SEC targets Green Oasis
charleston.net./pub/news/bizpage/sec0703.htm
Friday, July 3, 1998
By JOHN P. McDERMOTT
Of The Post and Courier staff
The Securities & Exchange Commission has sued Green Oasis Environmental Inc., the company's president and two other individuals for fraud, alleging they profited by issuing false and misleading information about the Charleston-based oil recycler.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Charleston Wednesday, follows a 15-month investigation of Green Oasis by the SEC, which oversees publicly traded companies.
The agency alleged that William D. Carraway, Raymond C. "Bo" O'Brien and Ronald V. Reece pumped up the value of Green Oasis' stock starting in 1996 by touting the company through misleading press releases and Internet messages. During that period, O'Brien and Reece never told other investors about their relationships with Carraway's company, according to the lawsuit.
"As a result of their efforts the price of Green Oasis had risen from less than $2 to nearly $10 per share," the SEC said.
Carraway, his wife and O'Brien sold more than $2.3 million of the stock between May 1996 and May 1997, the SEC said. The stock has nearly bottomed out since the probe became public in May 1997, now trading from 25 cents to 50 cents a share.
Green Oasis claims to have developed a mobile refinery that can convert waste oil into a low-grade diesel fuel. The SEC's Internet fraud unit started investigating the company in March 1997.
Most of the allegations in the lawsuit center around Carraway, president of Green Oasis, and O'Brien, a longtime investor in the company.
SEC attorney Edward Sullivan, who filed the complaint, said the document speaks for itself. Carraway could not be reached. O'Brien said he could not comment because he was unaware of the lawsuit Thursday.
The SEC said O'Brien operated two businesses out of the same office near Chicago - Tecumseh Asset Management Inc., which tracked shares of tiny companies like Green Oasis, and Microcap Consulting & Communications, an investor relations firm. He helped Green Oasis obtain a ticker symbol in March 1996. That same month Green Oasis gave Microcap Consulting 20,000 shares to write and distribute news releases.
The day after Green Oasis began trading on the Nasdaq Over-The-Counter Bulletin Board, O'Brien issued a "flash-aggressive buy recommendation" for the stock in a report from Tecumseh Asset Management. At the time, the company's prototype refinery "lay disassembled in a field," the SEC said.
"When he wrote the recommendation, both O'Brien and Carraway knew that there was no reasonable basis for O'Brien's recommendation," according to the lawsuit.
Meanwhile, Microcap Consulting, now with a sizable stake in Green Oasis, started issuing the first of 31 upbeat press releases on a range of topics, from large purchase orders that never materialized to purported tax breaks. Some of the written statements "created a misleading impression" about Green Oasis "and the likelihood of its success," the SEC said.
The news releases "materially misrepresented the status of Green Oasis's technology, its commercial viability as well as the existence of purchase orders for its equipment," the SEC alleged.
Reece, a self-employed, part-time security consultant from Alexandria, Va., was introduced to Green Oasis by O'Brien. The SEC said Carraway and O'Brien encouraged him "to publish positive information about the company in numerous Internet news group messages he wrote and in an electronic newsletter he published about the company."
While passing himself off as an impartial investor and denying any payments from Green Oasis, Reece had in fact been reimbursed by the company for four trips he made to Charleston, the SEC said.
Also, the agency said Reece received $600 from the company to upgrade his computer and a $20,000 discount on a Green Oasis securities sale, "all of which he failed to disclose in his publications." Reece could not be reached for comment.
The SEC is seeking fines and other sanctions against Green Oasis, Carraway, O'Brien and Reece for numerous violations of securities laws. The agency also is targeting Carraway's wife, Mary Ann, to compel her to surrender up to $806,955 in profits she has earned off the sale of the company's stock.
Business reporter John P. McDermott can be reached at 937-5572 or at mailto:jmcdermott@postandcourier.com. |
