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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony @ Equity Investigations, Dear Anthony, -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: UnBelievable who wrote (54581)	4/14/2000 5:31:00 PM
From: StockDung	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 122087

Meyers Pollock, ex-president indicted in stock scheme NEW YORK (Reuters) - Meyers Pollock and Robbins, a defunct New York brokerage allegedly involved with organized crime figures in a scheme to manipulate stock prices, and its former president have been indicted on securities fraud charges, federal prosecutors said on Friday. The indictment of the firm, its former president Michael Ploshnick and 11 of its stockbrokers was unsealed in Manhattan federal court. The charges grow out of a 1997 indictment against 20 defendants including high-level members and associates of the Genovese Organized Crime Family and the Bonanno Organized Crime family in a scheme to manipulate the market price of certain securities including those issued by Mesa, Ariz.-based HealthTech, a health and fitness club operator. In November, Gordon Hall, who had been HealthTech's chairman, was sentenced to seven years and three months in prison for conspiring with organized crime members to pump up shares of the company's stock and defraud investors. He was also ordered to pay $3.8 million in restitution. Sixteen other defendants charged in the scheme previously pleaded guilty. Prosecutors charged that the crime families joined forces with unscrupulous stock promoters and HealthTech officers to infiltrate Meyers Pollock, then used bribes, threats and violence as part of a scheme to manipulate stock prices. The earlier indictment charged that the defendants began the scheme in 1996 to drive up HealthTech's stock price by duping investors. Prosecutors said investors in California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma, New York, Tennessee and West Virginia lost millions of dollars because of the conspiracy. The brokers at Meyers Pollock used high-pressure, boiler-room sales practices to induce customers to buy HealthTech securities and misled investors about the nature and quality of HealthTech and its securities, prosecutors alleged. The indictment unsealed on Friday alleges that in return for a bribe in the form of HealthTech warrants, Ploshnick allowed Meyers Pollock and its brokers to promote HealthTech securities to their customers. These stock brokers in turn received secret cash payments to induce the customers to buy HealthTech stock and later HealthTech warrants. The indictment also alleges that Meyers Pollock and Ploshnick charged excessive undisclosed mark-ups to customers in connection with the firm's sale of HealthTech warrants that it received at no cost. 16:58 04-14-00