"none other than C. Austin Bud Burrell, whose dire warnings about naked shorting have been featured at NCANS.net, on the Bob OBrien blog and similar Internet sites."
............Bud got Terry Ramsden according to Mark Cuban!!
(see:Mark Cuban weblog->Naked Shorting - The Real Bad Guys)
"A few weeks ago, I learned that shares of one such company, Private Trading Systems Inc. of Scottsdale, Ariz. (Pink sheets: PVTM), were being offered to European investors by an apparently fictitious brokerage calling itself Anglo Swiss Consulting (fictitious in the sense that it is not registered with any nations regulatory agency and that its Internet site is something of a Potemkin storefront.)"
"When I looked into Private Trading Systems, I noted that its chairman, chief executive, treasurer and corporate secretary is none other than C. Austin Bud Burrell, whose dire warnings about naked shorting have been featured at NCANS.net, on the Bob OBrien blog and similar Internet sites."
............ BUD BURRELL GOT YOUR GOAT TOO!!
"Sources say Ramsden may have invested in Enterprises Solutions and similarly tried to get others to invest. Ramsden couldn't be reached for comment."
smartmoney.com
But the SEC isn't done. Sources say regulators are looking into a possible connection between some of those European partnerships and British investor Terry Ramsden. In the 1980s, Ramsden, a noted high-stakes gambler, was listed as Britian's 57th richest man, but he lost most of his fortune when the Japanese stock market collapsed nearly a decade ago. After filing for bankruptcy, he was charged with fraud for trying to conceal some assets and ultimately spent 10 months in jail. Sources say Ramsden may have invested in Enterprises Solutions and similarly tried to get others to invest. Ramsden couldn't be reached for comment.
Stock Watch
Out of Luck
By Matthew Goldstein Published: May 10, 2000
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The $2.3 Million Hot Potato
It may be hard to believe, but there's $2.3 million sitting in two accounts at a New York brokerage that no one wants to claim.
Securities regulators say the money and stock in the accounts represent some of the ill-gotten gains from the alleged stock scam involving Enterprises Solutions, the Canton, Mass., Internet-security firm. The accounts are registered with two offshore limited partnerships based in the British colony of Gibraltar. The Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that Herbert Cannon, a Florida stock promoter, secretly controlled those entities — a charge Cannon denies.
At a recent hearing in Manhattan federal court to determine whether a temporary freeze on those assets should be lifted, no one appeared to represent the Gibraltar partnerships. In the absence of any objection, U.S. Southern District Judge Miriam Cedarbaum extended the freeze until a trial is held later this year on the underlying civil fraud charges against Enterprises Solutions, Cannon and John Solomon, the company's chief executive. That means Wall Street Equities, the brokerage firm where the accounts are held, can't transfer or release the money to the owners.
Government lawyers had rushed to court on April 6 to obtain a temporary restraining order after they got word that a representative of the offshore entities had asked Wall Street Equities to liquidate the accounts and transfer the proceeds overseas. In court papers, regulators contend Cannon personally instructed brokers at Wall Street Equities to sell shares of Enterprises Solutions when the company's stock was rising sharply earlier this year.
The SEC suspended trading in Enterprises Solutions stock on March 30, after its shares shot from $7 to just under $22. Though the 10-day suspension expired at midnight April 12, the stock has yet to resume trading on the OTC Bulletin Board. For the past two weeks, shares have sporadically traded on the Pink Sheets, the loosely regulated trading platform run by the National Quotation Bureau. Daily volume has averaged a few thousand shares, compared to the 260,000 shares that changed hands the day before trading was halted. At last count, shares of Enterprises Solutions were selling for $7.
— Matthew Goldstein
THOMAS J. MURPHY was no stranger to risk. A former craps dealer on the Las Vegas strip, Murphy enjoyed playing high-stakes poker and dabbling in speculative stocks. But sometime on March 31, the longtime Las Vegas resident decided he'd overplayed his hand.
For weeks, Murphy had been recommending a tiny stock called Enterprises Solutions (EPSO) to just about anyone he met — relatives, friends, even people he played poker with in the casinos. And for a time, it seemed his tip was a winner. Between March 21 and March 29, shares of the fledgling Internet-security company rocketed from $7.38 to nearly $22 on the National Association of Securities Dealers' OTC Bulletin Board.
Then, on March 30, the Securities and Exchange Commission suspended trading. The SEC was concerned, it said, about the veracity of several press releases issued by the company. People whom Murphy had advised to invest in the company began calling his home, wanting to know what was going on. Murphy, apparently as distraught as they, didn't know what to tell them.
Around 10:30 a.m. PT on March 31, Murphy called his wife of 24 years, Virginia, at her job as a casino entertainment director and left a message on her voice mail saying he loved her. Then the 49-year-old marketing executive hand-wrote a three-page letter to her and their two college-age children, drove to a shooting range, rented a gun and took his life. In his letter, Murphy instructed his wife to tell anyone who asked that he had believed Enterprises Solutions was a legitimate company.
"I think he was mortified and ashamed,'' said Virginia Murphy in a recent interview. "I think the phone calls upset him. When it stopped trading, it upset him. He felt unbearable guilt. It wasn't just about our finances. He felt personal responsibility."
In the days immediately after Murphy's death, things got worse for investors in Enterprises Solutions. The SEC filed civil fraud charges against the Canton, Mass., company and Chief Executive John A. Solomon, charging them with issuing misleading press releases about a product the company claimed to have developed to protect Web sites from hack attacks. Regulators contend the company has no such product. In fact, SEC lawyers say, Enterprises Solutions isn't much of a company at all — it has no revenues, no customers and just a handful of employees. The company and Solomon deny the fraud charges and insist the company was on the verge of lining up customers when the SEC swooped in.
Federal regulators also are pursuing fraud charges against Herbert Cannon, a Boca Raton, Fla., stock promoter whom the SEC alleges was the scam's mastermind. According to the Commission, Cannon, who has a long history of fraud convictions and securities violations, secretly controls two foreign limited partnerships that at one time owned nearly 15% of Enterprises Solutions' 3.2 million outstanding shares. In all, 61% of the company's outstanding shares are owned by 15 European entities.
Regulators say that while Enterprises Solutions stock was soaring, Cannon and some of the European partnerships were selling thousands of shares through accounts held at a New York brokerage, taking in at least $2.3 million. Cannon denies having "any legal or beneficial ownership interest" in the accounts.
But the SEC isn't done. Sources say regulators are looking into a possible connection between some of those European partnerships and British investor Terry Ramsden. In the 1980s, Ramsden, a noted high-stakes gambler, was listed as Britian's 57th richest man, but he lost most of his fortune when the Japanese stock market collapsed nearly a decade ago. After filing for bankruptcy, he was charged with fraud for trying to conceal some assets and ultimately spent 10 months in jail. Sources say Ramsden may have invested in Enterprises Solutions and similarly tried to get others to invest. Ramsden couldn't be reached for comment.
While SEC lawyers won't comment on Murphy's ebullient stock touting, there's no indication that they're looking at anything he may have done or said. Still, there's no easy explanation for why he was so eager to spread the word about Enterprises Solutions — or, for that matter, why some investors took his advice. Virginia Murphy claims her husband simply was a gregarious fellow and compares his enthusiasm for Enterprises Solutions to getting "caught in a whirlwind." Whatever his motivation, Murphy's story sheds light on how investors are drawn to such speculative stocks.
One investor says he learned of Enterprises Solutions from Murphy during a February trip to Las Vegas, where the two met in the poker room of Steve Wynn's splashy new Bellagio Hotel & Casino. The investor, who didn't want to be identified, recalls Murphy as a boisterous man who seemed to be a regular in the poker room. Over the course of an evening, Murphy told him he had a hot stock tip, then suggested he invest in Enterprises Solutions.
Murphy gave the investor his card, and over the next few weeks the two had more conversations by phone. Each time, the investor says, Murphy became more effusive about Enterprises Solutions, once concluding a voice message by exuberantly shouting, "EPSO! EPSO!" The investor says he finally bought 400 shares in late March, when the stock was trading around $15. When the SEC later halted trading, he called Murphy, who sounded "haggard." Murphy told him his phone "had been ringing off the hook."
According to other investors, Murphy's wife and some of his friends, Murphy, who spent more than 20 years dealing craps at the Tropicana Casino before taking a job marketing health-food products over the Internet, was indeed a fixture in Vegas's casino poker rooms. And he liked to chat up anyone who'd listen. "Murph," as he was known, "was advising quite a few people to invest in [Enterprises Solutions]," says Margaret Larsen, one of his partners at Marketing Opportunities Group. "I was probably one of the few people he didn't tell about it."
Murphy's wife says she doesn't know how her husband learned of the company. She's not even sure how much he invested. A friend says Murphy got hooked during a conversation with Enterprises Solutions' investor relations manager, Vancouver businessman Eugene Hodgson — whom he met in a casino. Hodgson, identified as a contact person on several Enterprises Solutions press releases, declined to comment.
It's perhaps fitting that Las Vegas — which in recent years has emerged as an epicenter of stock manipulation schemes and "pay-for-hire" newsletters that tout stocks for a fee — would play a role in the Enterprises Solutions affair. Not only did news of the stock spread in poker rooms along the Strip, but the company came into existence after taking over the corporate shell of a now-defunct gaming company called American Casinos International. (The SEC says that Cannon — whose home city, Boca Raton, is another spawning ground for stock scams — was instrumental in negotiating the 1999 quick-change maneuver, commonly known as a "reverse merger.")
Moreover, many Wall Street professionals say investing in a Bulletin Board company is little better than gambling. With few, if any, analysts following the 4,900 stocks that trade on the Bulletin Board, it's hard to find independent assessments of a company's prospects. And even though the National Association of Securities Dealers has stiffened financial reporting requirements, regulators say the market, with its pint-sized stocks, remains a breeding ground for fraud.
Nonetheless, small investors are often drawn to Bulletin Board stocks by bargain prices. Before April's big market sell-off, more investors than ever were pouring money into Bulletin Board stocks; the NASD estimates that trading activity was running 366% higher than a year earlier. Recent statistics show a subsequent fall-off in Bulletin Board trading — probably a good thing, given the perils.
Ironically, Murphy's wife says no one knew better than her husband the dangers of gambling — whether at cards, dice or stocks. He knew that one's luck could change quickly, she says, and that there are no sure things. So why, she wonders, didn't he apply those lessons to Enterprises Solutions?
"I have this three-page letter and it's the last thing he'll ever say to me," Virginia Murphy laments, "and half of a page is about this stupid stock."
Stock Watch Archive
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Mark Cuban weblog->Naked Shorting - The Real Bad Guys
I got a very interesting email a few minutes ago. I cant say I have fact checked it exhaustively. I havent. Im sure the Naked Shorting Sithmeisters will weigh in with their comments about any perceived or real inaccuracies. Facts can never get in the way of a war, so every side and every word will be spun by all those with something at stake.
Personally, the only thing I have at stake is the ongoing entertainment value of all of this. My 20k shares short of Overstock will continue to do just fine. ( Patrick Byrne, if you want to lend me any of the shares you own and have taken possession of, I would be happy to borrow them and short them).
But I digress. Here is the information I received. You can do your own research before coming to any conlusions. Im sure the comments to this blogpost will be very, very interesting.
Ive been following your blog and have been particularly amused by your postings about Patrick Byrne, Overstock.com and the mysterious people behind the anti-naked shorting movement.
Ive spent quite a bitof time tracking a vast network of corrupt executives, financiers and brokers who route discounted shares of obscure U.S. companies overseas through sham private placements and venture capital deals and then resell them to foreign investors at marked up prices, through unlicensed securities boiler rooms
A few weeks ago, I learned that shares of one such company, Private Trading Systems Inc. of Scottsdale, Ariz. (Pink sheets: PVTM), were being offered to European investors by an apparently fictitious brokerage calling itself Anglo Swiss Consulting (fictitious in the sense that it is not registered with any nations regulatory agency and that its Internet site is something of a Potemkin storefront.)
When I looked into Private Trading Systems, I noted that its chairman, chief executive, treasurer and corporate secretary is none other than C. Austin Bud Burrell, whose dire warnings about naked shorting have been featured at NCANS.net, on the Bob OBrien blog and similar Internet sites.
Burrell also has been a litigation consultant for John OQuinn, the Texas lawyer representing Overstock.com in its suit against Rocker Partners, Gradient Analytics and other defendants who allegedly undermined the companys stock through nefarious shorting activities.
Its worth noting that shares of Endovasc Inc., another company that is part of the anti-naked shorting coalition, also were sold by a foreign boiler room known as Bellador Advisory Services.
Theres another interesting aspect to Private Trading Systems. According to the Form 10-12 that Private Trading filed earlier this month with the SEC, its biggest shareholder, with a 43.2 percent equity stake, is T.P. Ramsden.
The filing said Ramsden controlled the rights to the technology behind the trading system that the company is developing to allow institutional investors to privately trade securities, instruments, or any financial asset that is capable of being converted to electronic form.
What Private Trading Systems SEC filing did not say is that T.P. Ramsden is Terry Ramsden, once a highflying British bond trader, who pleaded guilty to investment fraud in the 1990s and later was convicted of bankruptcy fraud. He was sentenced to 21 months in prison, and served 10.
Ramsden is making a comeback of sorts, and has raised eyebrows in British investment circles by taking positions in several small public companies whose shares have moved upward after his arrival (Hansard Group is one example).
I offer this tale as yet another example of the kinds of activities that members of the anti-naked shorting coalition have been engaging in, while claiming that it is their detractors who are involved in dishonest undertakings.
Feel free to use this information as the basis for a new blog post
Let the comments begin.
blogmaverick.com
Capital letters
Put the phone down on these 'boiler room' pressure sellers
Saturday October 29, 2005
The Guardian
I have been phoned repeatedly by Securities Advisory Group International, apparently registered in New York, with a persuasive line to buy shares at $1.05 in Material Technologies - a small US firm which they say currently trades at $1.20 - "as a special recommendation for new customers".
SAGI states Material Technologies will show a rise of around 300% over a year. They will recommend when to sell and ask for 3% of any profits, this being their way of making profits for their company. The calls, actually from Ireland and not New York, have been up to 30 minutes duration.
Is this a genuine stock offer?
SF, London
Material Technologies is a real Californian company working on electronic gadgetry to detect cracks in bridges and buildings. It has US government contracts, but it is still at the development stage with multi-million dollar research bills and losses. These costs are, in part, financed by issuing shares in exchange for money or stock in other companies. One such deal was a stock swap with Birchington Investments - registered in the British Virgin Islands but listed on the Irish Stock Exchange. These shares are sold under a deal restricting trading for a year.
The 3% is immaterial. SAGI makes its money by buying the shares for a few cents and selling them for dollars. Your shares will also be restricted.
The source of SAGI's shares is unclear. Both Material Technologies and Birchington say they have no idea, although the California company is aware of the share pushers. And they are confused by the 300% gain claim. No one can promise this.
In reality, SAGI is part of a group of high pressure "boiler room" sellers including Douglas St James (Suisse), Parker Lane and Black and White Investments. The FSA has issued warnings on these firms and believed they had disappeared.
Now they're back. Put your phone down on further calls.
Is seven weeks too long for an ISA swap?
I opened an Abbey ISA on April 13 with a £17,368 transfer from a Marks & Spencer ISA. This took seven weeks. When I complained, I was told it was normal to take that long and I had no claim on the lost interest. Is this right?
JM Teesside
No. You switched for a higher rate so you had every expectation of getting it, not having to wait nearly two months.
Sadly, Abbey's call centre tried to fob you off with total nonsense. When Capital Letters called, apologetic Abbey admitted seven weeks is not normal. Two weeks should be maximum.
Abbey is backdating your interest to April 27 - two weeks after the transfer - and will send you £20 to recompense your inconvenience.
Is this guaranteed bond copper-bottomed?
My IFA suggested I invest in the Keydata five-year bond paying a guaranteed 7.5% per annum. Following disasters such as split capital investment trusts, precipice bonds and Eurolife, I am wary of anything paying more than a building society. Should I be suspicious?
JD Manchester
You are right to be wary as this is an entirely novel concept. Keydata has found a US market in second-hand insurance policies based on key workers and major shareholders in US firms. At its simplest, the bondholder money buys the policies and pays the ongoing premiums, scooping the pool when the insured person dies.
This scheme arose in the fertile minds at KPMG which claims its arithmetic is robust, providing enough of the insured persons die on schedule, and insurers stay in business.
The hope is this market is so little known that pricing anomalies will continue to boost returns.
The income - around 2.5% more than a risk-free product - is guaranteed. But your return of capital could be at risk if the KPMG financial model fails.
What happens when a job is finished early?
A local decorator quoted £585 to paint the exterior of my flat. The work had been started by another worker who went off sick. They said the work would take three to four days. But the job was finished in under two days. Where do I go from here?
DH Suffolk
Nowhere. Most people complain when a job takes too long. The work, carried out in excellent weather earlier in the summer, was to your satisfaction. The price you agreed was for the job, not for the painter's time.
Contact
We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Write to: Capital Letters, Money, The Guardian, 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER or email capital.letters@guardian.co.uk
Do not send original documents but do enclose a daytime phone number. Information is general and offered without any legal responsibilty. Always take professional advice if in doubt.
money.guardian.co.uk
PRIVATE TRADING SYSTEMS INC 10-12G/A 2/6/2006
We have entered into a written commitment agreement with our controlling stockholder, T.P. Ramsden, pursuant to which Mr. Ramsden has agreed to contribute $20 million in new financing, comprised of a mixture of cash and liquid securities, including shares of Birchington Investments, Ltd. Mr. Ramsden’s financing commitment is conditioned upon our receiving final approval for listing on the American Stock Exchange. The Commitment Agreement with Mr. Ramsden has been filed as an exhibit to this Registration Statement.
Besides Mr. Ramsden’s commitment, we do not have any other committed sources of financing at this time and it is uncertain whether additional funding will be available when we need or whether any such financing will be available on terms that will be acceptable to us. If we raise funds by issuing debt, we will have to pay or refinance the debt at maturity, regardless of our financial condition or liquidity at that time. If we raise funds by selling additional shares of common stock or other securities convertible into common stock, the ownership interest of our existing stockholders will be diluted. If we are not able to obtain financing when needed, we might not be able to carry out our business plan. As a result, we might have to significantly limit or terminate our operations and our business, financial condition and results of operations would be materially harmed.
secfilings.nasdaq.com 3%2Etxt&FilePath=%5C2006%5C02%5C06%5C&CoName=PRIVATE+TRADING+SYSTEMS+INC&FormTyp e=10%2D12G%2FA&RcvdDate=2%2F6%2F2006&pdf=
BUD BURRELL GOT YOUR GOAT TO
Whats4free.com, Inc. first appeared on Emerging Company Report the weekend of February 18th through the 20th, 2000
Bud Burrell, President & CEO (r)
Richard Schmidt, Executive VP (l)
web.archive.org
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Thursday 17 February 2000, 17:58 GMT
WHAT'S FOR FREE TECHNOLOGIES, INC. COMPLETES OUTRIGHT PURCHASE OF DOMAIN NAMES; COMPANY FEATURED ON LEADING CABLE TV PROGRAM
Scottsdale, Arizona -- What's for Free Technologies, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: WFFT) is pleased to announce that it has completed the outright purchase and has received full rights to the whats4free.com, the whatsforfree.com, and the whatsfourfree.com domain names. The acquisition gives the company complete corporate and geographical control of the branded Internet website addresses. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
The company also announced today that its President and Chief Operating Officer, Bud Burrell, and its Executive Vice President, Charitable Activities, Rick Schmidt, had been interviewed by the Emerging Company Report Television Program. The interview took place on Wednesday February 16, 2000, and will air on February 18th, 19th, and 20th, 2000.
In this interview, Bud Burrell discussed the Company's current status, its business model, its site launch plans and goals, and why investors should consider the Company. In addition, Bud addressed the challenges facing the Company as a rapid growth analog, and why it believes its management will be able to successfully face these challenges.
prninternational.com
Are You Sure That's CNBC You're Watching?
By Matthew Goldstein Published: June 16, 2000
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Anchors for hire: Donald Baillargeon (left) and Skip Lindeman.
DONALD BAILLARGEON ISN'T a financial news anchor, but he plays one on cable television systems across the country.
The former advertising and marketing executive is the star, founder and executive producer of a television program called "Emerging Company Report," which appears weekends on cable systems in more than 125 cities. The 30-minute show, now in its fourth year, focuses exclusively on small publicly traded companies that Baillargeon likes to say could be "the stars of tomorrow."
But don't let the show's anchor desk, nifty theme music and on-camera interviews with corporate executives fool you — "Emerging Company Report" is a far cry from the business news programs that regularly air on CNBC and CNNfn. In fact, the show's not much different from the infomercials for products like Suzanne Sommers' Torso Track abdominal machine that usually precede or follow it on local cable systems. The corporate executives interviewed on "Emerging Company Report" pay $10,950 for the privilege of having Baillargeon and his co-host Skip Lindeman lob big, juicy softball questions at them and promote their companies.
You'd have a hard time discovering that bit about the fees, however, from watching an "Emerging Company Report" broadcast. The only indication that the corporate executives have forked out dough comes in a 130-word disclaimer that flashes on the TV screen for about 8 seconds at the start of each broadcast. And since the disclaimer appears before the logo is flashed and the theme music kicks in, it's possible that viewers tuning in late might think they're actually watching a real business news show and not an advertisement for a bunch of over-the-counter Bulletin Board stocks.
"These infomercials are really little more than advertisements made to appear like news programs," says Bradley Skolnik, Indiana securities commissioner and president of the North American Securities Administrators Association, a professional association of state securities regulators. They're difficult to regulate, he says, because "many in the regulatory community aren't even aware when these shows are on."
There's nothing illegal or inherently unethical about television programs like "Emerging Company Report." So-called pay-for-hire stock broadcasts have been around for years — first on radio, then TV and now the Internet. Executives at small businesses say they need these kinds of programs in order to get their stories out to the investing public. The Securities and Exchange Commission, meanwhile, says stock-promotion programs are permissible as long as the broadcasts disclose that companies are paying a fee — either in cash or stock — for a favorable mention. The SEC won't comment on "Emerging Company Report's" broadcasts, but it appears that Baillargeon is doing just enough to satisfy the disclosure requirement.
But a pay-for-hire broadcast that meets the letter of the law can still create confusion in the minds of some investors — particularly with the explosion of financial news on TV and the Web. "If a disclosure is going to mean anything, it's important the disclaimer is posted in a manner that can be understood by the average viewer," says Skolnik. John Markese, president of the American Association of Individual Investors, a consumer protection group, takes a more direct stand. He advises investors to ignore shows like "Emerging Company Report" entirely, since the information they provide is completely one-sided and goes unchallenged.
With millions of online investors now buying and selling stocks on their own, regulators say, individuals need to be especially vigilant in choosing their financial news sources. That's especially true when it comes to highly speculative Bulletin Board stocks, a popular playground for stock scammers. Just this week, for example, federal authorities in New York charged 120 people, including brokers and individuals with ties to two of New York's organized-crime families, of running a massive stock-manipulation scheme involving nearly a dozen small-cap stocks.
Two years ago, the SEC began an aggressive crackdown on pay-for-hire stock promotion newsletters, broadcasts and Web sites that failed to disclose that they took money to tout a stock. One of the companies caught up in the sweep was Baillargeon's "Emerging Company Report," which broadcasts from a Hollywood, Calif. studio. The SEC cited Baillargeon, as well as the program, for not disclosing the exact dollar amount of the fees he was taking from companies that had been featured on the show — an omission Baillargeon has since rectified at the SEC's request.
But the SEC isn't finished with Baillargeon just yet. In an unrelated matter, regulators have charged him with being a participant in a multimillion-dollar stock-manipulation scheme involving a now-defunct Bulletin Board company called Alliance Industries. Baillargeon had been vice president of public relations and marketing for the California firm when the SEC suspended trading in its stock in 1996. Last summer the commission filed civil fraud charges against Baillargeon and former Chief Executive Peter Norman, who allegedly controlled 80% of the company's stock. The SEC contends the two men made false and misleading statements in an attempt to bolster the company's stock price. Some of the misleading statements, the SEC charges, included claims about several new business ventures the company intended to move into — including the breeding of goats and the development of a chain of chiropractic clinics. The SEC complaint says the two men claimed the new businesses would boost Alliance's revenues from $20 million in 1997 to $1.2 billion in 2006. That's a lot of goats.
Baillargeon insists Norman duped him, and says he had no knowledge of the alleged stock manipulation and relied on financial projections that had been verified by an accountant. He contends he'll be vindicated when the case comes to trial. "Nobody lost more in that deal than me," says Baillargeon, who was in New York Thursday to film this weekend's edition of "Emerging Company Report." "Going to work for that company was a huge error on my part." Norman couldn't be reached for comment.
So far, however, the pending litigation doesn't seem to have had much impact on "Emerging Company Report" or Baillargeon's television career. In September, the company will air its 200th original show, a rare feat in the television business. Clearly, there seems to be a market for this kind of material.
Robert Ziner, chief executive officer of Value Holdings (VALH), a Miami-based lumber-distribution business with $70 million in sales, has only positive things to say about the program. He's appeared on the show three times in recent weeks, and those appearances have prompted more than 700 requests from viewers for more information. "It's all about public relations and investor information," says Ziner. But if Ziner was looking for a bounce in his stock, forget it. Since his appearance on the June 2-4 edition of "Emerging Company Report," Value's stock on the Bulletin Board has never risen above 40 cents, although daily trading volume rose from about 800,000 shares to 2 million shares on June 15.
But results aren't especially important to Baillargeon — he says he has no vested interest in the performance of stocks profiled on his program because he's paid in cash. All he's trying to do, he says, is provide a forum for small businesses to communicate directly to investors. "I think we go out of our way to say that it is only an information source," says Baillargeon. "I would hope that people wouldn't make investment decisions based solely on what they see on a television program."
That's certainly good advice, because one of the companies featured on an "Emerging Company Report" broadcast in early March, Enterprises Solutions (EPSO), became ensnarled in a legal battle with the SEC shortly after one of its executives appeared on the program. The SEC suspended trading in the Massachusetts-based company's stock in March and later filed civil fraud charges against the tiny Internet security firm. The SEC contends the company repeatedly made misleading statements about several security products it was developing as part of a multimillion-dollar stock-manipulation scheme. Baillargeon says situations like the one involving Enterprises Solutions are rare, and points out that, while he tries to make sure all the companies featured on the show are viable concerns, he isn't a financial analyst.
In other words, making an investment decision based on something you see on a show like "Emerging Company Report" is not much better than buying a stock based on a company's press release. Just as you generally don't find bad news in a corporate press release — and when it is there, it's usually sugar-coated — an "Emerging Company Report" broadcast is the epitome of positive spin control.
Programs like "Emerging Company Report" give a whole new meaning to the derisive phrase "happy talk," which some in the news business use to describe the inane banter between anchors on local television newscasts. But this kind of happy talk could end up costing people money.
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TV host got your GOAT?
Baillargeon's "MoneyTV" was a strange choice for Anselmo, given that Baillargeon was one of two officers sued by the SEC in a multi-million dollar micro-cap fraud case.
The SEC charged Peter Norman and Baillargeon touted a company called "Alliance" on the Internet and used Alliance's website to make materially false representations about businesses in which various Alliance subsidiaries were supposedly engaged, including the cultivation and sale of fast-growing "paulownia" hardwood trees, the breeding and selling of live GOATs and GOAT carcasses, and the development of a nationwide chain of chiropractic clinics.
The complaint alleged that, contrary to the representations, Alliance owned no paulownia-tree technology or plantations, did not own or operate a GOAT business, and was not developing a chain of chiropractic clinics.
Nonetheless, according to the complaint, Norman and Baillargeon projected that Alliance's various businesses would generate $4.8 billion over a projected ten-year period and that the paulownia-tree business alone would bring Alliance more than $l billion in annual revenue by 2006.
The SEC charged the pair carried out a wide-ranging manipulation of Alliance's stock from January to November 1996, causing investors to lose millions of dollars.
Baillargeon submitted to a final judgment in the case in January of 2002. The agreement permanently restrained and enjoined him from engaging in fraudulent activities and required him to pay a $10,000 fine. In addition, the court ordered Baillargeon to cooperate with the SEC in its further inquiries into the case, including testifying in all its investigations and judicial proceedings.
Last month, co-defendant Peter H. Norman was found liable for $2.2 million dollars including a $110,000 civil penalty.
An SEC attorney familiar with the case labeled Baillargeon a "fraudster." "That's what we call repeat fraud offenders," he said. "It's amazing. And that TV show has had so many names."
"MoneyTV" is described as a weekly syndicated financial TV show. It is part of Emerging Company Report, a promotional service used by Silverado in the past. As WND previously reported, the SEC instituted public cease and desist proceedings against DONALD A. Baillargeon, individually and doing business as Emerging Company Report in 1998, for failure to disclose that ECR had received compensation and stock for promoting securities.
Baillargeon received, directly or indirectly, compensation ranging from $2,500 to $17,000 for each guest appearance package sold and did not disclose the amount of money he had received from the issuers to publicize their companies and stock.
Baillargeon subsequently submitted an offer of settlement, which the Commission accepted. The SEC reported, "Without admitting or denying the findings herein, Baillargeon has consented to the entry of this Order Instituting Public Proceedings … and to the imposition of the cease-and-desist order."
That case was part of the SEC's first Internet securities fraud sweep. WND recently has learned that the SEC has launched a major new investigation of Internet stock promoters. The investigation has been launched from its San Francisco Pacific Regional office. |
