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To: Frank_Ching who wrote (5674)	11/11/1999 11:07:00 PM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 10354

Old scams, new twists as investors take to the Internet by Ted Jackovics Knight Ridder Newspapers By day, he's Jeffrey Mitchell, president of an insurance software company in the tiny New York suburb of Westport, Conn. By night, he's Jeffrey Mitchell, cybervigilante. That's night as in FBN (Fly By Night) Associates, a grass-roots assemblage of two dozen brokers, ex-brokers, and even a writer and art historian. Only a few have met in person. But they gather daily on a popular investors' Web site - the Silicon Investor - to examine stock offerings they think are suspicious. Cybervigilantes make up a small slice of a growing movement to scrutinize investment information on the Internet. These cybersleuths talk about anything from the experience of a company's executives to whether they think someone promoting a stock is telling the truth or getting paid to tout it. Other sources take a more structured approach, including stockdetective.com, produced by a Florida financial information services company with pithy features like "Stinky Stocks" and the "Red Light District." And at the far end of the cybersleuthing spectrum is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's new and expanding Internet Enforcement Division. But the SEC sometimes moves at the speed of a glacier, Mitchell said, because of the legal process that binds its operations. The SEC has filed more than 80 charges since 1996, although it gets 100 to 300 Internet trading complaints a day. That gives cybervigilantes plenty to do. The high volume of Internet information and transactions provides them with numerous opportunities to ply their unpaid, unconventional roles. Their posts appear to be drawing broader notice, including some that claim cybervigilantes bash companies and then profit by selling short - a bet that the price of a stock will decline. Mitchell and two others also are being sued by Business Wire after creating a press release about a new company purporting to sell pieces of the Internet - which is in the public domain and not for sale. He said it was the latest in a series of annual April Fool's hoaxes to show how easily some investors can be buffaloed. FBN collected no money through the gag, but they received more than 1,700 inquiries asking how to invest up to $100,000. "We are not afraid to speak out and call attention to scams," Mitchell said. "It's amazing people are so gullible. They think if it's posted (on the Internet) it must be OK, even though they don't know who they are dealing with." The cybervigilantes share a trait common to many who post information on the Internet: a zeal to protect their identities. Nearly all of them write comments under anonymous computer sign-ons rather than their real names. The cybervigilantes often have been "flamed" at Silicon Investor's no-holds-barred chat area referred to as "The Death Threat Thread." They attribute the acrimony to shareholders whose stocks have lost ground after cybervigilante challenges. The cybervigilantes' impact is difficult to document, and the SEC does not reveal what prompts its investigations. But the agency suspended six over-the-counter bulletin board stocks on Jan. 29, four days after a Nevada cybervigilante, who refers to himself online as Steve Pluvia, drew attention to four of them on Silicon Investor. Pluvia noted the price of the stock of one of the companies, Citron, had soared in less than a month and found similarities in the name of a person involved in two of the companies, deepening his curiosity. The SEC ordered a 10-day suspension of trading of Citron, which the SEC identified as a Denver-based Internet marketing company. The SEC noted questions raised about the "adequacy and accuracy of publicly disseminated information," including business prospects and future earnings. Citron issued a statement Jan. 29 that allegations appear to be derived from Pluvia, acting as a catalyst for short-selling. Another FBN Associates intervention that preceded an SEC stock suspension began with posts last summer about a mining company called Mountain Energy. Janice Shell, a resident of Italy who is a co-defendant with Mitchell in the Business Wire lawsuit, called attention on Silicon Investor to the mining company's operation. The mining company's stock plunged to a fraction of its price and the SEC suspended trading. The company could not be reached for comment. The Bloomberg wire services show both Citron and Mountain Energy resumed trading after their suspensions. The SEC won't reveal whether any company whose trading has been suspended is under investigation, spokesman John Heine said. A company can resume trading if the SEC believes the company meets the points raised in the SEC suspension. "We take tips from anyone," Heine said, without disclosing how effective any particular source might be. "People who lost money on the stock hated us," Mitchell said. "But we got respect, too." Fly By Night Associates began a little more than two years ago when some fellow computer programmers saw companies claiming fully automated Y2K solutions. "We thought they were ridiculous, but instead of calling them frauds or scams we started to joke about it," Mitchell said. "That led to using humor and parody to express a point." These days Mitchell, married and the father of two children, works out of his home. He's most active online between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m., after a Yankees game and before getting five hours of sleep. During the day, he might put in another two hours on Silicon Investor, which became so popular its founders sold it for $35 million last year to a company in which Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen now has a heavy stake. "I don't make any money off it," Mitchell said. "I'm considering what would interest me. It's sort of like detective work. But instead of reading a book with the answer on Page 250, I'm doing it in real life." FBN Associates is doing something quite clever, serving the public good by using parody as a teaching device, said Kevin Lichtman, a former stockbroker who is president of FinancialWeb.com, the company that operates stockdetective.com and other sites. "People just don't know what they don't know about investing," Lichtman contends, recalling how he recently flew into Orlando next to a woman who said she'd made $7,000 on that "Amazonthingee." The need for investors to take responsibility also is at the core of the SEC's activities, even while it is stepping up enforcement efforts with plans to double its Internet force of 125 attorneys, accountants and analysts set up in October. "I encourage investors to take what they see over chat rooms not with a grain of salt, but with a rock of salt," SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt said earlier this month. Mitchell agrees. "Our little comedy troupe ended up becoming a cybervigilante group, not by design, but it's evolved that way. We've just gotten emboldened to do it more aggressively." 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To: Frank_Ching who wrote (5674)	11/11/1999 11:15:00 PM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 10354

Dog LOSER, get over the bitterness as I have suggested, it will consume you throughout the few remaining years of your old age. You have been PUMPED, DUMPED and HUMPED as a ZSUNE CHUMP. It is unfortunate that you had to lose so badly, but not all was lost, your incredibly stupid investment choices serve as a shining example to others to not be such dorky dolts. WATCH OUT NEWBIES, these conning, lying, thieving rubes are trying to get more CHUMPS into this stock to bail them out of their massive losses.

To: Frank_Ching who wrote (5674)	11/11/1999 11:23:00 PM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 10354

who use Web names such as Bear Down, Floydie and Tastes Like Chicken, A Cybersleuth Claims Credit for SEC Action on Bulletin-Board Stocks By Eric Moskowitz Senior Writer 2/5/99 3:00 PM ET With the explosive growth of online trading, a nether world is evolving in which individual investors, cybervigilantes and Internet gurus meet in online stock chat rooms. Like bit players in a John Ford movie, these colorful characters populate the Wild West of Wall Street. See also Trading Suspensions Growing More Common WWW Internet Fund Finds Net Stocks Can Turn South Quickly With individual investors taking an increasingly prominent role in this bull market, these online main streets -- full of gossip, opinion, invective, hype and sometimes hard news -- can exert hefty pressure on stocks. And taking center stage are the Silicon Investor chat boards. The cybersleuths here, often dismissed as kooks or crooks, recently received some vindication from regulators. Last Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission suspended trading for 10 days on six over-the-counter bulletin board stocks after they suddenly rocketed even without any material news. The impetus to halt trading came from Steve Pluvia (not his real last name), a well-known poster on Silicon Investor who has seen his fair share of controversy. On Jan. 25, a full week before the SEC halted trading in four of the stocks, Pluvia started a thread titled "One Big Scam? CTRN, ECTS, IVHD, SMEK and MALB." The stocks subsequently halted by the SEC included Citron (CTRN:OTC BB), Smartek (SMEK:OTC BB), Electronic Transfer Associates (ECTS:OTC BB) and Invest Holdings Group (IVHD:OTC BB). Pluvia and his cyberassociates, who use Web names such as Bear Down, Floydie and Tastes Like Chicken, represent a new breed of sleuth/investor in search of instant gratification. Perhaps this breed owes its existence to the rampant bull market and evolving computer technology. Ever since Silicon Investor -- now owned by Go2Net (GNET:Nasdaq) -- started more than three years ago, Pluvia has used the chat boards to communicate his findings as he tracks small-cap companies that fall beneath Wall Street's radar.

To: Frank_Ching who wrote (5674)	11/11/1999 11:23:00 PM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 10354

SEC hands down six trading suspensions in one day, a new record. By Peter Ramjug WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Federal securities regulators Friday suspended trading in six public companies, believed to be the largest number of suspensions handed down in a single day in recent memory. The Securities and Exchange Commission said questions had been raised about the accuracy of public information released by the six, which were all traded on the National Association of Securities Dealers' Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board. They were Invest Holdings Group Inc. , Polus Inc. , Electronic Transfer Associates Inc. , Smartek Inc. , Citron Inc. and USA Talks.com Inc. . All of the trading suspensions were scheduled to last through Feb. 11, the SEC said. SEC spokesman John Heine said the total was believed to be the largest number the Wall Street regulatory agency had ruled on in one day in recent times. As is the commission's custom, he declined comment on whether the SEC was investigating any of them. The regulator said it suspended trading in Invest, which claims to develop and sell health care products, because of information concerning the efficacy of its products and its business relationship with Internet marketing company Citron. Invest did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment. A Citron spokesman, William Hazelton, said the company was meeting with its attorneys and would issue a formal statement later. When asked why Citron's press releases carried the same phone number as three other suspended companies -- Smartek, Electronic Transfer Associates and Polus -- Hazelton said the number was "for information on the release but it's not the phone number for the company." Meanwhile, Smartek, a home rebuilder and wholesale clothier, allegedly lacked "meaningful," publicly available financial information, the SEC said. There had also been questions about information regarding a merger, it added. USA Talks.com, a La Jolla, Calif., company offering a flat rate "all you can talk" long distance service, was suspended because of claims it had made about the status and extent of the company's business operations. Telephone calls to Smartek and USA Talks.com were not immediately returned. As Bulletin Board companies, the six were not required to file official documents with the SEC, which regulates the securities markets. But the commission recently approved a rule that would offer investors better information about stocks traded on the Bulletin Board. The rule, proposed by NASD, a self-regulatory group, permits only those companies that report their current financial information to the SEC to be quoted on the board. NASD's electronic OTC Bulletin Board is a quotation service that displays real-time quotes, last-sale prices and volume information on about 6,600 OTC securities which are not listed or traded on a national securities exchange. About half of them do not file financial statements with their regulators, NASD said. Under the new rule, market makers who deal in the OTC market would not be allowed to quote securities traded on the Bulletin Board unless the company filed periodic reports with the SEC or its exchange regulator. The new rule was to be phased in over a 12-month period starting in July. By June 2000 the rule was to apply to all companies on the Bulletin Board. 17:36 01-29-99