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

To: tom rusnak who wrote (1551)	5/4/1999 1:35:00 AM
From: marcos	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3795

Excellent find - they've done it before as well - "Mr Cameron said the Internet was chosen for this year's scam because "some people, who might normally question the validity of an investment offer, seem to think that offers on the Internet come with some authority". ASIC last year attracted 700 would-be investors after placing newspaper ads for the Geep, a cross between an Angora goat and a sheep, and for an air-and-land package that allowed people to charge passing aircraft for entering and leaving their airspace."

To: tom rusnak who wrote (1551)	5/4/1999 1:52:00 AM
From: Josef Svejk	Respond to of 3795

Humbly report, tom, that's great, and it cost how much? " "$60,000" Humble wow. And they didn't even get a blessing for that kind of money? magneticdiary.com With FBNA there is nothing to lose, so who needs smbi.com.au ? ;-) Cheers, Svejk proofsheet.com

To: tom rusnak who wrote (1551)	5/4/1999 3:27:00 AM
From: EL KABONG!!!	Respond to of 3795

tom, Excellent find. Thank you for the contribution. I wonder if there's an Australian News Wire, and if so, are they suing anyone over this year's annual April Fool's joke in Australia? Ahh, but this involves Australian laws, not US laws. So there couldn't possibly be any value in all this for the defense of the Webnode3, could there? I mean, an official agency of one of the world's largest non-third world countries, the equivalent of our own SEC... Hmmm... Wonder if they're available to testify about the EDUCATIONAL value of their prank? Look at all of that personal information they've gathered on all of those respondents... Why, I'll wager there's some sort of commercial use planned for that information... NOT!!! KJC

To: tom rusnak who wrote (1551)	5/4/1999 9:40:00 AM
From: Janice Shell	Respond to of 3795

MORE than 200 people were prepared to part with up to $50,000 each – a total of $4 million – to secure a stake in an Internet investment hoax created by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. Thanks, Tom! A very interesting article. What they did is quite similar to what we did, except that they kept the joke running longer: ASIC will disclose today [May 4] that, since April 1, it has been conducting Australia's biggest Internet scam as part of a campaign to educate the public about the pitfalls of investing in high-risk Internet ventures. Note that like us, they paid for advertising: The site was listed by several Australian search engines and Internet banner ads were placed to draw in potential investors. Their object was to educate the public, as was ours: ASIC chairman Alan Cameron said yesterday the results of the hoax "show how willing people are to part with large sums of money without finding out anything about the company they are giving their money to"... Like us, they do it every year: Mr Cameron said the Internet was chosen for this year's scam because "some people, who might normally question the validity of an investment offer, seem to think that offers on the Internet come with some authority". So. Is anybody suing them?