i was wondering if any solv shareholders saw this article about 'mob' manipulation in the solv market & if this pertains to those that bashed the stock so vehemently on si? thanks in advance, pm's are welcome! ;
"....According to trading records, the accounts traded in the same stocks that Business Week had identified as being exploited by the Mafia. They included SC&T, Solv-Ex Corp., Osicom Technologies and Novatek International. (There is no indication that any of these companies were in league with the Mob.) ...."
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PART 1
Thursday, February 25, 1999
Howe Street and the Mob
Stockbroker Jean-Claude Hauchecorne has been censured by a VSE panel for handling offshore securities for unknown clients. He found out exactly who some of those clients were in 1996, when two Mafioso and their gun-toting musclemen came into his hotel room demanding their money back
David Baines
The Vancouver Sun
<Picture>Phil Abramo, "a new breed of underworld businessman," seeking to expand into white collar crime.
If Howe Street stockbroker Jean-Claude Hauchecorne wasn't sure who his clients were, he found out on May 25, 1996, when four men accosted him in his room at the Drake Hotel in Manhattan.
One of the unscheduled visitors was a client he knew as Louis Metzer, although he had never met him in person. When "Metzer" burst into the hotel room, Mr. Hauchecorne recognized him from a Business Week photo as Philip Abramo, reputedly a high-ranking member of the Mafia.
With Abramo was Philip Gurian, another Mob-connected figure who had placed dozens of orders with Mr. Hauchecorne to buy and sell U.S. stocks that, according to Business Week, were being manipulated by Mafia-controlled brokerage firms.
Mr. Hauchecorne described the other two as "hit men." One had a gun in his belt and was brandishing a steel bar.
They demanded that Mr. Hauchecorne return $1.75-million that he had transferred to Switzerland on the instruction of another Mafia operative, Eric Wynn. Otherwise, they said, they would kill him.
"I was scared shitless," the 41-year-old broker said in an interview with a Vancouver Stock Exchange official.
That conversation and other details of Mr. Hauchecorne's role as broker to the Mob were revealed in a VSE hearing last fall into allegations that Mr. Hauchecorne ran a string of accounts for offshore clients without determining who they were, and allowed third parties to deal in the accounts without proper authority.
Details of the Business Week account, and several other magazine and newspaper articles, were presented at the hearing as evidence that Mr. Hauchecorne should have known with whom he was dealing.
"This is a classic example of Canadian brokerage firms acting as turnstiles for American promoters' paper coming from offshore," said one long-time Howe Street broker, who asked not to be identified.
Jean-Claude Mr. Hauchecorne's career in securities began in 1985, when he joined Continental Securities in Vancouver as an assistant to Art Charpentier, a director and vice-president of the brokerage firm. Mr. Charpentier was the picture of propriety. He was a chartered accountant, a designation that distinguished him from the morass of penny-stock dealers on Howe Street. He was well-spoken, and local press frequently sought him out for stock market commentary.
But his stock dealings belied his respectable exterior. One of Mr. Charpentier's key clients was Handelskredit Bank of Zurich, which had demonstrated an uncanny knack for buying shares of VSE companies just before the stock price took off.
One of these was Archer Communications. On Feb. 19, 1987, Archer president Larry Ryckman arranged for the company to sell -- through Charpentier -- 600,000 shares at 60¢ per share to Handelskredit Bank.
The same day, Archer announced it would acquire a three-dimensional sound technology and the stock began a long climb to the $27.50 level, affording the beneficial owners of the Handelskredit stock -- whoever they were -- the opportunity to make millions.
Archer eventually collapsed in a hail of class-action lawsuits. Despite evidence that its stock had been rigged, Mr. Ryckman escaped regulatory action. (Later, Alberta regulators caught him manipulating the share price of an Alberta Stock Exchange company called Westgroup Communications Corp. and suspended him for 18 years.) .... CONT'D
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