Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Joe Copia's daytrades/investments and thoughts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe Copia who wrote (13027)	3/6/1999 1:46:00 PM
From: CIMA	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25711

SEC Charges 13 With Internet Fraud By MARCY GORDON AP Business Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — Continuing their ''sweep'' against Internet investment scams, federal securities regulators announced Thursday they had charged nine people and four companies with fraud online. The Securities and Exchange Commission alleged separate schemes that deceived investors around the world by fraudulently promoting stocks in Internet junk mail, online newsletters, Internet message board postings and Web sites. The market watchdog agency made the allegations in a civil lawsuit and three administrative actions. All four cases involved people allegedly promoting stocks without disclosing they were paid for it. The lawsuit also involved an alleged ''pump and dump'' scheme, in which promoters pushed up a stock's price by making false claims about the company and later sold their own shares to cash in on the artificially high price. The accused individuals, including one current and two former stockbrokers, promoted more than 56 publicly traded companies and received more than $450,000 for doing so, the SEC said. The companies are fairly small and their stocks are relatively cheap, risky and thinly traded. The agency ''continues to be vigilant in its efforts to stamp out fraud on the Internet,'' said SEC Enforcement Director Richard Walker. ''If you're trying to cheat investors on the Internet, we are watching and we will catch you.'' The actions were the latest moves in a nationwide crackdown against investment fraud in cyberspace started by the SEC in October. The agency has been targeting people promoting stocks over the Internet who don't disclose they are paid to do so. Such stock promotions are known as ''touting.'' Stock touting is not illegal in and of itself, but any compensation received from the companies must be fully disclosed, including the nature and amount of payment in cash or stock. In the new lawsuit, the SEC alleged that P. Joseph Vertucci, an insider of Interactive MultiMedia Publishers, and Bruce Straughn, a former Chicago stockbroker, manipulated the company's stock price in a ''pump and dump'' scheme. Vertucci and Straughn also are accused of arranging for publications to tout Interactive MultiMedia, a software development company, on the Internet and elsewhere. They allegedly paid the touters with cheap or free company stock, which the touters failed to disclose. Interactive MultiMedia's stock later collapsed and the company ceased operating, the SEC said. The agency sued Vertucci, Straughn and five other people allegedly involved in the scheme, seeking unspecified civil penalties and repayment of illegal profits from some of them. Vertucci denied any wrongdoing, saying he was deceived when he bought Interactive MultiMedia. The SEC ''missed the point. ... What they're doing is wrong,'' he said in a telephone interview. Straughn said he hadn't seen the details of the case yet and had no immediate comment. In the three administrative actions, the SEC alleged that: — Scott Flynn and his company, Strategic Network Development Inc., used Internet junk mail and a Web site called Stockprofiles.com to disseminate favorable information about several companies without fully disclosing his payments from the companies. Flynn, a former stockbroker convicted of securities fraud in another case, is said to have received at least $183,200 in cash and 322,500 shares of stock from at least 10 of the companies. Flynn could not immediately be reached for comment. —Hastings Communications, the owner and publisher of Stockprofiles.com, promoted the companies without fully disclosing its payments from the same companies. In a settlement with the SEC, Hastings Communications agreed to refrain from such violations in the future. The company neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing. —Max Ramras, through a business named RCG Capital Markets Group Inc., touted the stocks of nine companies on a Web site without disclosing payments in cash and stock options from the companies. RCG Capital Markets allegedly made more than $100,000 from the companies since November. Don Wall, an attorney in Phoenix for Ramras and his company, did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment. The Flynn and Ramras cases will be heard by SEC administrative law judges, who will determine whether the allegations are true and whether any remedial actions should be imposed. ——— EDITOR'S NOTE: The SEC advises investors to read its Cyberspace Alert before buying any investment promoted on the Internet. The publication is available on the investor assistance and complaints link of the agency's Web site at <http://www.sec.gov/>www.sec.gov. It also is available by calling 1-800-SEC-0330. Investors also are urged to report suspicious investment offerings to enforcement@sec.gov.

To: Joe Copia who wrote (13027)	3/6/1999 10:02:00 PM
From: hoffy	Respond to of 25711

IATV article- LOOKING GOOD! Broadband Week for March 8, 1999 ACTV Migrating Internet-TV Product By BILL MENEZES March 8, 1999 ACTV Inc. wants to tap the consumer market by combining its technology for enhancing television programming with synchronized Internet content, pushing further into a crowded field. The company is launching its software-based application, dubbed "HyperTV," into the commercial entertainment-programming market after two years of development as a private-network platform for education systems, "e-School Online." Since its introduction in early 1996, HyperTV has grown into a business that is expected to generate $3 million in revenue this year, according to ACTV chairman and CEO Bill Samuels. HyperTV delivers streamed Internet video, Web URL (uniform resource locator) addresses, advertising and other data or links to viewers' personal computers, in synchronization with broadcast or cable programming on their television sets. PC users with TV-tuner cards can view programming and HyperTV-enhanced Internet content simultaneously on their monitors. Besides getting multimedia programmers, portal owners and other content providers to license HyperTV software, creating a stream of royalties to ACTV, the company wants vendors to embed HyperTV in their advanced-digital set-top boxes. This way, viewers can get simultaneous video and special Internet content on regular television sets. Until more advanced boxes, such as General Instrument Corp.'s DCT-5000, are available and deployed, most HyperTV viewers must get the Internet portion over their PCs -- an arrangement that Samuels said is more lucrative than cumbersome. He noted studies indicating that 13 million people Web surf while watching TV, while as many as 25 million households have PCs in the same rooms as their TVs. "The current market is probably as much analog television and being online as it is digital TV," Samuels said. ACTV sees HyperTV as an expansion of the interactive-broadcast platform that it began testing last month on Tele-Communications Inc.'s Dallas digital system. It hopes to roll that platform out widely by the third quarter, after completing its integration with TCI's Headend in the Sky. Michael Shronstrom, director of institutional research for Denver-based investment banker Neidiger Tucker Bruner Inc., said HyperTV not only represents a lower capital requirement going forward than individualized TV, but it also provides competitive advantages through its patented technology for synchronizing Web and TV content. "The original business model called for a multiyear build-out of the individualized TV technology," Shronstrom said. "That model has been sort of supplanted by what HyperTV can bring to the company."