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Pastimes : Business Wire Falls for April Fools Prank, Sues FBNers -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Blue On Black who wrote (929)	5/1/1999 12:46:00 AM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Respond to of 3795

Lee, yes, the person responsible for the PairGain hoax, Gary Dale Hoke, was arrested by the FBI and charged with securities fraud. Hoke had posted a fake Bloomberg press release on angelfire.com that claimed PairGain was going to be bought out for $1.35 billion in cash. The stock went up more than 30% on the news and real money was made or lost because of it. As I posted here earlier, the PAIR debacle is precisely the type of incident we strive to prevent. See #reply-8754056. Note the date and time. Note that we issued this warning way before the news wires confirmed it was fictitious. Here's more on the story: europe.cnnfn.com - Jeff P.S. Do you think perhaps the PairGain episode in any way may have played a role in the filing of the webnode lawsuit shortly thereafter?

To: Blue On Black who wrote (929)	5/1/1999 12:55:00 AM
From: Bill Ulrich	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3795

lee, I'm glad you asked about the Pairgain chap. He's facing charges of securities fraud, as well as a stock price manipulation charge which was just added this week by the SEC. The PAIR case is markedly different from Webnode; a "night & day" contrast. 1. A distinct effort was made to forge a release from a real agency. 2. A publicly-traded company and its stock price were clearly detrimentally affected by his actions. 3. Real investors were harmed (at least one investor purchased PAIR shares as a result of the report).