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Microcap & Penny Stocks : HITSGALORE.COM (HITT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Janice Shell who wrote (2188)	6/17/1999 7:01:00 PM
From: Tommy Hicks	Respond to of 7056

Gee, I guess this means you really did retain legal counsel.<G> Hat's off to you three and Methven & Associates. That's damned good. Best of luck. th

To: Janice Shell who wrote (2188)	6/17/1999 7:23:00 PM
From: BORIS BADENUFF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7056

*******BAD BOY BROKER NEWS******* By David Martin NEW YORK, June 16 (Reuters) - Eighty-five stock brokers were indicted on racketeering charges on Wednesday, accused of swindling thousands of investors out of millions of dollars by manipulating stock prices, federal prosecutors said. Prosecutors at a news conference at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn said the men would convince unsuspecting investors to buy cheap, so-called bulletin board stocks, drive up the price, cash out and leave the investors with nearly worthless holdings, Two defendants, Dominick Dionifio and Enrico LoCasio, were identified as associates in the Colombo organized crime family, while a third, Yakov Slavin, was identified as an associate of Russian organized crime, prosecutors said. ''A number of these defendants have ties to the mob and, if there's money in it, they're in it. The mob never saw a market it didn't want to control,'' Louis Schiliro, assistant director in charge of the FBI in New York, said. The brokers -- most of whom were not actually registered brokers and some had had their licenses revoked -- would lure customers to open accounts by referring to well-known, profitable stocks but then switch their money into risky low-priced stocks, prosecutors said. Once the prices of the cheap stocks were inflated, they would sell off their own shares, making money for themselves and leaving the stocks essentially valueless, officials said. The 85 defendants operated through 11 firms, among them First National Equity Corp. of New Jersey, Three Arrows of New York, JS Securities and Pacific International, based in Vancouver, Canada, authorities said. All of the defendants were charged with racketeering and money laundering. The stiffest count carries a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison. The most massive of the schemes was carried out over an eight-year period, prosecutors said. One broker, Robert Catoggio, had previously been barred from the securities industry by the Securities and Exchange Commission but had continued to work as a broker, prosecutors said. Another, Thomas Boccieri, had been a SEC lawyer in the 1970s, they said. Fifteen defendants have entered guilty pleas, including Boccieri, who pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------