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Gold/Mining/Energy : Canadian Diamond Play Cafi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: VAUGHN who wrote (719)	3/8/2003 1:53:35 PM
From: E. Charters	Respond to of 16207

I have worked for and dealt with a number of crooks in the industry. They are all somewhat different. Some overpromote and shade you on deals in an up-front way. You jes kain't get nothing out of them that looks good. You get that nagging bad, feeling. Some, (most) will not sign confidentialities "without knowing where and why they are signing first".. CA's are admittedly dangerous, but it is nice to hear that they intend to be crooks from the outset. Usually a crook will signal his intentions or tell on his character from the outset. This is common, like wearing a mask. If you get the slightest feeling of insincerity or psychophancy, run. Here are some categories. Remember, to steal in a deal a crook of this kind needs to be clever. And smooth. 1. Upfront will not be tied down to anything that prevents theft. control freaks. Similar to 2 but pro-forma. See two. 2. Overbearing, arrogant, controlling and disimissive. always keeps the person off balance, and worms out what info they can use. Takes what they can because of "their deservedness or position". See one. 3. Claim jumper, stakes next door in order to find out what is wrong with the adjacent claims in order to dispute them. See number two. 4. Makes a profession of bribing government officials. See two. 5. Papers the street with his stock. Issues scads of shares at attractive option prices. See two. 5. Makes purposely phony reports to drive stock that are extremely hard to detect on properties that for other reasons will never be produced from. This we all have seen in Bre-X. But I have worked in situation where it happened blatantly. See two as well. 6. Pretends partnership or JV in order to get company secrets and details of an area. The fades on the JV and works and stakes to your disadvantage. This is the Hemlo fraud and variations on it are done by many companies still. The judge did not believe Lac. Lac lied. They stole the ground. This scared a lot of mining companies since then, and they all have written their CA's to accomodate theft. Interesting clauses therein are (Inco) are to the effect of "we reserve the right to buy an interest in your claims off "any third party" !!!!! -and- "there is nothing in this deal that implies a fiduciary trust." (also Inco). Do not sign a deal where a trust is not being set up. Else why do the deal? A fiduciary trust is a trust beteen people that implies responsibility to each others business interests over time. The fiduciary trust is what companies enter into when they do business together. Another element of a deal they claim to want, is the ability to in effect "ignore the necessity of confidentiality where information was publicly available about the value.. etc..". This is irrelevant in matters of trust. If one person works in competition with another after learning of the other's intentions in business towards even a "publicly" declared asset, it is still malfeasance. Mining companies are unique in the amount of dealing they do with third parties over their property. They are almost like real estate companies. But they all want to reserve the right to compete against their former partners or friends outside of some time limit or area. Kind of working at cross purposes, to a deal, isn't it? It is similar to a brokerage company promoting and dealing in a stock and underwriting it at the same time. Hard to keep two separate attitudes or divisions in the same company. 7. [A crook is one who] Works your claims and hides the info that they have found. Drops claims and picks them up later. Common, and the paranoid dream of the prospector. This is the principle reason for some of the time-limit clauses and area-limit clauses in deals and CA's. Area limits are reasonable. Time limits less so. 8. Processes minerals or concentrate for a company and keeps a specified portion of the value found without delcaring it. This is done by assaying sleight of hand. Old Noranda trick, they have done to many and continue to do so. Big claims and amounts and small. Custom milling is the tourist trap of the mining company. I did not get the feeling that Derbuch fell into any one of those categories. He seemed like straight shooter. He was close to the vest but this does not necessarily mean he is hiding bad intentions. Others in the Wawa area left he feeling that way. And I was right. Most of the companies I have dealt with in mining you have to wary of. some about the kind of deals and litigation you may get into or want to get into. They are wording and lawyer crooks. Others are just sleazy and underhanded and blatant about it. I have been dealt dirty and badly by many mining people. Most of them. Even "good friends", so-called, who dealt otherwise good with me for years then threw the bone in later. Several former partners ended up screwing me for nickels and dimes and dollars and claims. Several brokerages took me for good money on some blatant examples of sleaze. I have worked for people who phonied assays, jumped claims and admitted it, and salted core. All in all it cost me directly and indirectly millions. Millions on single stock deals, untold millions on losing claims. We lost 75 million in mineable ore in one five year fade by people who were both sleazy and somewhat incompetent. Many will tell you that 75 million dollars worth of ore is not mineable. It depends. It can be mineable, and eminently so. Good access, near surface, simple ore, high grade, workings in, drilling done. You save 20 million right of the bat. A much smaller list of companies is the ones who are honest and straight shooting. That and generous and good to deal with AND competent with good stock? Damn small group. I would say I have dealt with 95% crooks, shysters and generally bad people in the mining industry. There are very few I have 100% confidence in for all matters. Some I can trust in certain areas, but not in others strangely.. it is matter of how you do the deal. If there was a good honest, competent, generous, and monied company out there who had the right philosophy and were go-getters, I would just sell all my ideas or claims to them daily. I would not bother trying to start my own company. The reason I am trying to start Wildcat as a mining company is to make more money at the game, that is deserved since the mining areas and the idea to work them is my intellectual property and it is fitting that I should get some money out of it at least. It is heartbreaking to lead companies into the James Bay area (Ashton, Spider et al) for diamonds, and Wawa for diamonds and gold, (following Clements diamond discovery in drift, but years earlier knowing about Diatremes in the area) and predict the NWT would be the next South Africa over ten years ago, and not make one cent out of it. If I cannot make other companies competent and honest, at least I can make my own company that. EC<:-}