Here is an article which mentions William Strong:
Australian rancher bought shares, received nothing
By CHRISTOPHER CAREY
Of the Post-Dispatch
06/13/2004
Wally Peart is still waiting for 4,000 shares of Chequemate International Inc. stock he bought in July 1999.
The Australian rancher wired money for the shares to a bank in Singapore and got a confirmation notice from his brokerage in Manila. But the brokerage, Oxford International Management, did not send a share certificate before it stopped responding to customers and quietly shut down.
Peart, 65, an inexperienced investor, had been buying shares of small American companies through Oxford since 1994, when a representative called to ask whether he would be interested in some suggestions.
Peart bought stock in seven U.S. companies, which unbeknownst to him all had close ties to the people behind Oxford. His total investment: about $130,000.
He never sold any of the shares, in keeping with Oxford's recommendation to hold his investments for maximum long-term gains.
"Everything seemed to work OK, and they often invited me to visit them in Manila," he said. "However, in 1999 it all folded, and my retirement fund disappeared."
By then, two of the companies whose shares he owned were essentially defunct. Three others were bound for bankruptcy. But Peart could have made up some of those losses if he had been able to sell his stock Chequemate stock.
The price of shares in Chequemate, a purported 3-D television company once based in St. Charles, more than doubled in February 2000. Shares in ZiaSun Technologies Inc., an Internet holding company with headquarters in California, had a similar rise a few months earlier.
Peart couldn't sell all his stock in those companies because he never received the certificates for the last $40,000 of shares he bought from Oxford.
Both stocks benefited from glowing "buy" reports by a supposedly independent securities analyst, who, it turns out, collected fees for his research.
Chequemate's shares, which peaked at around $18 a share, now trade for a fraction of a cent. Ziasun, whose shares once topped $15, merged in late 2001 with another company, in a deal worth less than $2 a share to Ziasun investors.
Peart since has learned more about the companies and the financier behind them, Bryant D. Cragun.
Peart views himself as the victim of false promises.
In one of his last letters to his broker, demanding the share certificate for the Chequemate stock, Peart threatened to sue. But figuring out who to target, where to file the legal action and whether it was possible to collect damages proved daunting.
Cragun was Oxford's chairman from 1991 to 1997. In August 1997, the firm notified investors it had been purchased by PT Pasifika Pratama Investido, an Indonesian company.
The new boss was William P. Strong, another American, who had owned a brokerage in California. He also was listed as a broker for PT Dolok Permai, another Indonesian firm that peddled most of the same stocks as Oxford.
Peart has tried without success to contact Strong.
He did hear from a representative of another investment firm, Safe Harbour Ltd. of Shanghai, China, two years ago. The caller identified himself as Sam Ford and offered to help Peart salvage his investment with Oxford.
Ford offered to credit Peart with $111,000 for his stake in six of the seven companies whose shares he bought from Oxford - if Peart would contribute another $49,950 in cash to his new account with Safe Harbour.
The total amount would have been applied toward 80,475 shares of Global Immune Technologies Inc. Peart declined the overture, which regulators say was an attempt to extract more money through a so-called "recovery" scam.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has put Safe Harbour on its list of companies that are offering investments in that country without a proper license. And shares of Global Immune, which lists headquarters in Woodstock, Ga., do not trade on any market.
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