This is worth reproducing in full:
To: heinz blasnik who wrote (23338)
From: Les Horowitz
Wednesday, April 5, 2000 4:03 PM ET
Reply # of 23370
Investors Rush to Buy 'Fried Air' Stock
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch investors scrambled to buy shares in fictitious firm F/Rite Air
(pronounced "Fried Air"), sending more than $6.5 million in orders to an investment Web site
before discovering it was an April Fools prank.
The InfoExchanges Web site at www.iex.nl was bombarded with hundreds of e-mails on Saturday after posting an item about California-based F/Rite Air, billed as having developed an "air ioniser" that might take the place of anti-depressant drug Prozac and that was being tested by the U.S. Air Force.
"I thought investors would have become wiser after World Online (WDON.AS) and Via.Networks
(VNWI.AS)," Web site co-founder Raymond Spanjar told daily Algemeen Dagblad on Monday,
referring to two Dutch-listed shares that have skidded since flotation.
InfoExchanges, which had said it had one million shares set aside for an upcoming F/Rite Air listing, eventually took pity on frenzied punters and owned up to the prank. In a note on Sunday it said the IPO would not take place because "the company does not exist".
Spanjar had already counted more than 15 million guilders ($6.49 million) in orders before giving up. He reckoned that the total might be around 30 million guilders.
Not one of those responding to the "offer" had requested a prospectus.
Hats off to 'em, working this even on a SATURDAY!!
Not one of those responding to the "offer" had requested a prospectus.
Why am I not surprised, lol? Last year I was, as you know, monitoring the email. My experience was, apparently, like theirs: I could NOT believe how many people were responding, and couldn't imagine how we might conceivably reply to the avalanche of messages.
I'm afraid, though, that our erstwhile competitors made a dreadful mistake: they didn't submit a PR to Bizwire. So their chances of appearing as defendants in a Major Ridiculous Lawsuit are probably nil. |
