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To: Jane4IceCream who wrote (28772)	10/8/1998 9:14:00 PM
From: Mongo2116	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50264

So they are not bashers, and Fortune agrees. The unofficial queen of the cybervigilantes is Janice Shell, a 50-year-old art historian who lives in Milan and got hooked on busting online con men after she was burned in an Internet investment scheme two years ago. A tireless--even obsessive--pursuer of online malefactors, Shell says she spends 12 hours a day trolling the Internet, looking for crooks. Thanks to this single-minded dedication, she has become a celebrity--at least to those who hang out on Silicon Investor. There are two threads devoted just to her: "Janice Shell for President" and "Janice Shell--A Retrospective." In the past two years, Shell says she has exposed an investor relations director with a murder rap, a so-called biotech company that really sold kitty litter, and a CEO who claimed to have run the largest corporation in Nevada but who was really the head of a two-man air-conditioning repair shop. "God help us if [Shell] ever goes to work for the hypester pump-and-dump gang," one admirer gushed in an August posting. "Being an international sex symbol is hard work, but someone has to do it." In June, Shell took note of a mining company called Mountain Energy. What caught her eye, she says, were postings announcing that the stock, then trading for pennies, would soon hit $5. Shell started digging, and here is what she says she found out: An "informant" told her that Mountain Energy's management team had once been charged with fraud. She also heard that the firm's main asset--a tract of land Mountain Energy claimed was worth $200 million--was worth little more than $100,000. Between June and August, Shell posted her findings on Silicon Investor, warning investors to stay away. During that time the stock, which had earlier climbed 200%, fell from $1.70 to 22 cents. That's when trouble began. Investors who had already bought Mountain Energy stock were furious. "These Bulletin Board Stock Guardian Angels...why don't they want us honest investors to make money?" complained one. Finally, in late July the SEC halted trading in the stock. So far it hasn't taken any further action, but it still has its eye on the company. Meanwhile, the company's management has resigned and dismissed all its employees. "A lot of people were really hard on her; they didn't believe her, but she was right all along," says Bill Liang, a medical researcher at Harvard who invested $3,000 in Mountain Energy. "We should have listened." What's Mountain Energy's side of the story? FORTUNE tried calling company headquarters. The phone was disconnected. Shell has been accused of being an