LOLOL I watch "Boiler Room" then I check my email, and here's the first thing I find...sheesh!!!
Save the World, is gonna be doing it's "saving" from the pinks forever......if lucky.
SEC halts Save the World, publicist defends promotion
Thursday Jul 20 2000
by Brent Mudry
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has suspended trading in
shares of Save The World Air Inc., more than three weeks after The New York
Times panned the Australian-based OTC Bulletin Board promotion and poked
fun at the company's claims of saving the world with a "zero-pollution fuel-saving
device."
The SEC imposed a 10-day trading halt on Thursday against Save The World
Air, which claims its gas-saving gizmo cuts carbon monoxide emissions from cars
by 97 per cent and decreases full consumption by as much as 43 per cent.
Save The World Air shares fell 31 cents to $4.88 on Wednesday. (All figures are
in U.S. dollars.) The stock soared from the 15-cent level in mid-December to a
peak of $14 on July 7.
The SEC states it halted the stock amid "questions that have been raised about the
accuracy and adequacy of publicly disseminated information concerning, among
other things, the results of demonstration tests of STW Air's Zero Emissions Fuel
Saver device and STW Air's purported relationship with the Ford Motor Co."
While the SEC may have its concerns, Save the World's Los Angeles-based
spokesman, Roger Neal, an 18-year veteran entertainment and business publicist,
is sure that everything about the company, including its management, its technology
and its business, is "real." "I've seen it work," Mr. Neal told Stockwatch.
"This is definitely not another scam on the bulletin board," says Mr. Neal.
The SEC-imposed halt marks an untimely interruption to the aggressive promotion
of Save The World Air, which includes a purported endorsement from Hollywood
karate star and "environmentalist" Steven Seagal, supposedly successful
demonstrations at car dealerships in Los Angeles and New York, a broad
television campaign and a bullishly-edited reprint of an unflattering New York
Times story.
Last Friday, the company's Los Angeles-based publicist, whose wife runs Inside
Hollywood Tours out of the same office, claimed CNNFN's Business Unusual
show was overwhelmed with the hot-air story. "This story is too significant to give
only two minutes on our show. We want to devote almost an entire show to it,"
Mr. Neal claims a Business Unusual staffer told him.
Save the World's impressive stock market rise to a peak capitalization of
$252-million has made the company's president, Jeffrey Muller, and his wife,
Lynette Muller, quite rich, at least on paper.
At Dec. 31, the company had 18,010,000 shares outstanding. The Mullers paid
$1,800 for 18 million shares on Feb. 20, 1996. It is unclear now many of these
shares are now free-trading. In the company's only other private placement, it sold
10,000 shares at $10 each in early 1998 in a financing under Rule 504 of
Regulation D.
At Dec. 31, Mr. Muller and his wife each had beneficial ownership of seven
million shares, for a total of 14 million shares. It is unclear what happened to the
other four million shares they held earlier.
Save The World's flagship asset is its fuel saver, a device said to run exclusively
on forced air. The company bought 70 per cent of the rights to the device in 1997
from Mr. Muller's brother, Terence Muller, its owner.
While the works of obscure Texas artist Sky Jones were featured assets of a
number of controversial bulletin-board promotions, including Terry Neal's Itex
Corp., Canaccord Capital's Sky Scientific rig job, and Beverlee Kamerling's
International Indigo, Mr. Jones cannot hold a candle to the fame of Pro Hart.
Save the World credits Mr. Hart, described as an "internationally acclaimed artist
living Down Under," with inventing its revolutionary forced-air gizmo.
In case it takes a while for the gizmo to catch on, Save the World hopes to save
the world with its other feature asset, the "Kiri Super Tree." The company claims
its president Mr. Muller "developed the exclusive intellectual property naming
rights to the tissue culture and cloning technology known as the Kiri Super Tree."
This amazing arboreal mutant is said to grow an inch a day in the growing season,
reaching 35 feet in its first year and 60 to 80 feet in three to five years. Not only
that, when you chop it down, it pops right back up again. "The Kiri Super Tree
has the ability to regenerate from exactly the same stump, eliminating the need for
replanting," claims Save the World.
Save the World's fuel-saver promotion caught the eye of skeptical New York
Times reporter Gretchen Morgenson, who wrote a piece on June 25, calling the
company "one of the latest balloonists" on the hot-air-driven bulletin board of
obscure stocks.
"Stockbrokers all over the country are paying attention to this and it's something
that could really revolutionize the car industry ... Word is getting around. There's a
lot of buzz to it," Mr. Neal told the New York Times. The stock was then trading
at $5.
A few days later, Save the World issued a press release reprinting bits of the
article to make it look like a positive endorsement, cutting out Ms. Morgenson's
skeptical and negative comments. "But other aspects of the company may not
pass the, ahem, smell test," stated one purged comment.
Partly boosted by the favourable twist on the unfavourable article, the stock kept
rising, peaking at $14 a week and a half later. Last Tuesday, apparently at the
request of the newspaper, Save the World issued a new press release, reprinting
the full article, warts and all.
While Save the World may not have passed the sniff test of Ms. Morgenson, it
tickled the nose of Rocco del Priore, the service director of a Manhattan General
Motors dealership, where Save the World demonstrated its device on July 11.
"I smell emissions all day working in the shop; I went to the back of the
automobile and sniffed the exhaust and was very surprised that I did not become
dizzy," he stated in a Save the World press release.
Mr. Neal, who says he was paid 10,000 shares and no cash to publicize the Save
the World story, remains as upbeat as ever on the company. "I know that it's real,
it's not a scam at all," he told a reporter.
(c) Copyright 2000 Canjex Publishing Ltd. canada-stockwatch.com |
