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

To: Oleg Sogolov who wrote (66603)	2/2/2001 5:38:43 PM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 122087

Fugitive Telephone Exec Told to Pay $1.3 Mln in SEC Fraud Case Washington, Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- A former telephone company promoter was ordered to pay $1.3 million on charges he fraudulently lured investors with false claims his company had a new technology for providing long-distance service over the Internet, the Securities and Exchange Commission said. Fred Carter, ex-president and chief executive officer of American Telephone and Telecommunications Corp., was ordered by U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman to return $569,850 of investors' money and pay other fines, the SEC said. The judge entered the ruling after Carter failed to appear in court, the agency said. ``We're looking for him,'' said Larry Ellsworth, SEC assistant chief litigation counsel. Carter is a fugitive and is wanted by police in California for an unrelated securities fraud charge, Ellsworth said. Carter has no lawyer and couldn't be reached for comment. The SEC alleged in December 1999 that Fred Carter and Wendell Carter, American Telephone's vice president of corporate sales, issued false information during promotional seminars primarily aimed at Washington, D.C., area residents in 1996 and 1997. The Carters aren't related. Wendell Carter last September agreed to pay $5,000 to settle the charges, which he neither admitted nor denied. The men claimed to have a ``revolutionary technology'' for routing telephone calls using the Internet, the SEC said. In fact, the company didn't design any technology and had bought Internet telephony products for show at investor demonstrations, the agency charged. American Telephone has no relation to the much larger, publicly traded AT&T Corp., formerly known as American Telephone & Telegraph Co. Fred Carter and Wendell Carter also gave potential investors baseless projections that American Telephone's stock would at least triple within a year, the SEC said. They also lied by telling investors the company was allied with an Internet equipment maker that would help the company start business, the SEC said. The two also did not tell investors that Fred Carter pocketed most of their money for personal expenditures, the SEC said. Ellsworth said the SEC was able to serve the complaint on Fred Carter, while in hiding, through the lawyer for one of his relatives in Chicago. When Carter failed to answer the complaint, the judge entered a default judgment against him, Ellsworth said. ``Now we have to try to find him again,'' Ellsworth said. Feb/02/2001 17:20 ET For more stories from Bloomberg News, click here. (C) Copyright 2001 Bloomberg L.P.