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Microcap & Penny Stocks : TGL WHAAAAAAAT! Alerts, thoughts, discussion. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Bishop who wrote (66077)	10/4/2000 11:51:29 AM
From: Due Diligence	Respond to of 150070

Anyone see this? msnbc.com

To: Jim Bishop who wrote (66077)	10/4/2000 12:08:11 PM
From: CIMA	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 150070

When cocaine walks Wall Street Sharpe Capital suit reveals seamy side of securities industry OPINION By Christopher Byron MSNBC contributor Oct. 3 — One of Wall Street's darkest and ugliest secrets is the widespread use of drugs — in particular cocaine — among those who buy and sell stocks for a living in the high-pressure trading rooms of America's securities industry. Now, a lawsuit filed Sept. 27 in a New York court by a Nasdaq brokerage firm named Sharpe Capital Inc. has inadvertently brought the whole, ugly subject cascading into full public view. THE PICTURE NOW EMERGING in reaction to that suit reveals a company seemingly blinded to the corrupting culture of drugs and money enveloping the firm's most lucrative operation: that of trading stocks in Nasdaq-listed and unlisted securities. The company employs 316 people and makes markets in nearly 8,000 stocks, many of them Over The Counter and "pink sheet" securities. It has offices on Wall Street and in Boca Raton, Fla.; Jericho, N.Y.; Carmel, Ind.; and Tinton Falls, N.J. Sharpe generates roughly $100 million in gross revenues, with two-thirds of the business coming from its trading desk operations. So deeply immersed and comfortable did Sharpe Capital's trading room apparently become in this world of recreational drug use that no one at the firm seems to have raised even a peep of protest as cocaine and prostitution developed into a kind of secret currency that helped build the firm's trading desk into a major Wall Street force in the current bull market. The source of these astonishing revelations and charges? None other than the co-manager of Sharpe Capital's own trading desk operation on Wall Street throughout the entire period in question: Judy A. Payer. Repeated requests for comment from the company regarding Payer's charges proved fruitless. A request for comment from the company's co-owner, Larry Hoes, was directed by Hoes himself to the firm's outside counsel, attorney Greg Sichenzia. Two separate phone calls to Sichenzia seeking comment on allegations of criminal wrongdoing at Sharpe Capital were not returned. As reporting for the story progressed, a person named Keith Chambers, who identified himself as a vice president of technology for Sharpe Capital, called and asked what it was the firm was being asked to comment upon. When advised that a former top official at the firm was alleging specific criminal and civil wrongdoing by the company, Chambers promised to have one of the co-owners return the call for comment. No return calls were ever received. SUIT SEEKS $2.975 MILLION In the suit that has brought all this to light, Sharpe Capital is seeking to recover $2.975 million in allegedly excessive compensation to Payer and her husband — William F. Kirincich — who together founded and ran the firm's 55-person Over The Counter trading desk in the Wall Street office from 1995 until last week. The suit further alleges in a separate fraud claim against Payer that she overstated various securities held by the firm to boost her own compensation and conspired with a well-known New York investor, John Fiero, to hire away Sharpe's trading desk employees and open up a competing business. Yet the suit itself is far less interesting — and disturbing — than the counter-charges that Judy Payer has now begun firing off publicly in her own defense against Sharpe Capital and her now-estranged husband, William. TRADERS WITHOUT LICENSES Those salvos paint a picture of a fast — even chaotically — growing trading desk operation, awash in drug use from the top down, while management paid little if any attention to such basic questions as whether the desk's employees actually needed to be registered with, and licensed by, the National Association of Securities Dealers in order to conduct securities transactions with customers of the firm. Payer's charges gain credibility because she was, until last week — when the firm fired her and evicted her from Sharpe's premises — in a position of direct management responsibility, along with her husband over the day-to-day operations of Sharpe's trading desk. In several extended interviews for this story, Payer said she was coming forward out of fear that if she did not now speak publicly, and fully, about the activities inside Sharpe Capital, the firm would try to make her a scapegoat for any revelations that might eventually leak out. Her charges, lurid though they are, have been confirmed through interviews with a second Sharpe employee, with non-employees who have done business with the firm, and through reference to company and National Association of Securities Dealers documents. No company officials, including Sharpe Capital's own lawyers, returned telephone calls for this story or would offer any comments on Payer's charges. BLOWING WHISTLE ON HER HUSBAND Among Payer's more astonishing charges are those that involve allegations of drug abuse by her own husband.