Te only TRUE "DD" on CDDDE: "Here is what I saw at the [CDDDE] show: 1. There was no explaination of how the different layers are read, what I understand is that the laser hits the refractive material and give off a optical response that is picked up by a sensor. I do not understand how the laser
is able to skim down to the lower layers without hitting the above layers and giving a response. After all this is the
whole basis of the technology. Its still 1 and 0 marked by imprints picked up by normal CD like devices. The
mechanism to be able to shoot a laser predictably at specific levels of a sandwhiched layer of opticaly clear, but
market with florecence signatures...........um well it does not sound like a cheap device even if it is able to be made.
What I was thinking was that each layer would have a different florecent signature on each layer, but nothing like
that was presented.
2. The card reader will need something within it to change the lasers position in order to hit the various spot, this is
not addressed at all, this makes most of the card reader look like a non-product. In the demo the showed the
image of the 1 and 0s then translated into a paragraph of text. Anything with the data capabilites the card should be
showing at a minimum a large JPG file.
3. Does the technolgy work, of course, on a simple level, you can mark digital information and read it with
whatever manner you want, is what we saw real, no I don't think so. Clearly real people may be working on the
physics, but the demo today was bullshit.
4. Within the card readers were some cute lighted bars that had nothing to do with anything, except to give the
appearance of laser refractions. This gave it the look and feel of the mirrored laser scaners in the supermarket.
5. The video deni has ultra low production qualites, and the information provided was silly.
6. The guy running the music demo (which should have been animation at the very least, the music could have
simply been .wav files or mp3 files played directly from the computer) keep on moving the mouse around as if he
was doing something, he was not, but he kept on nervously moving the mouse and talking to the big fat guy next to
him. When he was ask to change the trace and he clicked to do it amazingly the sound did not change.
7. The guy that asked him about if off the shelf lasers diodes could be used, was given a strange answer. The
question was to how many milliwatts lasers would be used. He was answered with we will use a 1 watt laser. I am
no expert but I believe a 1 watt laser is very powerful, like powerful enought to melt the plastic casing of the CD
media. Not sure though.
8. The control device for the how Audio portion was a Radio Shack mixer. Sure it could change the volume, or
select between different imputs, but how it could actualy change the way the laser read is beyond me.
9. The audience was stacked with insiders from the company. The questions were terrible, and showed a real lack
of serious people, perhaps the other showing had more people.
10. Now this is the funniest one, and you had to be really perceptive to catch it. I was rolling with a straight face on
this one. The main CEO guy at the beginning had the Freudian slip of the year. He said. "We are
corrupt..COOPERATING with many blah blah blah. It was like a confession, i was rolling. Sure give it to him as
an english as a second language guy...LOL
anywayz send me a reply with what you think............
====================================
Wednesday Nov 3 1999
HOWE ST. GRADUATE BIG ON THE BULLETIN BOARD
by Brent Mudry
While C3D Inc. is anxious to dispel media linkage to two stock promoters shot to death in an execution-type hit a
week ago in a New Jersey mansion, the highflying and not-yet-reporting OTC Bulletin Board company traces
directly back to Vancouver. C3D legal director Michael Goldberg points out that Vancouverites must be tired of
their city's stock-world reputation, earned by the Vancouver Stock Exchange, the exchange formerly known as the
Scam Capital of the World, and he suggests that C3D may be the big winner to recover the city's image. "Hey
guess what, Vancouver did a good one," Mr. Goldberg told Stockwatch on Wednesday, en-route home to Florida
after a busy day on Wall Street.
Mr. Goldberg disputes any link between C3D and Internet stock promoters Maier Lehman, a former broker with
alleged bucket shop A.S. Goldmen, and his partner Albert Chalem, murdered Oct. 25. The double-homicide has
been a major news event, and the New York Times reported on Saturday that C3D shorts, who told investigators
that Mr. Chalem was helping them, feared that he and Mr. Lehman had been killed as a result.
"We have never retained any promoters ... we have no idea who they are ... they were not stockholders, and
coming from a former prosecutor, I've dealt with the media a lot," says Mr. Goldberg. The C3D official, now 50,
notes he served as a homicide prosecutor in Philadelphia before an internship stint with the U.S. Attorney's office in
Washington.
"I didn't even know about this so-called murky world of penny stocks" before the Times article, says Mr.
Goldberg. The lawyer suggests that "the unfortunate circumstance of our stock symbol probably ending up on a
piece of paper in someone's office" may be all there is to the media speculation. He points out that C3D is a real
company with more than 60 employees, of which 40 are senior scientists, all with PhD's and at least half of them
are double-PhD's. "It is unfair for anyone who thinks this is a bullshit company, excuse my French," Mr. Goldberg
told a Canadian reporter.
Both Mr. Goldberg and John Swanson, a New York publicity agent retained by C3D, are quick to point out that
C3D's "revolutionary" optical data storage technologies were vindicated in their debut Oct. 4 at a press conference
in Israel. Both men point out that a Reuters reporter legitimized the company and gave it mainstream credibility in a
favourable report. (In an unrelated deal several years ago, now-banned Vancouver promoter Terry Alexander
gave an exclusive entree to his mystery Saudi Arabian sheik to a Reuters reporter just as his Arakis Energy
promotion was about to collapse.)
Mr. Goldberg says that all his fine scientists are very upset that their company has been associated with murky
penny-stock dealings. "I wish I had some dirt to give you, but I can't," says the former homicide prosecutor.
While Mr. Goldberg knows of no dirt, he is more than happy to credit Phil Garratt and Clair Calvert, both of
Vancouver, with much of C3D's success so far. "I have only nice things to say about these guys ... I hope they can
make a lot of money on this deal," says Mr. Goldberg.
Although C3D has made no detailed regulatory filings yet, its stock has been a stellar performer on the bulletin
board in recent months. The thinly-traded issue began trading in late April at less than $3 (U.S.) a share and
peaked at $25.88 (U.S.) on Oct. 18. The stock has become quite volatile in recent weeks, falling 30 per cent to
bottom out at $17.50 (U.S.) in a six-day stretch ending Oct. 26, then bouncing back to $23 (U.S.) two days later.
The stock closed Wednesday at $18.69 (U.S.), recovering from a fall to $16.06 (U.S.) in the wake of
unfavourable media coverage.
While Mr. Garratt and Mr. Calvert may not be household names on Wall Street, they are certainly well known on
Howe Street, the centre of dealings on the VSE. Both Mr. Garratt, a controversial stock promoter from Australia,
and Mr. Calvert, who left the brokerage industry three years ago, are perhaps best known in Vancouver for
Mr.Garratt's Cycomm International, previously known as Sonatel Communications. The Cycomm file is particularly
well-known by investigators with the Ontario and British Columbia securities commissions, who delved deeply into
Mr. Garratt's dealings.
In one of the highest-profile regulatory scandals in Vancouver in decades, British Columbia's finance minister called
an inquiry in August of 1994 into the B.C. Securities Commission's controversial approval of an $8.75-million
Cycomm financing prospectus. (The biggest mutual fund buyer in the Cycomm financing was Altamira Investments
of Toronto, which subsequently had the misfortune of watching its star fund manager Frank Mersch get suspended
and fined for lying to regulators about his secret personal trading in shares of another Vancouver promotion, Robert
Friedland's Diamond Fields Resources.)
In the affair, dubbed Holley's Folly, then-B.C. Superintendent of Brokers Dean Holley receipted prospectuses for
both Cycomm and Cam-Net Communications Network, overruling the well-evidenced objections of his
investigators, his senior staff and himself. After some spirited behind-the-scenes negotiations with Cycomm's
lawyers, Mr. Holley flip-flopped and gave his thumbs-up, on the condition that Mr. Garratt be forced to step down
as president. (In a flavour-of-Vancouver coincidence, a C3D shell founder resides in the same luxury waterfront
condo tower that a former Cam-Net chief executive, a fugitive from the FBI, is holed up in.)
Lloyd McKenzie, the former supreme court judge selected for the 15-month Cycomm inquiry, did a masterful job
in his final report by missing his mandate, dismissing extensive evidence, exonerating the BCSC and attacking stock
market whistle-blower Adrian du Plessis, who resigned as a BCSC investigator over the commission's questionable
handling of the file. Mr. du Plessis has since retired from his dirty-stock-sleuth career after winning a National
Newspaper Award in Canada for breaking the story of YBM Magnex International, the Russian money-laundering
play which featured reputed mobster Semion Mogilevitch, a player in the Bank of New York money-laundering
scandal.
"The mountain of evidence speaks for itself," the unrepentant Cycomm investigator told a reporter after Mr.
McKenzie released his report. Public investors and several of Canada's top mutual funds lost millions of dollars on
Cycomm shares soon after the BCSC's controversial approval. The shares, priced at $3.50 in the financing, fell to
$1 six months later.
If C3D proves to be a great tech-stock success story, it will mark a significant vindication for Mr. Garratt after his
Cycomm/Sonatel career of ropeless, floatless, self-propelled crab traps and assorted non-existent electronic
devices. Vancouver Sun reporter David Baines noted that Mr. Garratt told Sonatel shareholders in 1987 that the
company was on the verge of "revolutionizing" the fishing industry with an automatic fishing device.
The next year, Mr. Garratt shifted his promotional pitch to touting the PL 2000, a revolutionary device to convert
party lines into single phone lines. Once again, "the actual revenues were zero," Mr. Baines reported.
With two flops in hand, the indefatigable promoter turned his talents to pitching the Ad-Zapper and the
Ad-Swapper, two more devices allegedly invented by fraudster Dieter Blum, the creater of the PL 2000. The
zappers and swappers purportedly allowed hotels to replace television commercials with their own advertising
content. Although Cycomm shares ran to $8.25 in 1998, once again, product revenues were negligible to nil.
In a particularly unfortunate development for Mr. Garratt, his much-vaunted scientist Mr. Blum was later exposed
as a fraud. The pseudo-scientist claimed to have degrees from the University of Basel in Switzerland and Roosevelt
University in Belgium. In reality, Mr. Blum was a high-school dropout with a lengthy criminal record for
fraud-related offences, and he was serving time behind bars in a B.C. prison during his purported European
academic career.
Mr. Calvert was a key broker for Mr. Garrett during this period. In trading investigated by the OSC and later
reviewed by the BCSC, Mr. Garratt accounted for 95 per cent of the total Sonatel trading volume one month. The
Sun reported that most of Mr. Garratt's stock was acquired by T.C. Coombs, which redistributed it to its clients.
Mr. Calvert, a broker at Continental Securities, later merged into Yorkton Securities, handled both sides of Mr.
Garratt's trades. T.C. Coombs later had the misfortune of being shut down by London regulators.
In one of the more intriguing twists in the Cycomm affair, shares of Cycomm and Rare Earth Resources, an affiliate,
were purchased through P.O. Box 423 in Geneva Airport, the same post box used as a conduit for shares in Asil
Nadir's Polly Peck scandal. Although the Serious Fraud Office of Britain mounted a major investigation into Polly
Peck, Mr. Nadir skipped off to Cyprus where he remains beyond the reach of British regulators.
With Mr. Garratt's Cycomm affair in the past, he and Mr. Calvert now emerge as the main players behind C3D,
forming the shell and handling most of the public-float shares. C3D's Mr. Goldberg, the former homicide
prosecutor, is not shy of giving credit to the pair. "We bought a shell from a Miami securities law firm ... it had a
clean history, which is why we chose it," says Mr. Goldberg. The C3D executive notes that Mr. Calvert set up the
shell, and he thinks Mr. Garratt came on board after. Mr. Goldberg is particularly impressed with Mr. Garratt. "I've
found him to be an honourable guy," he says.
Mr. Goldberg notes that Mr. Garratt and Mr. Calvert raised $3-million (U.S.) for this clean shell. He also confirms
that while C3D has about 14 million shares outstanding, the public float is a little less than three million shares, and
the Garratt group accounted for virtually all of this. The other 11 million shares are restricted shares, for the vend-in
of the technology. "None of us guys have any free-trading stock," Mr. Goldberg points out.
While Mr. Goldberg says that Mr. Garratt and Mr. Calvert have been "nothing but gentlemen," he points out that
C3D retained outside counsel to do extensive due diligence on the deal and the players. "Vancouver deals do not
always have the best reputations ... we have very able counsel from a very large and prestigious firm, and they
pretty much checked it out from asshole to elbow," says Mr. Goldberg. It is not clear if the busy lawyers bothered
checking any media clippings on Mr. Garratt and Cycomm.
(c) Copyright 1999 Canjex Publishing Ltd.
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