To All: Yesterday's News Release: Frank Balfour leaves jail with an ankle bracelet
Jot-It! Software Corp JOT
Shares issued 20,714,756 Feb 2 close $0.56
Mon 2 Feb 98 Street Wire
Also BC Securities Commission (BCSEC)by Brent Mudry
Career stock promoter and repeat securities violator Frank Balfour had a short stay in jail on Thursday, before being quickly released to serve a 30-day sentence on electronic monitoring. The move spared Mr Balfour the discomfort of spending a night in jail with non-white-collar criminals, although he must endure wearing an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet and stay mostly at home for the next month. "He was considered a low-risk offender," BC Corrections spokesman Bill Young told Stockwatch. "He was
admitted and then released," Mr Young added. The corrections official notes this saves the taxpayer the cost of locking up offenders who are not deemed to pose a risk to the community.
The veteran Vancouver promoter's latest trouble stems from his dubious dealings in Vanharbour International, a Nasdaq bulletin-board shell. Another Vanharbour associate ended his own sentence last summer, also without jail time, for an unrelated fraud. Larry Kostiuk, the ousted founder of Evergreen International Technologies, now called Jot-It!
Software, tangled earlier with Mr Balfour in a scrap over control of Vanharbour. The pair's Vanharbour dealings are detailed in a July 7 1997 Stockwatch story on Jot-It!
Mr Balfour's latest run-in with the law climaxed on Thursday, when BC provincial court judge William Craig sentenced him to "thirty days' imprisonment" for bilking a Vancouver investor out of $60,000 for worthless securities, in year one of his 25-year ban from public markets. "Thirty days' imprisonment" can mean various things for various people. Some, especially those criminals who steer clear of white collar crime, spend time behind bars. Others, like Mr Balfour, are placed under "house arrest," which is how corrections officials like to describe their electronic
monitoring program.
Mr Balfour pleaded guilty on December 15 to one charge of unregistered trading, an infraction of the Securities Act. Under the plea arrangement, the much heralded Securities Fraud Office dropped proceedings on four other Securities Act charges, including one count of fraud and three counts of contravening a 25-year trading ban. The plea deal effectively cleared Mr Balfour of fraud.
Mr Balfour's latest career achievement came after he peddled $60,000 of worthless shares of Vanharbour to a Vancouver doctor, Margaret Webb, and her husband Gordon Tait, in October 1996. The promoter forgot to tell the couple the shares were restricted. He also forgot to tell them he had a 25-year ban from the BC Securities Commission, issued in April 1995. The lengthy ban was for Mr Balfour's key role in the 1989 manipulations of Metaxa Resources and Bu-Max Gold.
The busy promoter did not even take a breather when hit with his lengthy ban, because he was already hard at work on Vanharbour. In September 1994, Mr Balfour, took control of a couple of US shells, including Keebee Corp, Vanharbour's predecessor. Thomas Gauthier served as a capable front man, but he was never accused of any wrongdoing in the $60,000 fraud, and was slated to appear as a Crown witness if Mr Balfour's case went to trial. In February 1996, Mr Balfour and Mr Gauthier briefly linked up with Mr Kostiuk and his front-man,Anthony Dyakowski. Mr Kostiuk was eager to pick
up a new shell, as he and his loyal directors had been ousted from Evergreen as he awaited his own date and fate in criminal court. Besides Mr Dyakowski, Mr Kostiuk also used the services of Phil Nerland, a lawyer whose three-year suspension, for misappropriating modest amounts of clients' funds, ends this May. After four months of negotiations, the Balfour and Kostiuk camps had a falling out as the two front-men squabbled over the fine points of the Vanharbour deal in June 1996, and the hoped-for deal collapsed. That fall, in October, Mr Balfour enticed the doctor and
her husband to buy the $60,000 worth of Vanharbour shares.
Judge Craig's 30-day sentence matched the joint submission made by defence lawyer Jim Williams and securities fraud office prosecutor Heather Holmes. "I am pleased that the offence was treated as being a very serious offence of its type under the circumstances," Ms Holmes told Stockwatch.
(c) Copyright 1998 Canjex Publishing Ltd. canada-stockwatch.com
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Just wondering about relationship to current pricing of shares...what's that old story about the Lower Bollinger Band... Later...Gator |
