I am honestly saying that I did not know what was going on. I would take a lie detector test to that fact. You can email me your phone number to discuss it... whatever it takes. I sent transactions to Tod Pauly earlier in the year to show him. I just refinanced my house to pay off the credit card debt that I accrued over this fiasco.
It is very simple. I was used.
I bought 100 shares in the company back in 1/96 at $5 per share after I started subscribing to StreetLevel. Then in the fall of 1997, I bought more at $1. StreetLevel started commiunicated with the company again and was touting the stock as a bargain.
Then Essary put out a request for subscribers to come forward to form a "SAC" so that the membership could be in contact with individual companies that StreetLevel was following. He also said that those who did this would get their subscription for free. Prior to this I found a post by Mohamed on the newsgroups. I emailed him and he sent me an investor package along with an email reply. It was the first time that a CEO wrote me and I thought that it was pretty cool. So I sent a note to StreetLevel saying that since the CEO was emailing me back, I would volunteer to be the SAC leader.
Then I was told to talk to Mike Rehtorik in investor relations to keep current on the information. Then there was the smart investor, Tod Pauly, Caroline Bogart, etc. And the rest is history.
As far as Tod and I figured, the shares going out were to Mohamed's accounts. Remember that Mike kept saying that stock was being illegally shorted through Canada? I figured that they were selling it into our buying.
True, I sold a few days before posting it. But my sale was an immediate reaction to the realization of the scam. It took me a couple of days to figure out what I would say to everyone. After finding out exactly what kind of people I was dealing with and the kind of stuff they were doing to Tod and Caroline, like you stated earlier, I was concerned about my safety.
I sold on a very down day. In the days following, it rose. Several people emailed and called me. Some said that they would hold on and still believed that the Company was on the up and up. Not until that moment did I realize how this had become such a frenzy. It taught me a lot about the stock market mentality. |
