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Microcap & Penny Stocks : PanAmerican BanCorp (PABN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ColleenB who wrote (41883)	10/29/1999 12:57:00 PM
From: Howard C.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 43774

And here is the followup....aren't penny stocks interesting? Two Internet stock promoters found shot to death in a New Jersey mansion had served as government informants, providing information on securities fraud cases, according to published reports today. Alain Chalem and Maier Lehmann were crippled by gunfire and then shot point-blank in their heads, investigators said. Their bodies were found early Tuesday in the opulent estate Chalem shared with his girlfriend. Regulatory and law enforcement sources said they were uncertain whether the information the men provided in the securities investigations was damaging enough to provoke the shootings, The New York Times reported today. Lehmann had cooperated with authorities following a plea agreement stemming from a 1992 insurance fraud case, The Star-Ledger of Newark reported today. He pleaded guilty to mail fraud in the case, which eventually netted more than 100 defendants, including insurance company officials. In exchange for helping federal prosecutors, Lehmann was sentenced to house arrest. Monmouth County Prosecutor John Kaye has said earlier that the men had ties to ``shady' business dealings and the attack was possibly linked to their penny stock Web operation, www.stockinvestor.com. Chalem, 41, and Lehmann, 37, were not registered brokers. They promoted certain stocks on their Web site, which is registered in Panama and operated by an administrator in Hungary, regulators said. Detectives from the prosecutor's office, as well as FBI agents and SEC investigators, are trying to unravel the complex web of stock deals the two were involved in, said prosecutor Robert Honecker. One theory they are checking is that the men were killed by ``somebody who did not like the fact that they may have lost money' doing business with them, Honecker said. County authorities also said they are investigating possible organized-crime links to the slayings. The Securities and Exchange Commission last year charged Lehmann and other defendants with distributing false information about companies after Electro Optical System Corp. stock rose from 50 cents to more than $5 per share in one day. Investors eventually lost at least $10 million in that scheme, authorities have said. Lehmann agreed in January to pay $630,000 in penalties. Between 1994 and 1996, Chalem worked at the brokerage A.S. Goldmen and Co., which was indicted in July in New York on charges connected with stock manipulation, forgery and illegal trading. The firm has denied the accusations, and Chalem was not named in those charges. People involved in the continuing investigation of Goldmen said Chalem had provided information in the case, the Times reported.