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Non-Tech : The Critical Investing Workshop -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dealer who wrote (10582)	4/3/2000 1:36:00 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 35685

Monday - 12:52 04/03/2000, EST Investors Race to Buy 'Fried Air' AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch investors scrambled to buy shares in fictitious firm F/Rite Air (pronounced ``Fried Air'), sending more than $6.5 million in orders to an investment Web site before discovering it was an April Fools prank. The InfoExchanges Web site at www.iex.nl was bombarded with hundreds of e-mails on Saturday after posting an item about California-based F/Rite Air, billed as having developed an ``air ioniser' that might take the place of anti-depressant drug Prozac and that was being tested by the U.S. Air Force. ``I thought investors would have become wiser after World Online (WDON.AS) and Via.Networks (VNWI.AS),' Web site co-founder Raymond Spanjar told daily Algemeen Dagblad on Monday, referring to two Dutch-listed shares that have skidded since flotation. InfoExchanges, which had said it had one million shares set aside for an upcoming F/Rite Air listing, eventually took pity on frenzied punters and owned up to the prank. In a note on Sunday it said the IPO would not take place because ``the company does not exist'. Spanjar had already counted more than 15 million guilders ($6.49 million) in orders before giving up. He reckoned that the total might be around 30 million guilders. Not one of those responding to the ``offer' had requested a prospectus.