Chuck: I have never used the word "criminal" in conjunction with any of the desert plays, just "unsubstantiated hype and unkept promises". Criminality is for a court of law to decide, not I.
As for an "opinion why a bunch of hypsters would bring in the fund managers and letter writers", do you know any better way to hype a stock?
Some years ago, I participated in a "Dog and Pony" show of the same kind with a company going public (They owned a bunch of patents in superconductivity, half of which were mine, so they asked me to come on the road show to lend credibility and answer "questions".).
These people were not criminals, just incompetant, but the "boiler rooms" to which they spoke were full of young brokers calling their clients to buy as these people spoke of the grandiose future.
Of course this stock which went out at a 4 bucks (plus warrants of course) can now be had for $.001 (yes a tenth of a cent). They raised a cool $3.5 MM bucks, and have been living on the interest since, they have done nothing with the body of intellectual property they had.
Lucky for me, when I negotiated the sale of the patents, I took cash and stock (worthless today, since I could not sell for two years), and they had to return the intellectual property if it did not generate royalties for me in 3 years, which, you guessed, it did not.
The world is full of very smart, yet incompetant (as far as getting a business off the ground) people, some of which might be extremely smart and know how to push the boundaries of the envelope (of legality) without breaching it.
Zeev |
