Funny, I did not see this in the 10sb at all;
"Chairman D. Scott Elder said the company did not authorize paying shares to the stock promoter and the executive who did so has since left the company"
The former bottling company has promoted its new business mix of Internet companies to investors in a press release headlined, "ZiaSun Takes CMGI Strategy to the Next Level," a reference to the well-known financier of such companies asLycos. A ZiaSun executive also paid 50,000 shares to a stock promoter called Interactive Business Channel to write a positive report about the company.
The report compared ZiaSun's e-mail service, Pinmail, to Microsoft's Hotmail, and its financial Web site, Mfinance.com, to Marketwatch.com. Hotmail has 40 million users; Pinmail was just launched. Mfinance has six full and part-time employees in its Hong Kong office; Marketwatch.com has 50 full-time staff in New York, San Francisco, London, and Tokyo.
In the weeks following the paid promotion, ZiaSun's shares got caught in the wave that drove up scores of Internet-related stocks. But then the message-board writers started to pummel the company. ZiaSun Chairman D. Scott Elder said the company did not authorize paying shares to the stock promoter and the executive who did so has since left the company. Interactive Business Channel, which is based in Irvine, Calif., did not return phone calls. |
