What's next? ;) Read this! Guess ZTECT was wrong to defend him, but when was Ztect correct about anything?
Man charged in $17 million Net scam Batavia man
named in stock scam
By Christy Gutowski Daily Herald Legal Affairs Writer
Posted on March 23, 2001
Two years ago, IRS agents became suspicious about a $381,000 deposit in an
elderly couple's personal banking account.
What resulted, federal prosecutors said Thursday, are sweeping indictments
alleging a securities fraud scheme involving a local Internet stock promoter that is
alleged to have bilked investors out of $17 million.
Jeffrey C. Bruss, 33, of Batavia is the latest defendant in one of the country's first
federal investigations of the Internet being used to defraud investors of publicly
traded securities.
The indictments, handed down by a U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, involved
a company called Keystone Energy Services Inc., a Los Angeles-based public
utilities company that markets low-cost electricity. Federal prosecutors allege
those named in the indictments provided false financial information while selling
shares to the public for their own personal profit.
An Elk Grove Village businessman and five others were named in earlier
indictments.
All but William J. Nordvic, 49, of Elk River, Minn., whose parents' private bank
account sparked the probe, have pleaded guilty to varied insider trading,
conspiracy and money laundering charges.
He is accused of steering 4.7 million shares of Keystone's stock - all the freely
traded shares available - into the names of 12 investors.
Nordvic is accused of forging those names, then steering the shares to two
"insiders" whose involvement in the company was concealed. He is accused of
earning $467,000 in illegal stock sales proceeds, and laundering some of it
through his parents' bank account.
Bruss, who was indicted Thursday, is accused of aiding in the scheme by
publishing favorable information about the company in "The Future Superstock,"
a now-defunct Internet stock promotion Web site and newsletter he operated in
late 1997 in West Chicago.
The company's stock price increased from about $5 a share to more than $12
after Bruss' promotion. He received 35,000 shares as compensation.
Bruss and others are suspected of then immediately transferring 800,000 shares
of the stock to Canadian brokerage accounts Bruss either controlled or in some
way influenced. Stock sales from these accounts netted nearly $7 million, of
which Bruss profited an undisclosed portion, federal prosecutors allege.
Bruss is charged with conspiracy, securities fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, money
laundering conspiracy and money laundering.
Neither Bruss nor his attorney could be reached Thursday. |
