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Technology Stocks : Preference Technologies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: afrayem onigwecher who wrote (189)	6/12/2000 6:51:00 PM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 460

The company is trying to find $10 million to keep going, but it is having trouble, a source said. The company has historically financed its operations to date through the sale of its common stock. From its inception through Dec. 31, it issued more than 26 million shares of common stock, raising $2.9 million, according to the statement.

To: afrayem onigwecher who wrote (189)	6/12/2000 6:55:00 PM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 460

A tangled web Calderone's Las Vegas-based financial public relations firm, Marketing Direct Concepts, merged with Courtleigh Capital in February 1999 to create Stockup.com. The roots of Courtleigh Capital, which also went through a series of name changes, was built by Edward Williamson, who once pleaded guilty to wire fraud after attempting to bribe undercover FBI agents posing as stock brokers in an attempt to persuade them to peddle selected stocks. Williamson incorporated his company as ANCR Inc. in Colorado in 1985. Two years later, he changed the name to CEA Labs Inc. In 1995, the company was reincorporated in Kansas, followed by another name change two years later to Courtleigh Capital. Calderone claims he has no relationship with Williamson, and that when MDC merged with Courtleigh Capital, it was the "shell" of a dormant company. Taking that route, he said, was a speedy way to go public because Courtleigh had already been trading on the Over-the-Counter exchange. Williamson told the Business Press he was involved with Calderone about 18 months ago when he helped Courtleigh Capital merge with MDC. But even before that, Calderone found himself in the middle of a questionable stock promotion scheme while running Marketing Direct Concepts. The Wall Street Journal mentioned Calderone's financial public relations firm in a Sept. 8, 1998 story on stock scams. The story detailed how shares in Oshman's Sporting Goods jumped 17 percent in one day in July 1998 from a pair of "bullish research reports" and "the buzz about the company on the Net." "But what wasn't immediately apparent," the article continued, "was that one of the analyst reports was paid for by Marketing Direct Concepts, a Las Vegas firm with a stake in Oshman's valued at more than $100,000 at the time. "The firm paid a public relations wire service to distribute both the analyst reports.... Oshman's says it has no affiliation with Marketing Direct Concepts. Calderone... says he doesn't see anything wrong with the arrangement." When the Business Press asked Calderone to comment, he said the MDC relationship was "fully disclosed. We liked the company and took a position in the company because we saw it as an emerging company. There was no conflict of interest." Before Williamson pleaded guilty to wire fraud, he had launched another stock promotion company called Williamson & Associates. After his arrest in January 1997, he changed the company name to Fifth Avenue Communications based in New York. A column on the Web site of the cable news channel MSNBC reported that Fifth Avenue later issued a press release saying the business was being sold by its "otherwise unidentified owner" CEA Labs (a company owned by Williamson) to a penny stock outfit called Auburn Equities. Two years later, Williamson was still listed as the billing contact for Fifth Avenue Communications' Web site and the company continued to issue promotional material, including releases pushing Stockup.com. MSNBC reported that on May 4, Fifth Avenue issued a Stockup.com news release. Soon after, its stock rose from $3.50 a share to nearly $40. "The Fifth Avenue Communications Web site has itself recommending Stockup.com for purchase as recently as June 17, (1999)," MSNBC reported. The news release has since been erased from the Web site. Preference Technologies' Calderone said that he has never met Williamson. "That's (Williamson's) prerogative if he wants to promote us," he said. "We sent him a letter telling him to disclose that he has no relationship with our company." Williamson said Fifth Avenue is a financial public relations firm, and companies pay to be posted on its Web site. "We had them on our site because they were going to hire us, but Stockup.com was taken off the site when they decided to go with another company to promote them," Williamson said. Stockup.com's stock rose and fell sharply during that time, even though it didn't offer any products for sale until its news conference in February, when it announced it was changing its name to Preference Technologies and released the Global Information Gateway. During a February interview with the Business Press, Calderone boasted that the company's Web site had been ranked among the top 500 visited sites, according to Media Metrix, an Internet rating service. He said that was because of alliances the company had established with other popular sites that channel Web traffic to Stockup.com.