<font color=red>Speaking Out Against Brokerage-Chat Site Securities Fraud, The Consequences: Counsel to the Terra Nova Trading, L.L.C. Branch Office, MB Trading, Ltd.
Via telephone and facsimile, I again refused to retract any statements concerning MB Trading, Ltd. Through inducement of fraud and ongoing violations of State and Federal securities statutes, I not only paid nearly $350,000 in commissions over the course of one year to the brokerage firm represented by Counsel in the following, but I also suffered capital losses of a significant multiple to these commissions. Here are the words of Counsel to Manhattan Beach Trading, words reserved for one of its most valuable former clients:
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, LLP
Counselors at Law
Los Angeles, CA
December 4, 2000
VIA FACSIMILE & FEDERAL EXPRESS
Dear Mr. Asser:
On behalf of our client, Manhattan Beach Trading, I am writing with respect to certain statements you have made and published regarding Manhattan Beach Trading. It has come to our attention that you individually and as Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Stock Operators, L.L.C. (collectively, "you" or "your") have published by means of message board postings, mass electronic mail messages, and chat room discussions false, malicious, and libelous.
In a mass electronic mail statement dated Sunday, November 26, 2000, 6:38 p.m., you published a defamatory statement implicating Manhattan Beach Trading as being involved in "massive, organized securities fraud."
You placed a message board posting on the Silicon Investor on Friday, November 17, 2000,12:11 a.m., posting reply number 116854 of 116906. As they concern Manhattan Beach Trading, the defamatory statements in that posting include the following:
"guilty of illegal order flow agreements, in which commission dollars were kicked back to day trading sites as a reward for ensuring traders were encouraged to trade as often as possible, the kickbacks amounting to some 35% of all commissions"
"guilty of defrauding investing traders and investors of hundreds of millions of dollars over many years"
"most assuredly guilty of committing fraud on a massive scale"
"guilty of countless federal securities violations, as well as criminal and civil fraud"
All of the foregoing statements are false, malicious, and libelous, and are injurious to the reputation, good will, and business of Manhattan Beach Trading. Accordingly, I demand that you publish immediately, and in a manner substantially the same as the defamatory statements, a statement to satisfactorily and fully retract all of the foregoing defamatory statements. Please provide this office immediately with proof that you have published a sufficient and full retraction.
Sincerely,
Deana A. La Barbera |
