The way I look at it, it was stolen ... what they sold to people ... they gave them a prospectus on Berden USA but they sold them shares in Berten USA Holdings ... two separate companies,” he said.
Berten USA Holdings was a shelf company that wasn’t even trading ... it was worth nothing. A scam popularly known as a boiler room - approximately 1200 Australians invested around $25 million. That money has disappeared.
Boiler rooms burn investors
31 January 2002
It’s the scam of the millennium. The criminals target Australia because we like investing, we have the money and they’re so clever even the pros get caught.
Clive Aber is a seasoned share trader. He’s even done a few courses on the subject. But that offered little protection when a Philippines-based investment company known as Bradford Kempner called and seduced him into buying shares in companies that simply did not exist.
Clive thought he bought shares in a US company known as Berten USA. It was a real company with a promising software idea. He could even track its progress on the NASDAQ, it was doing so well he bought even more, spending up to $25,000 all up.
But the owner of Berten USA, James Martin, was also a victim. He says the same criminal syndicate invested in his company ... then basically stole it.
“The way I look at it, it was stolen ... what they sold to people ... they gave them a prospectus on Berden USA but they sold them shares in Berten USA Holdings ... two separate companies,” he said.
Berten USA Holdings was a shelf company that wasn’t even trading ... it was worth nothing. A scam popularly known as a boiler room - approximately 1200 Australians invested around $25 million. That money has disappeared.
For James Martin the cost was too difficult to bear; “when I found out what they were doing … they’d written through their lawyer to shut up and co-operate or they’ll make my life a living hell and I’ll go bankrupt. So I refused to co-operate, I closed the company, fired all 52 loyal employees, shut down the operations, pulled the website, then got sued and had to go into bankruptcy.”
Having lost an estimated $60 million business, James has now moved to Australia to help the victims of the scam, setting up a lobby group called the Stock Investigation Research Society … or SIRS.
Their mission is to go after whomever they can to stop other security fraud scams or - as many of the boiler rooms operate outside Australia’s jurisdiction - at least make buyers aware of what scams are operating internationally. |
