I think this may be a first:
biz.yahoo.com
Monday August 21, 6:29 pm Eastern Time
Mass. moves to stop trio from posting Internet stock comments
BOSTON, Aug 21 (Reuters) - A Massachusetts state agency on Monday moved to stop a trio of men from posting what it says are false and misleading statements about three biotech companies on the Internet.
Officials from the Enforcement Section of the Massachusetts Securities Division moved for a temporary cease and desist order against the three men - Raymond Costanzo and Richard Costanzo, both of Durham, North Carolina, and Ephraim Morris of Chandler, Arizona.
The trio are accused in a civil complaint of flooding the message boards on the Yahoo!(NasdaqNM:YHOO - news) web site with tens of thousands of false and misleading statements about New Jersey-based Biomatrix Inc (NYSE:BXM - news) and two units of Cambridge, Mass.-based Genzyme Corp(NasdaqNM:GENZ - news), in an attempt to manipulate the price of the stocks.
The three men began posting negative comments about Biomatrix and Genzyme's Tissue Repair and Surgical Products(NasdaqNM:GZTR - news) and its Surgical Products Division(NasdaqNM:GZSP - news) in the spring of 1999, just before and after Genzyme announced an agreement to merge the three companies.
The civil complaint charges that about half of the more than 33,000 postings on Yahoo!'s BMX board were from the trio, who used a variety of false names.
The negative messages may have been a factor in the drop of Biomatrix stock from $35 to $21 a share, Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin noted in a press release. Anyone who held a short position, a technique used to take advantage of an anticipated decline in the price of a security, would benefit from a significant drop in their price.
``We do not intend to allow the manipulation of securities on the Internet to mislead Massachusetts investors,'' Galvin said.
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Regards,
Barb |
