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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Amazon Natural (AZNT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Janice Shell who wrote (24745)	2/24/2000 4:11:00 AM
From: EL KABONG!!!	Respond to of 26163

Another press release... lasvegassun.com February 14, 2000 Tiny LV company sues big stock chat sites LAS VEGAS SUN A Las Vegas health care products company claims it's the victim of a nationwide cyberspace smear campaign conducted by two prominent Internet stock chat sites and others. Amazon Natural Treasures Inc., a 25-employee outfit that makes health care products with ingredients from the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, filed a federal lawsuit last week in Las Vegas against five message-board users, another 113 unnamed posters, 20 unnamed companies it identified as "black corporations" and stock chat websites Silicon Investor Inc. and Raging Bull Inc., where the posts about Amazon Natural are being made. Suits against message-board operators are rare. Silicon Investor told the Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition this is the first time it has been sued. The defendants told the Journal's Interactive Edition they are not responsible for Amazon Natural Treasure's problems and don't review the posts in any way before they are made. Amazon Natural said in the suit it believes the defendants are being paid by short sellers, in cash or securities, to post false and defamatory messages about Amazon Natural on the Internet and receive bonuses for deliberately driving down the price of the company's common stock. Short sellers borrow stock in hopes of profiting when the stock price drops. They can then buy the stock at the lower price to repay the loan. The suit said the defendants operate their cybersmear campaign on a targeted company until a desired target price is reached and then move on like a "wolf pack" to the next victim. The suit said that once the short sellers and other fraudulent parties succeed in making their profits, the next step is to try to destroy the market for that stock and to create a "terminal short" by driving the company out of business. The suit alleged Amazon lost about $75 million in revenues as a result of the defendants' short selling, which it said drove down the trading price of Amazon's stock by about 95 percent to 12 cents a share from a 52-week high of $3.56 a share on April 8, 1997. The defendants drove down the company's stock price by "bashing" or publishing defamatory statements about the company to alienate potential investors and encourage shareholders to dispose of their shares, the suit said. The company has about 800 shareholders. Amazon alleged the defendants not only harrassed potential buyers of Amazon's common stock but also interfered with sales of its flagship product, a sugar substitute called Nature's Taste, by publishing defamatory statements that suggest Amazon was engaged in "illegitimate, dishonest and criminal business operations." The statements include claims Amazon is being run by "criminals" and the company is operating a "scam," the suit said. In press releases, the company predicted that Nature's Taste sales were expected to reach $50 million in 1998 and would contribute to overall sales of $75 million in 1998, $125 million in 1999 and $250 million in 2000, the Journal Interactive Edition reported. But sales have fallen short of such predictions, and Amazon attributes this to the war it has been waging against short sellers soon after it went public in 1996. The individual posters named in the suit are Janice Shell, D. Tod Pauly, Jeffrey Mitchell, Cynthia Demonte and Dean Dumonte. The suit said Shell, a resident of Milan, Italy; and Mitchell, of Westport, Conn., allegedly made false and defamatory claims on the Internet by accusing Amazon Natural of committing fraud on the Business Wire news release distribution service. Mitchell and Dean Dumonte, a Milford, N.H., are accused of putting messages on the Internet saying Amazon's Nature's Taste product was "poisonous," that there are no retailers for Amazon Natural Treasure's product line and the retailers they contacted from information procured on the company's website have never heard of the company. KJC