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

To: StockDung who wrote (9279)	2/13/2006 11:31:25 PM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Respond to of 12465

Re: Jim DeCosta Here's what I wrote on Gary Weiss' blog about DeCosta and AZNT: It's obvious the Baloney Brigade has no experience with securities fraud, apparently including the oft cited but so-far unpublished "expert" in naked shortselling Dr. Jim DeCosta. According to SanityCheck blogger BBurrell: "He has been a consulting expert on some of the most important older cases in the space, including the critical Amazon Natural Treasures. Companies who have been victimized have used him and his materials to mount their defenses to the continuously mutating attacks on them..." thesanitycheck.com As it turns out, Dr. Jim owned 50,000 shares of Amazon Natural Treasures (AZNT) ( see: Message 16173486 ), so he obviously can't be considered a neutral party here. Unless, of course, he was paid in stock, which would make him a hired gun rather than a concerned individual. So what was AZNT you ask? Here's a snippet from Jason Anders' piece on the company in the Wall Street Journal: "Beginning in 1997, the company issued press releases trumpeting its innovations, including a 'cream protection against AIDS,' a chewing gum that can be used in place of brushing teeth and a scalp cleanser that cures baldness. Mr. Sylver says the company can't afford to produce and distribute those products and others because of the cybersmear campaign." ( see: Message 12851462 ) Believe me, it gets worse. When I first encountered the company their IR guy was John Fasano. Fasano subsequently was sentenced to 37 months in prison for the manipulation of Spaceplex International Amusement Centers stock ( see: caselaw.lp.findlaw.com ). The CEO was Mike Sylver, who the SEC nailed for "antifraud, bookkeeping, internal controls, reporting and securities registration violations... also sold millions of shares of stock to the public in unregistered, non-exempt transactions." ( see: caselaw.lp.findlaw.com ). Many of these shares were sold through a boiler room named Wellrich which has since been shut down. Sylver maintained an account at Creative Capital, a company owned by George Doumanis. Doumanis was "sentenced to 14 months in prison, to be followed by two years of supervised release" for his role in attempting to conspire with a mutual fund to manipulate the price of the stock of Integrated Homes ( INHI; see: sec.gov ). Doumanis arranged financing for AZNT through Joseph Andy Mann who was later arrested and "accused of participating in a racketeering enterprise with members and associates of five mafia organizations, including the Bonnano and Colombo crime families." ( see: bizjournals.com ). Yet, of course, all the company's woes were the result of evil message board bashers -- who conspired with the DTC -- to use counterfeit shares to drive the company into the ground. And somehow, despite all this arrests and convictions of company insiders, we are supposed to believe that AZNT is a seminal case in the history of proving the existence of naked shortselling?!!! Oy. Jeff Mitchell \| Homepage \| 02.03.06 - 12:48 am \| # haloscan.com