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Gold/Mining/Energy : Solv Ex (SOLVD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JJB who wrote (5600)	4/24/1998 9:03:00 AM
From: tonto	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6735

"Separately, the NASD said Fiero Brothers Inc., New York, Falcon Trading Group Inc., Boca Raton, Fla, Sovereign Equity Management Corp. SOVEREIGN WAS NOTABLE YESTERDAY. SEC charges N. Miami man, 4 others with fraud By DAVID POPPE Herald Business Writer In the latest twist in a long-running penny stock fraud investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged five men, including a North Miami civic activist, with a ''brazen'' 1993 fraud that cost investors at least $6.5 million. The SEC alleges Marc A. Osheroff, 42, the former chief executive of Alter Sales Co. of Miami, hatched a plan to illegally issue and sell four million shares of Alter stock. Alter allegedly took advantage of rules that permit companies to sell stock to offshore investors without first registering the shares with the SEC. Those rules say companies need not register shares if they sell to offshore investors who agree not to sell to U.S. investors for at least 40 days. A man who answered the phone at Osheroff's North Miami home said Osheroff was not available to comment. The other four defendants could not be reached Thursday afternoon. In its lawsuit, the SEC says Osheroff and the four others created two fictitious offshore accounts to buy 4 million shares of Alter stock at deeply discounted prices. Within days, the foreign accounts had funneled the shares into U.S. brokerage accounts. About 80 percent of the shares were sold through these U.S. accounts within 40 days, at market prices. To fuel the scheme, Osheroff and Barry Gesser, 35, Alter's former publicist, allegedly issued false press releases claiming foreign firms wanted to buy Alter. The SEC says there were no merger talks. Alter stock eventually collapsed. After changing its name to ICIS Management Group, the Nasdaq small cap market delisted the company in 1996. ''This is a particularly brazen example of the abuse,'' of offshore registration rules, said Erich Schwartz, the SEC attorney who filed the complaint. In Thursday's lawsuit, the SEC charged Osheroff and Gesser with fraud. It also charged Glen T. Vittor, 36, the former president of Sovereign Equity Management Corp. and Sheldon Maschler, 53, a former broker at Datek Securities Corp., with helping sell the unregistered Alter stock. Robert S. Mitchell, 43, a former Alter employee, was charged with letting unregistered shares be deposited in his personal brokerage account and selling them. Osheroff received a leadership award in 1993 from Jewish Vocational Services and has been active in the group for years.