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

To: heronwater who wrote (83669)	4/3/2003 6:29:19 PM
From: heronwater	Respond to of 122087

H-Quotient Targets Our-Street.com investrend.com April 3, 2003. (FinancialWire) One of the companies that Our-Street.com has targeted, H-Quotient (OTCBB: HQNT), is firing back. H Quotient is one of 81 public companies embroiled in a growing national controversy over naked short selling. CEO Douglas A. Cohn and the company’s attorney, Paul Goodman, have accused the site and its founder, Nick Tracy, whom Cohn and Goodman allege is not the site founder’s real name, of “criminal activity,” and that FinancialWire, in covering the bizarre happenings of a week ago between the site, the company and major newswire services, is “providing a forum to a criminal.” Cohn denied FinancialWire’s reporting that he had “threatened” Primezone, causing it to “pull” an Our-Street.com news release about H-Quotient, but a spokesman for Primezone who was involved in the discussions said that she did indeed believe the service was being threatened. “We did feel the conversation was threatening,” she said, adding, “we did not feel the press was fraudulent or misrepresentational.” Primezone pulled it, she said, because the service simply does not have sufficient resources to deal with controversy. The CEO and the attorney said that the Our-Street.com business model, whereby subscribers are charged upwards of $2,400 per year for advance alerts on the site’s SEC complaint filings, is a violation of the Securities and Exchange Act’s section 10(b)5. The site admits that Tracy and subscribers may be themselves shorting stocks that are covered in their complaints, and may have done so in advance of the complaints. Cohn’s main complaints about FinancialWire is that it published the name of the site, saying that provides recognition for the site and a resource for the company’s investors to see. The contested press release, however, despite being pulled, remains visible on many financial websites, and associated with H Quotient’s ticker symbol. Cohn also said he believes the flap was a “non-story,” and stated that “legitimate news services would not have written about it.” He said that H-Quotient will be filing libel charges against Tracy and Our-Street.com, and that he and Goodman have complained to the Securities and Exchange about Our-Street.com, for its complaint to the SEC about H-Quotient, saying it contains “lies and falsehoods – from top to bottom” and falsely states that Tracy had tried to contact Cohn. He also denies that he lives in Virginia Beach, which apparently is a statement made in the site’s complaint. Goodman said that using a site to “complain to the SEC is meaningless.” Anyone can contact the SEC at any time with a complaint, he said, simply by calling, writing or emailing, and that the SEC does not tell anyone whether it is investigating any complaint. “The SEC is set up to protect the markets, and is not responsive to the individual investor’s concerns,” said Goodman. He said that the most common legal tool available to individual investors who feel they have been harmed is a class action lawsuit, not the SEC. “There is no proof that an actual complaint has been filed with the SEC,” said Goodman. Cohn said that Tracy’s motives are a subterfuge for shorting activities, and that Tracy’s efforts against the company “and our shareholders” is “nothing new.” The CEO said that executives of the company have “worked diligently to build a company, and then we have to deal with extraordinarily low-life” detractors who are “simply trying to manipulate our stock for their own personal gain.” The company has been invited to refute any claims made in the “filing,” and have said they will be back in touch with FinancialWire on this invitation. ------------------------------------------------------------- our-street.com CORRECTION - our complaint incorrectly stated Douglas Cohn was a resident of the Virginia Beach area. According to whitepages.com Douglas Cohn is a resident of Mclean, Va. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. As always, we will gladly publish any inaccuracies which are brought to our attention. We invite Mr. Cohn to supply the details previously requested in the email we sent as well as to provide a detailed point by point correction of the complaint filed with the SEC. We will post it prominently on this site.