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Pastimes : Scammy Awards... Thursday, Feb 25, 1999 at 9pm EST -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rande Is who wrote (372)	2/25/1999 11:11:00 PM
From: Trader J	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 445

Thank you Rande and firstly I would like to apologize for being late to the party.....but I had to empty the garbage.... ....and when you get as much Society Anonyme mail as I do, it can take awhile.

To: Rande Is who wrote (372)	2/25/1999 11:16:00 PM
From: Trader J	Respond to of 445

In the perfect example of "Once, you are stupid, twice .... you are an idiot" I would like to present the award for the..... For Most Pump and Dumps by an individual, the Scammy award goes to Bear Down for bringing our attention the pump and dumper named “Tosti,” the master-mind of the Scam of the Year award winner. -------------------- Cabal creates $1.2 billion out of air Shadowy group of penny-stock companies inflates share prices to incredible levels Jan. 27 — Since the beginning of January, a group of obscurely linked and secretly controlled companies whose shares trade on the NASDAQ bulletin board have been soaring to astonishing heights, creating a combined market capitalization of $1.2 billion out of nothing but hot air and empty press releases. In the process, they have given investors a one-way ticket on a rocket ride that's surely headed for a crash landing. THE STORY HIGHLIGHTS CHARGES of fraud, threats and the participation of brokers at the Wall Street investment firm of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. The yarn also casts doubt on the capacity of the National Association of Securities Dealers to police the Over the Counter bulletin board market. And in the end, the saga serves as a cautionary tale for anyone buying or thinking about buying the thinly traded shares of stocks on a market where swindlers and charlatans abound. At the center of the controversy is one-time stockbroker named Peter C. Tosto, who was drummed out of the securities industry by the NASD in 1991 following a fine for swindling clients. Tosto then set up a stock promotion firm named Investor Relations and started swindling investors all over again. In 1997, Tosto was fined $1.1 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission for a swindle in the shares of a company named San Diego Bancorp. Also at the center of events with Tosto is J. Alexander Securities Ltd., a Los Angeles-based brokerage firm with its own legal headaches. In September of 1998, National Financial Services Corp. sued the brokerage firm, charging it with arranging for the launch of trading in an OTC bulletin board stock — H&R Enterprises — that quickly became the focus of a “massive international securities market manipulation” in the summer of 1997, according to the lawsuit. J. Alexander, a member of the NASD, surfaces in the current controversy as the so-called “sponsor” of three companies — Citron Inc., Electronic Transfer Associates Inc. and Polus Corp. These three companies began trading as “non-filing” microcap stocks on the OTC bulletin board between June and October of 1998. So-called non-filing companies are firms that “go public” through IPOs that raise less than $1 million in the offering. So-called “sponsoring” broker-dealers are member firms of the NASD that thereafter file documents with the NASD in order to begin trading publicly in the shares on the NASDAQ electronic quotation system. J. Alexander declined to produce copies of the companies' financial statements and referred inquiries to the companies. The phone number provided reached an answering machine. Three of the companies involved — Citron, Electronic Transfer Associates and Polus Inc. — all have seen the value of their shares explode in recent weeks, with Citron at one point this week touching $42 per share — up from a mere $1.50 on Dec. 31. With company press releases claiming that Citron currently has 10.2 million shares outstanding, the $42 quote puts a market value of $428 million on the company. Polus sold for as little as 90 cents as recently as Dec. 31. By the start of this week, the price had climbed to $13 per share. With company press releases appearing to claim that Polus has a total of 13.3 million shares outstanding, the $13 quote puts a market value of $173 million on the company. And Electronic Transfer Associates sold for as little as 75 cents per share as recently as Nov. 4. By last week the price had reached $31 per share. With an apparent total of 20 million shares outstanding, the price puts a market value of $620 million on the company — a company with no business telephone listing to be found anywhere, and whose only known corporate office is 500 square feet of rent-free space in an office in Denver. PUBLIC INFORMATION LACKING Kaye, Schole securities attorney Jay Strum offers advice to investors trading online. The lack of public information about these companies is both astonishing and calculated. The press releases have mainly been distributed by two competing distributors of electronic news releases for corporations, PR NewsWire and BusinessWire. But the releases show only a “contact” name and a Madison, Ga., telephone number. Inquiries to that number produce someone who sometimes answers with the greeting “Corporate offices ...” and other times with “Marketing consultants…” and declines to say more. As a result, would-be investors have no way of knowing that behind the hype is the disgraced, fined and disbarred former stockbroker Peter C. Tosto and his firm Investor Relations. PR NewsWire's own office files list Tosto as the contact for an entity known as Tellerstocks, which has been distributing the releases. Citron Inc (CTRN) price change $19.88 unch Polus Inc (POLU) price change $3.00 unch Smartek Inc (New) (SMEK) price change $4.00 unch Electronic Transfer Assoc Inc (ECTS) price change $14.00 unch Invest Holding Group Inc (IVHD) price change $0.22 unch Malibu Inc (MALB) price change $1.50 unch Data: Microsoft Investor and S&P Comstock 20 min.delay Tosto, a New Yorker, first enters our story in August of 1997. That's when he and two friends — Armando Frusciante and Thomas Telegades, both of the Bronx — arranged for a stock sale of a company they controlled named Smartek Inc., which had been formed two years earlier out of a reverse merger into a defunct silver mining company. Because the men planned to raise less than $1 million in the offering, they did not have to file a detailed stock registration form but only a skimpy “Form D” that listed Smartek's officials and promoters. Also listed in the filing is a company by the name of Tostel Corp., which is identified as a beneficial owner of Smartek shares. In the filing, the address given for Tostel Corp. is the same as that given for Tosto himself: 124 West 72nd St. in Manhattan. That, plus the fact that the corporate name “Tostel” appears to be an acronym for Tosto and Telegades, suggests that Tostel was in reality a holding company for shares in Smartek on behalf of both men. No other shareholders are listed. The stated reason? All are “corporations organized and/or having principal executive offices in the Isle of Man” — a popular offshore tax haven. Meanwhile, action had been developing on other fronts...... msnbc.com