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Pastimes : Investment Chat Board Lawsuits -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StockDung who wrote (1183)	3/2/2001 3:30:51 AM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12465

I don't think I could ever do the AZNT story justice without writing a novel. I guess SEC attorney Meredith Munro, as per the Las Vegas Sun, said it best when she called the case one of the most extreme she'd ever seen, "given the permeation of fraud." By the time we started looking at AZNT in the summer of '98 the company had already had a string of preposterous press releases. For example, they claimed to have a cream protection for AIDS, a chewing gum that prevents cavities, a cure for baldness, and so on. It didn't take long to figure out the acting IR guy had already been named by the SEC in another scam and that he had ties to the mob. A check of the CEO, Michael Sylver, showed he had literally dozens of judgments against him for failure to pay. At the time we got involved AZNT was hawking their revolutionary new sugar substitute that came from a genetically altered tree that only grows on land owned by AZNT in the Brazilian rain forest. The new IR guy, who also had a record with the SEC, told us that he had been informed of a $250 million deal with Monsanto to market the product. Monsanto flatly denied it, going so far as to say all they got was a packet of the stuff in the mail which they promptly tossed in the garbage (AZNT failed to provide a single medical study showing the substance was safe for human consumption). AZNT was pumping their stock via a boiler room outfit (that was also shut down by the authorities) and doing deals with other folks who we later found also had ties to the mob. It appears the very same people the Sylver hired to help him launder his stock took him to the cleaners. He became so paranoid that he started suing everyone in site, from ex business partners, to the DTC, to the company from which he used to leased his repossessed car, to me. To my knowledge, he hasn't ever won. The related court filings read more like comedies than legal proceedings. No doubt the SEC also knew AZNT was a scam years ago as well. Why it takes so long to bring actions against such companies is a question only the SEC can answer. The important point is that at least Sylver finally got nailed as a con artist and we can now officially label AZNT as a scam. - Jeff