, 2000.
Since the start of the year WorldVision has also issued press releases for a company called Mustang Ventures Inc. (which changed its name August 2 to Self Help Zone Inc.), for an outfit called Freedom Golf Corp., and another calling itself HawaiiLove.com.
Penny World
Orville also turns up as the founder and head of a company calling itself B.N.K. Corporation. Documents on file with the Florida Secretary of State list one of the principals in the company as Charles R. Kiefner. Records on file with the NASD show Kiefner to have once been a broker with the notorious, now- defunct penny stock firm of Blinder, Robinson & Company and, as such, the subject of disciplinary proceedings by both the NASD and Florida state regulators.
Kiefner says he is Baldridge's ex-brother-in-law. He says he hasn't been involved with B.N.K. since 1997, but a Florida Secretary of State document deleting Kiefner's name from the company's list of officers and directors wasn't filed until August 4, 2000.
Other Florida State documents show Kiefner and Baldridge to have been apparently linked through a company called Sterling Consulting. Sterling appears in a document filed last November by a company bearing the name of Definition Ltd., as the seller of 500,000 Definition Ltd. shares to John Anderson, the husband of Definition's president, Donna Anderson. A recent Florida State filing shows that Anderson has now emerged as a director of Sterling Consulting, replacing Baldridge.
All three -- Kiefner, Sterling Consulting, and B.N.K. Corp., along with a fourth individual listed as a B.N.K. director, Laura M. Kough -- appear as selling shareholders of a total of more than 1 million shares of Definition Ltd. last October. Subsequent to the filing of a Securities and Exchange Commission registration for the sale of the shares, Definition's stock soared from 50 cents to almost $2.00, then collapsed. Definition changed its name May 5 to e Personnel Management.com. It currently trades at 30 cents.
This is the world of penny stock promotion that the SEC seems unable to stamp out no matter how hard it tries -- a world in which, it now appears, even a registered felon with a rap sheet that includes packing a piece, sexual battery, and lewd and lascivious acts before a minor feels safe to crank out press releases praising doubtful stocks to the skies. |
