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Love for the bashers and spammers
Yeah, right. Here, everyone has the opportunity to become Chairman of the Board and really show the bashers and spammers how it's done! That's right. People who genuinely care about their investment and the community now have the tools available to weed out useless or offensive messages...instantly, as Chairman of the Board. -- Welcome to Investors Hub.
The Corporation
InvestorsHub.com, Inc. was founded in 2000 by Matt Brown and Gary Bryant. The Company is privately held and based in Tallahassee, FL.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010211101437/www.investorshub.com/beta/about.asp
Matt, how can anyone delete my message posts on Hartcourt when your own author of FattClub.com denounced it as a fraud? Yet you say you do not know who Regis Possino and crew is.
Sad, so sad
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=393231
Lets see how good your dd is Matt. Lets play find the criminal in VEII's sec filings? http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=1173
BTW, they are trying to build the largest Ferris Wheel in the World. Las Vegas and New York are in the plans but the first one is to be in China so it should be right up your alley.
Matt, besides Regis Possino, The Mazurs where also invoved in Hartcourt. Maybe you missed it in your fine research report that Gagleo wrote.
Asean's Saxena claims Mazur teamed up with GCB's Possino
Asean Holdings Inc - Street Wire
Asean's Saxena claims Mazur teamed up with GCB's Possino
Asean Holdings Inc AHI
Shares issued 15,750,552 Jan 1 1900 close $.000
Friday Mar 1 2002 Street Wire
by Brent Mudry
According to General Commerce Bank's purported local swindle victim, Rakesh Saxena, who has been called a swindler himself, many times, the second key player behind Raoul Berthaumieu of Belgium, the front man in the $1-billion collapse of General Commerce Bank SA in Austria last year, was Sherman Mazur. Mr Mazur is a convicted big-league California real estate fraudster who graduated to the penny stock world after his release from jail. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.)
Mr. Mazur outranked General Commerce Bank key player Regis Possino, a disbarred California lawyer who has been quite active in controversial penny stock promotions in recent years, according to fugitive Thai financier Rakesh Saxena. "Sherman is the main player; he is the front guy," Mr. Saxena told Stockwatch. "Berthaumieu reported to Sherman, not to Regis."
According to a suit recently filed in Vancouver, Mr. Saxena, with a $10-million claim, was one of the most notable victims in the Austrian banking fiasco. Mr. Saxena, along with close associate Adnan Khashoggi, the Paris-based Iran-Contra arms merchant and former Vancouver Stock Exchange player, is an alleged key figure in the fraudulent 1996 $2-billion collapse of Bangkok Bank of Commerce.
Mr. Saxena is particularly chagrined he was unable to see through the General Commerce Bank fraud earlier. "It was a genuine fraud; it was tough trying to figure all that out," the former Thai financier, now fighting extradition from Vancouver under self-financed $375,000-a-year house arrest, told Stockwatch.
Mr. Mazur is one of those bigger-than-life characters who go from rags to riches to rags, or at least jail, to riches again, on a grand scale beyond the dreams of most financial fraudsters. His emergence in a key role at a European bank marks quite a remarkable comeback.
Mr. Mazur, then 43, capped a lengthy criminal investigation in July, 1993, when he pled guilty to seven counts of bankruptcy and tax fraud in federal district court in the United States District Court in the Central District of California in Los Angeles. The guilty plea came less than a week before he was to face the start of a trial on 74 fraud-related criminal charges.
The highflying financier, who boasted a fleet of eight or nine luxury cars including a Ferrari and two Rolls-Royces, was prosecuted for milking and bilking many of the 200 real estate limited partnerships he headed. Mr. Mazur's veneer of respectable success peeled away after he was indicted in 1991.
On Dec. 1, 1993, U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Lew sentenced Mr. Mazur to six years in prison and a $250,000 fine. (This was on top of the $500,000 restitution the fraudster agreed to in his plea negotiations.) Prosecutors called the Mazur saga one of the largest cases of tax fraud at the time. Mr. Mazur "should be punished for the greed he has shown," Assistant U.S. Attorney Maureen Tighe, the lead prosecutor, told Judge Lew.
While lesser men might be crushed by such a term and the odd one or two might find redemption and rehabilitation behind bars, not Mr. Mazur. For this incorrigible entrepreneur, prison was evidently just another business opportunity and a great place to network. "Sherman (Mazur) met Raoul (Berthaumieu) in jail," says Mr. Saxena, who knows quite a bit about the General Commerce Bank players.
Mr. Berthaumieu, who used the alias Lee Sanders then and now, had the misfortune of being convicted in 1991, when he pleaded guilty to felony bank fraud for writing $1.6-million in rubber cheques. The Belgian-born Canadian national, then 46 and living in the Los Angeles suburb of Woodland Hills, was arrested on a sealed grand jury indictment in June, 1990, in Melbourne, Australia, a credential few other bank chairmen can boast of.
The jailhouse legend is even richer. According to Mr. Saxena, while Mr. Mazur and Mr. Berthaumieu spent several years together in California, they also met a chap in jail who later became General Commerce Bank's representative in London. "It is stranger than fiction," says Mr. Saxena, whose courtroom opponents might suggest he is indeed an expert on the subject of fiction.
Mr. Mazur, Mr. Berthaumieu and their London associate were not the only General Commerce Bank key players to learn a thing or two in jail. Mr. Possino was convicted in 1978 in an entertaining drug sting, sentenced to one year in jail, and disbarred in 1984. The budding young lawyer had offered to sell half a ton of pot and $5-million worth of stolen bonds to undercover agents.
(c) Copyright 2002 Canjex Publishing Ltd. http://www.canada-stockwatch.com
Matt, since you wrote a research report on Hartcourt I am surprised you do not understand what that 4500 shares represented. Unless that is if some tout from the Cayman Islands is the one that really wrote the report which you claimed credit for.
Who came first? Matt or the ECNC Tree Trimmer?
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=ECNC&read=798
By: Fatt_Matt $$$$$
02 Aug 1999, 07:20 PM EDT Msg. 798 of 606331
(This msg. is a reply to 796 by jorjenzak.)
Jorjenzak,
I'm here buddy
Just making my way to posting on this thread....Ready for the fun to begin! LOL
Nice volume on the stock today. I'll have the report up by Wednesday on ECNC. Have to let everybody digest it first.
FM
By: Fatt_Matt $$$$$
02 Aug 1999, 09:47 PM EDT Msg. 800 of 606332
(This msg. is a reply to 799 by stephane2.)
Stef -
I should have known somebody was going to ask that!
Sorry that I was unclear. I always send out the report to my group first before I post the email/Research Report to the website.
It should be up by Wednesday. I am giving everybody from Monday AM to Wednesday PM to see if they want in or not..
All I do is research stocks that look interesting, I provide the DD (that everybody hates doing, but I enjoy) and I let them decide. I don't push stocks or pump them or any of that BS. I have a capped list (meaning I won't let anybody else in)...So that way I keep a tight ring of friends/traders/investors...
Cheers!
FM
http://www.clubfatt.com
So Bob, Matt who wrote a HRCT research report comes on this thread and acts as dumb as a rock. I am not surprised since I have seen it all on Wall Street. I could only imagine what would have happened on the AZNT board it touts where able to delete its detractors posts, but that alas is another story.
BTW BOB, if you think I am making this up about Edward Williamson just verify the info with the founder of I-HUB
By: Fatt_Matt $$$$$
18 Nov 2000, 09:55 PM EST Msg. 4874 of 5146
(This msg. is a reply to 4869 by gpgmike.)
Blast from the past:
You guys see now why I pitched a fit at GOCA when they were trying to sell the HOTEL for stock in this guy's company???? (Ed Williamson)
SurgiCare, Inc. Terminates Relationship With Fifth Avenue Communications
HOUSTON, Nov. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- SurgiCare, Inc., (OTC Bulletin Board: SXCR) a Houston-based ambulatory surgical center holding company (ASC), announced today that it has terminated its public relations and investor relations contract with Fifth Avenue Communications Inc. effective immediately.
SurgiCare learned today that Fifth Avenue Communication and its founder, Edward B. Williamson III have are defendants in a civil action instituted by the Securities and Exchange Commission, alleging securities fraud. SurgiCare, which had recently engaged Fifth Avenue Communications for public relations and investor relation's services, decided immediately upon learning of the alleged fraud to cease all dealings, both formal and indirect with the troubled agency.
"We were very surprised to hear of the SEC's allegations against Fifth Avenue Communications, Inc.," says Charles Cohen, COO of SurgiCare Inc. "While this alleged fraud in no way involves SurgiCare, we felt that the immediate termination of the PR contract is in the best interest of SurgiCare and its shareholders."
About SurgiCare, Inc.
SurgiCare, Inc., offers licensed, freestanding Ambulatory Surgery Centers for use by physicians and its physician partners and their patients. Freestanding refers to the fact that the facilities are physically and organizationally independent from a hospital. Ambulatory Surgery means surgical procedures, which do not require overnight hospitalization after the surgery. The ASC's are run under the guidance of a committee of physician partners. The Company goal is to grow through mergers, acquisitions, and turnkey management contracts in conjunction with physician-involved supervision and potential equity participation within a public company model.
Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This news release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, including statements that include the words "believes," "expects," "anticipates" or similar expression. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of SurgiCare, Inc., (the Company) to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. (Such factors include, among others, the risk factors contained in the Company's Annual Reports and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.) In addition, description of anyone's past success, either financial or strategic, is no guarantee of future success. The Company will remain dependent upon future financing for its growth and development, and for it to successfully implement its business plan. No statement contained herein should be construed as indicating that such financing is or will be available, and if available, will be on terms favorable to the Company. This news release speaks as of the date first set forth above and the Company assumes no responsibility to update the information included herein for events occurring after the date hereof.
SOURCE SurgiCare, Inc.
CO: SurgiCare, Inc.; Fifth Avenue Communications Inc.
ST: Texas
IN: HEA MTC ADV
EDWARD WILLIAMSON - "Securities Recidivist' Had a relationship with Go Call Inc. Edward is a convicted murderer, has bribed FBI Undercover agents in a sting operation. Recently all of his assets where froze and has been charged with securities fraud for bilking investors in non existent conpanies. Edward is the nephew of Alan Wolfson. Hartcourt's relationship with Go Call Inc was recinded as well as the deal with the Alaskan Gold Mines which was another fraud that Hartcourt was involved in.
---------------------------
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/memalias.cgi?board=GOCA&member=Fatt_Matt
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=GOCA&read=908
Go Call (RB: GOCA)
Reply to msg. Post new msg. Email this msg.
By: Fatt_Matt $$$$$
04 May 1999, 06:14 PM EDT Msg. 908 of 5146
(This msg. is a reply to 907 by apemansoul.)
Investment Research Report----
Please read my post to SI (on Club Fatt! board) regarding the report, for full details.
Here is the link to the Report:
http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/Bureau/9458/index.html
I would like to hear comments on the report!
FM
Someone call security!! http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/memalias.cgi?member=Fatt_Matt
Bob, Matt is an expert in DD since he got his training from a person I am sure you are familiar with
By: Fatt_Matt $$$$$
31 Oct 1999, 10:21 PM EST Msg. 7262 of 185541
(This msg. is a reply to 7260 by drlvanb.)
Ivan,
I see that this is a joint partnership with the Chinese thing.. I have researched a lot of chinese stocks back when they were hot. Me and good ole Francious Goelo
Is this a 50% ownerhip deal? I didn't see that in the PR, or maybe I am just getting old..
So, over the 4 year period, they should gross 20$million right?
FM
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=HRCT&read=7262
By: Fatt_Matt $$$$$
30 Nov 1999, 05:13 PM EST Msg. 652 of 6751
(This msg. is a reply to 648 by hajidog.)
I became aware of this stock too, via an email alert and the HRCT news..
I am glad to FINALLY see a China stock that is filing. That means so much for the crediblity of a company . Ihaven't reveiewd it yet, but I will try to tonight...
I'm not long yet...But you all defintely have a cool looking stock here..ESPECIALLY the China part...The China stocks always come back...this one just needs some recognition..
FM
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=ASAT&read=652
/////////////////////////////
http://straighttalk.pixi.com/money_081100.html
DUMB, DUMBER, DUMBEST
Are there really still people who invest-without-looking in this day and age of so much cautionary writing about start-up companies? You betcha! In America, especially, there are plenty of dummies to go around.
One of the great cases of over-exuberance came out of the Wall Street Journal recently. There was a little company (and still is) called eSat. Nice name, huh? Absolutely reeks of possible money. "E" as in electronic and "Sat" as in satellite. When the company went public, there was a lot of buzz about it on the Internet. The SEC still hasn't determined if the chat was random, or organized by buyers who wanted to push up the price of the stock, or was planted by people associated with the company (very illegal).
We do know that one of the people closely associated with eSat was Regis Possino. He was a lawyer until he was disbarred. He's been convicted of both fraud and drug addiction. Nice guy to have fronting your company!
eSat is out of Los Angeles. One of its businesses is as an Internet service provider. It also supposedly had a business relationship with giant Lucent, but now admits it "overstated" the significance of that relationship. Lucent doesn't seem to know anything about any relationship.
But the buzz was on the Internet chat rooms and by the start of 1999, eSat shares had zoomed to almost $23.
Then the "overstatement" about Lucent came out. Then the company posted an operating loss of nearly $9 million. Its most recent audit expresses doubt that it is financially a viable company.
The last time I checked, you could buy eSat for about two bucks a share. It is not connected with eSat Telecom (whose webpage you frequently get if you type eSat in your search engine). It's an OTC stock not listed on the main exchanges. But a lot of people couldn't wait to get their hands on shares last year
http://www.pcij.org/stories/2002/pastrana.html
Young Filipino is King of Boiler Rooms
15-16 APRIL 2002
by SHEILA SAMONTE-PESAYCO This two-part series documents the life and times—as well as the large-scale fraud—perpetrated by Amador Pastrana, a 30-year old Filipino who operates what could be the biggest scam syndicate in the world. Pastrana, who is based in Manila and Los Angeles, is the brains of a global network of boiler room operations that have duped thousands of investors who had little knowledge of the financial market. This article traces Pastrana's rise from an impoverished student and telemarketer to head of a worldwide fraud syndicate. His story is also the story of how liberalized global financial flows, the stockmarket boom, and the dotcom bubble have provided fertile grounds for high-tech fraud. Investigators estimate that the Filipino has victimized thousands of people, including pensioners in Australia, New Zealand and even South Africa, where one of the owners of De Beers Diamonds fell prey to his schemes. Published accounts say that Pastrana has earned about $6 billion from his network of 150 boiler room operations in nine countries, including the Philippines. These are called "boiler rooms" because they usually work out of cramped office spaces with desks and telephones and apply high-pressure sales pitches on their victims. Each office has an army of telemarketers that call up retirees, pensioners, lottery winners and then pitch stocks of "pinksheet" companies, or those whose shares sell for a fraction of a penny, listed on the unregulated Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board (OTCBB) of the US NASDAQ.THE OPERATOR of what could be the biggest scam syndicate in the world is a Filipino, authorities in various countries say. Just 30 years old, Amador Apungan Pastrana, has become the face of 21st-century high-tech fraud. According to authorities here and abroad, he is the brains of a global network of boiler room operations that have duped hundreds of thousands of investors with little knowledge of the financial market, but with lots of money to spare. Pastrana's alleged victims include 4,000 people who lost $35 million they invested in one of his shell companies, thousands of retirees in Australia and New Zealand, and nearly 700 South Africans who lost a total of $28 million, of which $5 million belonged to businessman Lino Leoni, one of the owners of the renowned DeBeers diamond company. Accounts in the Internet and Australian newspapers say Pastrana has already amassed some $6 billion in a mere eight years, a wealth accumulated largely from running at least 150 boiler rooms in nine countries. But his operations have also earned him the ire of the police and the Securities and Exchange Commissions (SECs) in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and in some European countries. None, however, has managed to catch up with the slippery Filipino. Pastrana, who maintains posh homes in Manila and Los Angeles, is now on the watchlist of authorities in many countries, including the Philippines. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has also begun to investigate his activities. Police in Austria want to talk to him, as well as to US national Regis Possino, a disbarred lawyer convicted of fraud and drug dealing, and shady Saudi Arabian businessman Adnan Khashoggi. Media reports say the three men were members of a consortium that bought a small Viennese bank without a brokering license, and then turned it into a boiler room. But Tomas Syquia, acting director of the Compliance and Enforcement Division of the Philippine SEC, says building a case against the international syndicate is difficult because of the complexity of the modus operandi. Most of the victims are all overseas, making it hard and costly to gather information and court evidence. As of this writing, the PCIJ has yet to hear from Pastrana or his legal representatives in Manila, to whom the Center sent a written list of questions. Still, James Martin, director of Sydney-based Stock Investigation Research Society (SIRS), a network of victims of boiler room operators, says, "He (Pastrana) is the Henry Ford of boiler rooms. He has taken it into mass production scale like no one else." Called "boiler rooms" because they usually work out of cramped office spaces with desks and telephones and apply high-pressure sales pitches on their victims, operations like that of Pastrana's can be found in practically every continent. Each office has an army of telemarketers that call up retirees, pensioners, lottery winners - anybody who's neither a banker nor a broker - who are thousands of miles away, and more than likely in another country. The glorified telemarketers then pitch stocks of "pinksheet" companies, or those whose shares sell for a fraction of a penny, listed on the unregulated Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board (OTCBB) of the US NASDAQ. These boiler rooms hire expatriates with Western accents who present themselves as hotshot brokers of securities firms that have impressive-sounding names such as Morgan Lynch (a cross of US investment banks J.P. Morgan and Merrill Lynch), Griffin Securities, Muller & Sons, Dukes & Company, and Knowle & Sachs. They send out glossy newsletters, put up Internet sites and pester the potential victim with follow-up calls until he agrees to part with his savings and buy the stocks. Clients, who plunk down amounts that range from $1,000 to $5 million each, then receive instructions on how to send the payment by telegraphic transfer to a bank overseas. The companies collapse their operations after six months to a year or when too many clients itching to see returns start burning their phone lines. But like zombies, the firms come alive again in another office address or in another part of the world, using a different name and another set of incorporation papers. Often, too, the salespeople would say they are calling from Bangkok, Hong Kong or China, even if they are making the calls in, say, Manila. Clients who try to cash in on their investments are never successful. More often than not, the boiler rooms do not really buy the shares and merely pocket the money. When the clients run to their respective SECs for help, they find out they have put their trust in obscure companies that do not even hold a license to trade stocks or a legitimate office address. Their phone calls go to business centers paid to render secretarial work and receive calls that are automatically re-routed to the boiler room's landlines. Engineer Peter Harvey, who lives in the remote town of Kondinin in Western Australia, admits losing $150,000 from investing in OTCBB shares offered by boiler rooms allegedly owned by Pastrana. In an e-mail interview, Harvey recounts how he was first "sold" shares of companies believed to be part of Pastrana's own pinksheet empire, and then later told that his account was being transferred to another firm - and then another. As Harvey tells it, he had first dealt with First Federal Capital, a company operating in Makati but based in Palau, in 1997. A year later, he was told his account was being transferred to Pryce Weston, which had supposedly bought First Federal. In 1999, another company called Saxon and Swift, which also had offices in Vanuatu and Hong Kong, took over Pryce Weston. Harvey says the same thing happened with Bradshaw Global Asset Management, another boiler room company then based in Makati but with a representative office in Rancho Sta. Margarita in California. Some time in early 2000, Bradshaw's operations were taken over by Newport Pacific Securities and Management, also based in Makati. According to Harvey, Newport eventually ceased operations, and his account was moved to Gibson and Peterson Company, based in Bangkok. "I even flew over to the Philippines to meet them and have a look at their operations," says Harvey. He says he did not find anything suspicious at the time. Now, though, he has only one word to describe these companies: "parasites." Yet while Pastrana seems to be the present king of boiler rooms, he was not the inventor of this elaborate scam. Experts say boiler rooms began more than a decade ago in the United States, particularly in Florida, where they reportedly flourished due to lax investment rules there as well as the large population of retirees. SIRS's Martin reckons boiler rooms boomed soon after 1990, when the US SEC allowed the trading of the so-called "Regulation S" shares. The policy, meant to respond to the increasing globalization of the capital markets, allows the sale of securities not registered with the US SEC to be sold to offshore investors. But Martin says what it has really done is to allow boiler rooms to mislead investors outside of the United States. These investors are led to believe they are being sold shares in legitimate US companies, and that the transactions have the seal of approval of US regulators. Coming at a time when stock markets were doing very well, the boiler rooms hit pay dirt in the hundreds of thousands of people eager to invest even their nest eggs. When the FBI conducted a major sweep in the early 1990s, the boiler rooms simply moved their operations outside of the United States, eventually choosing countries that had no extradition arrangements with US law enforcement agencies, or with weak rules of law. Many of the boiler rooms thus set up their "dialing" offices in Canada, Hong Kong, the Bahamas, Panama, Costa Rica, Liberia and South Africa. Some apparently wound up in the Philippines, with one of them eventually employing Pastrana. A BS Computer Science graduate of Trinity College in Quezon City, Pastrana had first worked as a crewmember in a McDonald's outlet before he chanced upon a newspaper ad for telemarketers in a Makati-based firm called Griffin Securities. It turned out to be a boiler room operation, but Pastrana lasted long enough in the company to master the "business." Some of his former employees were told that Pastrana took some vital diskettes with him when he resigned from Griffin. They believe he used these to help set up his first company, which became First Federal Capital. According to the Philippine SEC records of AAP Management, Inc., his flagship company, Pastrana managed to have more than 10 companies in just a span of five years. It is believed these companies form part of his "legitimate" business and still do not include his boiler rooms. Among those listed as his previous positions were managing director of First Federal Capital, Inc. and president of Mendez Prior Hall, which authorities raided and were able to seize documents from showing the extent of its boiler room operations. Today, Pastrana is said to own more than 100 boiler rooms and shell companies around the world. Some of them are incorporated in small tax-haven territories such as the Bahamas, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Mauritius, Cayman Islands, Western Samoa, Turks and Caicos, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Island of Nevis, and the republics of Liberia and Seychelles. Those in the United States were incorporated in Nevada, Florida, Delaware and South Carolina. Martin, who says he was duped by Pastrana in an even more complicated way, has also received reports that Pastrana in the early 1990s had crossed paths with Sherman Mazur, a German national who was then running boiler rooms in the United States. In 1993, Mazur was sentenced to five years in prison in California for securities fraud. While he was serving time, Mazur reportedly passed on the management of his boiler rooms to Pastrana, "whom he trusted," says Martin. "But Amador not only took over these boiler rooms, (he) set up more." Records obtained on Pastrana's US corporate empire as of June 2000, though, lists only seven OTCBB-listed companies created out of a series of reverse mergers and acquisition of dormant firms. The results are several holding companies operating only on paper, usually with the same corporate secretary, Roy Rayo, or Filipino lawyer Claudine Montenegro whom Martin also sued for practising in the US without a license. The seven US holding companies are neatly spread out into different sectors. Apart from Digital Reach Holdings Corp., which takes care of investments, there is Key Holdings Corp., which was incorporated in Nevada, but is an "online gaming company based in Antigua or Dominican Republic." Netsat Holdings Ltd. is said to focus on telecommunications and Internet service, Your Future Holdings Inc. on educational development and technology, Labco Pharma on pharmaceuticals, and another Cayman-based holding company for food. There is also Stratasys, once owned by Martin but is now Pastrana's, which is a Bermuda-based holding firm supposedly handling software development. The shares of these companies are listed on the OTCBB, which is highly vulnerable to price manipulation. Not surprisingly, these nearly worthless company stocks are among the offerings of Pastrana's boiler rooms. Harvey himself says he was among those who loaded up on Labco Pharma shares. While the clients of his operations permanently part ways with their money, Pastrana has yet to stop raking it in. According to one of his former employees here in Manila, his companies' tills rang up a total of some $5 million a day in 2000. Other ex-employees say more than a third of that automatically went to Pastrana while only a tenth was used to buy legitimate stocks in behalf of clients. A former resident of a squatter community in Guadalupe Viejo in Makati, Pastrana is now said to own a $2.8-million apartment penthouse on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. "He also bought his mother a lovely gift: a $14-million house in Rancho Santa Margarita in Mission Viejo, California," says Martin. "A very nice son, don't you think?" In the Philippines, his properties reportedly include two luxury condominium units in the high-end Essensa East in Taguig, a villa with a view of the sea in Caylabne Bay, the Winners restaurant on Arnaiz Avenue in Makati, and units at The Peak, also in Makati. Authorities hot on Pastrana's trail say some of the properties have been placed under the name of his front companies such as Euro Pacific Trade Inc., or those of members of his immediate family. Pastrana's megabucks have also found their way into listed conglomerates such as Hong Kong's Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., as well as Singapore Telecoms, US metal producer Alcoa Inc., Pacific Cyberworks of Hong Kong, and US semiconductor firm Intel. United Resources Asset Management Inc., which was set up in May 2000 and acted as investment manager for the entire Pastrana group of companies, had a portfolio of $200,000 invested in these stocks. In its first year of operation, the company targeted an investment of over $20 million a year, according to AAP Management records. Some of his associates say that despite his supposed riches, Pastrana still has some simple joys, among them buying brand-name shoes at bargain prices in either Bangkok or Hong Kong. But he is also known for e-mailing his personal secretary to keep replenishing his stock of blue and black Mont Blanc pens, as well as showing off the results of his latest liposuction or the wonders cosmetic surgery has done on his face. Obviously, too, Pastrana is making good a promise his former associates say he made to himself several years back. When he was still a struggling college student, Pastrana was said to have sworn in true Scarlett O'Hara fashion: "I shall never go hungry again."
Bob, why am I not surprised? Do you think a former HRCT tout should be able to pass judgment against me?
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=HRCT&read=7499
Hartcourt Companies (BB: HRCT)
By: Fatt_Matt $$$$$
01 Nov 1999, 09:27 PM EST Msg. 7499 of 185541
I thought today was pretty good...
I liked the news I saw and the forthcoming news that somebody posted about...
I did make this a club pick (Club Fatt)..I didn't plan on telling everybody that..but LtTrader let that out...
We had a few members pick it up today...A few had orders at open but let it ride because how much it ran up so fast!! (gosh darn MARKET orders!!)..
Stock looks good though for a good play for a while...Not moving here..Gonna ride the wave for a bit.
Keep on Rockin'
FM
Bob, your a dipstick ------back to your Master de'Bating !!
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=392856
Which seems to be an aceptable way to conduct ones self by the Hartcourt Thread chairman
See Bob, it was Matt that deleted the post. http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=392863
Why would Matt not want investors to know this on topic information?
As published in Offshore Alert on February 26, 1999.
Mezzanine Capital linked to manipulation of penny stocks
A Bermuda Stock Exchange-listed company whose minority shareholders include subsidiaries of the Bank of Bermuda and financial services firm Lines Overseas Management is caught up in what appears to be a scheme to defraud investors on the NASDAQ over-the-counter market, we can disclose.
We have uncovered an astonishing list of proven abuses and allegations of fraud and dishonesty against individuals and companies associated with Bermuda-registered investment holding company Mezzanine Capital Ltd., including its Chairman and President, Eric Chess Bronk, although we have found nothing to incriminate LOM or the Bank of Bermuda.
Bronk, some of Mezzanine's other shareholders and firms closely-linked with Mezzanine have been accused of using a variety of methods to ramp up stock prices to artificially high values so insiders can rake in profits.
These include entering into apparently bogus business deals, setting up sham firms and sending out false and misleading press releases about the prospects of companies.
Apart from allegations of share ramping, one of the companies linked with Mezzanine, Atlanta-based franchise firm Uniforms for America, has been accused by several US franchise holders of defrauding them by taking their $25,000 franchise fee and then offering no support.
One of the most damning allegations uncovered in our investigation involves a company whose stock is traded by Mezzanine, California-based XtraNet Systems, whose management includes Bronk and fellow Mezzanine Capital director Gary Davies.
An officer of XtraNet has been accused of physically stealing the financial statements of a Nevis-based Internet credit card processing company called DataBank International from its fax machine last month and then releasing them as XtraNet's a few days later, sending its stock price and trading volume soaring.
Shortly after releasing the allegedly stolen results over the Internet, XtraNet's stock went from about 16 cents per share to nearly $4 over a two week period before slipping back again to about $1.50. Trading volume, which had been almost non-existent, shot up considerably, with the biggest dump off occurring on February 1, when 1.8 million shares were sold.
Incredibly, XtraNet is currently featured as the 'Stock of the Month' for February by a promoter operating from www.hotstocknews.com, whose glowing review of XtraNet - for which it admits it was paid in shares - was largely based on XtraNet’s allegedly bogus financials.
XtraNet had indeed been negotiating to merge with the Nevis company and put out several press releases last summer announcing the deal.
However, after the deal was effectively called off in August, 1998 because the Nevis company's principal became suspicious of Bronk, XtraNet never announced the deal was off and, instead, put out a misleading press release creating the impression that it had gone through smoothly. To this day, Mezzanine's web-site at www.mezz.com still contains press releases that create the impression the deal went through.
Mezzanine Capital is a closed-end investment fund that was listed on the Bermuda Stock Exchange in the first quarter of 1995 before the current BSX regulations were in place. Its bankers are the Bank of Bermuda in Bermuda and its legal advisors are Conyers, Dill & Pearman.
The company was introduced to Bermuda by CD&P, which also represented another BSX-listed company, NimsTec, that was delisted in 1997 after we exposed its misleading and inaccurate share prospectus.
Indeed, Graham Collis, a senior partner of CD&P, helped prepare the share prospectuses for both NimsTec and Mezzanine Capital.
Although registered in Bermuda, Mezzanine is run by a group of businessmen operating out of California and Arizona and has 112 different shareholders from several countries, including the United States, Canada, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Turks & Caicos Islands, Panama, Ireland, South Africa and Israel.
The company's President and Chairman is Eric Chess Bronk, of Irvine, California. Other directors are Joseph R. Glenn (Vice President), of Phoenix, Arizona; Mitchell A. Saltz, Gary Davies and Sloan B. Jones, all of Scottsdale, Arizona; Carl T. Suter, of Anaheim, California; CD&P subsidiary Codan Services Ltd. (Resident Representative) and Bermuda-based CD&P attorney Wayne Morgan (Assistant Secretary).
Mezzanine's shares have never traded on the BSX. The company posts a net asset value each week that can be determined solely on the whim of its directors, according to the company's share prospectus. It appears that this NAV has deviated little from its original $10 per share, even though the stock in which it invests fluctuates wildly.
Mezzanine essentially sells its stock to a handful of microcap companies traded on the NASDAQ over-the-counter market so that it shows up as assets on these companies' books and enhances solvency. In return, Mezzanine usually receives stock in these companies, which it then trades in the marketplace, or pays cash for Regulation ‘S’ securities.
Although the Bermuda firm of Arthur Morris & Co. appears as Mezzanine's accountants on its prospectus, the company's accounts are done by Utah-based Schvaneveldt & Co., whose boss declined to comment for this story, as did all of the parties being investigated.
Mezzanine's financial statements sometimes contain remarkable items. For example, a Note to Mezzanine's fiscal 1997 financials stated: "In the fiscal year ended June 30, 1995, the Company issued 1,000,000 shares of its common stock to acquire German Bearer Bonds that they valued at $10,099,306. In the fiscal year ended June 30, 1996, it was discovered that there was no established quantifiable redemption value for the Bonds. The Company responded to this discovery by taking a temporary write down of $10,099,206. The Bearer Bonds are listed as an asset of $100. The Company is seeking a private placement to sell the Bonds."
Since Mezzanine never pays dividends to its shareholders and its shareholders are not entitled to redeem their shares, according to its prospectus, its very existence seems to be to provide 'assets' to highly dubious companies, some of which have close links to Mezzanine's officers and shareholders.
Mezzanine's officers appear to manage companies whose shares are traded by Mezzanine and some of Mezzanine's shareholders also receive commissions and fees through entering into seemingly dubious business transactions, some of which are currently being litigated following disputes alleging fraud.
Mezzanine has or has had positions in the following US-based companies: XtraNet Systems, The Hartcourt Companies, Uniforms for America, Conectisys Corp., Phone Time Resources (now Global Access Pagers), Beverage Store Inc. (now Fortune Oil & Gas), Net Voice Technologies, Paystar Communications and Hycroft Environmental Corporation (of which we can find no trace). The stock of all but the one we could not locatefluctuates between a few cents and a few dollars, while each firm continually loses money.
All of the companies have an appalling track record.
Conectisys Corp. was found guilty by the SEC five months ago of participating in a stock manipulation scheme, although neither Mezzanine nor any of its known associates were parties to the action.
On September 22, 1998, Conectisys Corp. was ordered by the US District Court for the Central District Court of California to "disgorge $175,000 of proceeds derived from its fraudulent conduct", according to an SEC press release.
In related judgments against Andrew S. Pitt, Devon Investment Advisors Inc., Mike Zaman, B&M Capital Corp. and Smith Benton & Hughes, the defendants were ordered to disgorge a total of $1.06 million they had made from manipulating Conectisys stock.
"Based on the evidence presented at the trial, the court found that Pitt and Zaman together planned the manipulation of Conectisys stock and Zaman and Smith Benton carried out that manipulation with Pitt's assistance," stated an SEC press release.
"In the course of carrying out the manipulation, Zaman and Smith Benton controlled the number of Conectisys common shares available for sale on the market, dictated the prices at which those shares traded, engaged in 'daisy chain' trading with market participants to fill retail customer orders and artificially increased the price of the stock purchased by retail customers.
"The court also found that Pitt and Conectisys offered and sold restricted stock to private investors based on material misrepresentations and that Pitt and Conectisys drafted a false and misleading business plan that was supplied to potential investors.
"Finally, the court found that Pitt, Conectisys and Devon sold unregistered securities in violation of Section 5 of the Securities Act."
Conectisys, which has Mezzanine shareholder Mandarin Overseas Investment Company as a holder of more than five per cent of its stock, reported a net loss of $2.7 million for fiscal 1997.
Accounting firm BDO Seidman, which took over the audit of Conectisys in 1996 after the company dismissed its previous auditors over "disagreements", said net deficiencies in the company's working capital of $1.24 million and $780,357 at November 30, 1997 and 1996, respectively, raised "substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern".
Despite the 1997 loss, the annual salary of its President, Robert Spigno, was increased to $160,000, while his wife, Patricia, received $80,000. All three senior officers, including the Spignos, also received a 'Staying Bonus' equivalent to 50 per cent of their annual salary, payable in restricted common stock, and each had options to buy 500,000 shares at "50 per cent of the average market value in the 30 days prior to it happening", according to documents filed with the SEC.
Another company closely-linked with Mezzanine, called The Hartcourt Companies, also featured on the periphery of a current investigation by the SEC into alleged stock manipulation by stock promoter Investor's Edge, although Hartcourt has not been officially implicated.
Investor's Edge has been accused by the SEC of being paid to write glowing reviews of stock that were presented to investors as impartial recommendations.
Investor's Edge recommended Hartcourt as a "strong buy" when its stock was at $1.40 but it has plummeted to 32 cents. Hartcourt's President Alan Viet Phan, who was interviewed as part of the Investor's Edge promotion, claims the promoter asked him for money but he refused to pay.
The Hartcourt Companies started an Investor's Bulletin Board for its stock last month but it was quickly taken down after a flood of negative messages from investors, some of whom claimed they had been ripped off.
Hartcourt's President Alan Phan, whose name has appeared as a director of another Mezzanine-related company called Uniforms for America, told us the bulletin board was taken down not because of the negative postings but because "someone planted a virus" and he said it would be back up again soon.
Despite the company's history of losses, Phan declared to investors that some of America's greatest companies were criticized by investors in their early days and he even likened himself to Microsoft's Bill Gates.
Hartcourt is currently suing two of Mezzanine's shareholders, Turks & Caicos Islands-registered Promed International and Mandarin Overseas Investment Company Ltd., claiming Hartcourt was defrauded in a deal to sell it 34 Alaskan gold-mines.
Hartcourt, which paid an up-front fee comprising 1.3 million Regulation 'S' Securities for the mines, reversed the deal when the defendants allegedly failed to provide a geological evaluation showing the mines were worth at least $10 million, as promised.
Hartcourt, which reported a loss of $1.6 million in 1996 and a loss of $474,372 for 1997 - $135,000 of which was due to the company issuing preferred stock dividends - now wants its shares back from Mandarin and Promed.
In another case, Eric Bronk and one of Mezzanine's other shareholders, Pagestar Inc., which appears to be operated out of Mezzanine's and Bronk's office in California, are co-defendants in a class action lawsuit filed in California on May 12, 1998 in which they are accused of stock manipulation.
Plaintiff Joseph A. Nigro claims he was conned into investing about $40,000 worth of shares in Satellite Technologies Corp. and the company it merged into, Pagestar Inc., based on false press releases about the firm's capabilities. The company's stock went as high as $3.75 based on hype but had plummeted to seven cents by September, 1997 when the alleged fraud was uncovered, states the complaint.
The statement of claim alleges that Bronk and the other individual co-defendants misled Nigro so they could "sell their own shares in the companies…and to indirectly benefit themselves by securing additional capital to pay their own salaries and bonuses as directors, employees and/or officers of the companies."
Spigno, whose attorneys are seeking between $2 million and $3 million, claims that Pagestar was nothing more than a shell company with no bona fide operations, a similar claim that has been leveled at XtraNet Systems.
There is similar discontent among investors in Uniforms for America, which sells franchises that supply medical and career uniforms.
In an investment package sent out by the company two months ago, there was a report dated August 12, 1997 by CSK Securities Research of California forecasting Uniforms for America stock price would be "in the $10 to $12 range in 1998 and in the $15 to $20 range in 1999". The reality is that, at February 25, 1999, Uniforms for America stock was trading for 56 cents.
Our research showed that CSK Securities is a business run from the home of Christina and Neal Kohlhaas, who started the company five years after being declared bankrupt in San Diego.
Uniforms for America, whose President is James D. Brockman, is facing another crisis at the moment and the possibility of a class action lawsuit from franchise holders who claim they have been defrauded.
Several of the 50 existing franchise holders in the US claim they paid up to $25,000 each for franchises but have received little or no support by the firm, as promised in contracts.
Apart from their franchise fee, some franchise holders told us they had paid Uniforms for America for merchandise but the company had failed to pay the manufacturers, who in turn eventually stopped delivering clothes to stores. One manufacturer was owed in the region of $1 million, according to one franchise holder.
It has also been claimed that Uniforms for America, which we have been told holds the leases on store properties, had failed to pay the rent to some landlords even though franchise holders had paid the rent to Uniforms for America, leading to problems for some franchise holders.
Additionally, it was claimed that Uniforms for America has tried to force some of the more successful franchise holders out of business so the corporation could take over their stores.
James Brockman failed to return a message from this newsletter.
Interestingly, Uniforms for America also holds stock in the Hartcourt Companies and Phone Time Resources, two of the half dozen or so companies Mezzanine has links with. Additionally, Hartcourt's President, Alan Phan, was listed as a director of Uniforms for America last year, although he denied to us he had been a director.
Further evidence that there might be a widespread conspiracy to defraud investors is provided by the fact that Regis Possino, a disbarred California attorney who runs Phone Time Resources, has also been involved with Hartcourt, as its corporate counsel (AFTER he was disbarred) and as an 'investment advisor' and is also a behind the scenes figure at Uniforms for America.
Possino's name appears in so many businesses linked with Mezzanine that it raises the question of whether he might be a hidden shareholder in the company.
Apart from disbarment in 1984, Possino's history includes being imprisoned for one year in 1978 for trying to sell $38,500 worth of marijuana to undercover Los Angeles cops, trying to place a monthly order for $680,000 worth of cocaine with the same officers, attempting to sell $5 million of stolen US treasury bills or bearer bonds to an undercover treasury agent, undergoing a $12 million personal bankruptcy and interfering with a witness at his trial on the marijuana offence, leading to her dismissal from the jury and his imprisonment for the rest of his trial.
"One evening during the trial, petitioner encountered one of the trial jurors as she was waiting for a table at a restaurant," reads the official record of his appeal against disbarment.
"He approached her, initiated a conversation and bought drinks for her and her companions. Although they did not discuss the merits of the case, petitioner asked the juror what she thought of the prosecutor. He also talked to her about himself, other persons involved in the trial and the judge. Learning that the juror was a religious person, petitioner discussed his own religious beliefs with her. The conversation ended when the juror and her friends were called to dinner."
Details of all of the above, with the exception of his bankruptcy, which was closed in 1992 with assets of $229,000 and liabilities of $12.18 million, were presented to the California Bar Association at his appeal against disbarment.
Although Possino's appeal against disbarment was thrown out, three of the eight members of the panel voted against disbarment and thought his licence should only be suspended for five years!
The involvement of so many businessmen with dubious pasts contradicts a claim by Mezzanine President Eric Bronk in the company's 1997 annual return with the Bermuda Stock Exchange that Mezzanine invests in companies with "strong management".
Bronk declined to discuss a list of questions we sent to him. "It appears clear that if you were interested in doing a fair article on Mezzanine Capital that you would not have waited until less than 48 hours before your publication to make any inquiries," he wrote by e-mail.
"Suffice to say that neither your questions nor the quality of your newsletter appear to merit serious or detailed response.
"Mezzanine Capital invests in emerging microcap public companies whose stock price can, by their very nature, be volatile. In the companies in which it invests, Mezzanine Capital takes only a minority position, usually less than ten per cent, and certainly has no input into the management or promotion of the companies". The last part of the sentence, however, is clearly false. In a document Mezzanine filed with the Bermuda Stock Exchange, Bronk and fellow Mezzanine director Gary Davies are listed as part of the 'Management' of XtraNet Systems.
Bronk is also listed as the Chief Financial Officer of XtraNet and Davies as one of its directors in official XtraNet documents and the telephone and fax numbers used for Mezzanine are not only the same as XtraNet's but also that of Net Voice Technologies, both companies Mezzanine holds or has held stock positions in.
Bronk, who is a licensed California attorney, has a colorful past. In 1991, he paid $1.1 million to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to settle an investigation into his role in a failed savings and loan institution in which regulators suspected fraud and embezzlement.
Additionally, Bronk and two of his companies were ordered to hand over an unspecified sum of money that was in a bank account in Los Angeles. Despite the settlement, Bronk denied any wrongdoing.
Our research shows that he has been a defendant in nine lawsuits filed at California State Court and there have been four judgments against him. Several of the cases involve allegations of dishonesty.
We have handed over details of our research to the SEC.
Matt, how about this hoot. Alan Wolfson/CYBERAMERICA makes deal with Alan Phan for Worlds 3rd. largest ISP in China. LOL BTW Matt, guess who Hartcourts legal council was? LOL
"According to the legal opinion of its counsel, Hartcourt has a valid assignment from CyberAmerica Corp., the original signer of the purchase agreement with the Chinese party. The company intends to proceed with the purchase and will provide the financing as its only condition precedent to closing."
China Internet Provider Denies Takeover by Hartcourt of U.S.
Bloomberg News
Mar 24 1999 12:19AM ET
Shanghai, March 24 (Bloomberg) -- China Infohighway Communications Ltd., China's third largest Internet provider, denied it agreed
to sell a 90 percent stake in the company to Hartcourt Companies Inc. of the U.S. and said there are no plans to bring foreign
investors into the company.
``This is sheer nonsense,' said Lu Qun, an official in Infohighway's publicity department.
Foreign participation in the Chinese Internet market is currently banned.
Hartcourt issued a statement in Los Angeles yesterday citing President Alan Phan as saying it agreed to buy 90 percent of
Infohighway subject to conditions.
These include an independent valuation that would establish the worth of the Chinese company at more than $80 million, and
Hartcourt arranging $30 million in financing to fund Infohighway's expansion and the repayment of some of its debts.
Lu said Infohighway, part owned by the Chinese government, plans to reshuffle its shareholdings in the near future but foreign parties definitely won't be considered.
Infohighway has no port of its own, instead using facilities supplied by China Telecom, the state telecommunications group with a
virtual monopoly on the domestic market.
Last year Infohighway was embroiled in controversy when senior managers couldn't agree on development strategies. Its general
manager, Zhang Shuxing, resigned as a result.
Infohighway started in May 1995 as a private company but expanded with the entry of three government-backed firms as
shareholders. It has registered capital of 80 million yuan ($9.6 million).
China now has about 2.1 million Internet users, including Infohighway's 70,000 customers.
Computer Economics Inc., a U.S.-based research firm forecasts that China's user numbers will reach 37.3 million by 2005, putting
it in second place behind the U.S., which by then will have 126.6 million users. (Infohighway's web site: www.ihw.com.cn)
=================================================
(COMTEX) B: The Hartcourt Cos. Inc. Issues Statement
B: The Hartcourt Cos. Inc. Issues Statement
LOS ANGELES (March 24) BUSINESS WIRE -March 24, 1999--The Hartcourt Cos.
Inc. (OTC:HRCT) reported that in reference to the rebuttal of the
Chinese party in the Internet transaction, Hartcourt stated that it
stands by its statement in the news release of Tuesday, March 23.
According to the legal opinion of its counsel, Hartcourt has a valid
assignment from CyberAmerica Corp., the original signer of the purchase
agreement with the Chinese party. The company intends to proceed with
the purchase and will provide the financing as its only condition
precedent to closing.
Hartcourt's counsel is contacting the Chinese representatives for
further clarification of their position.
Certain statements in this news release only constitute
"forward-looking" statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the
Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Such forward-looking statements
involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the
actual results, performance or achievement expressed or implied by such
forward-looking statements to differ materially from the
forward-looking statements.
-0- tjm/la* la/la
CONTACT: The Hartcourt Cos. Inc., Los Angeles
Frederic Cohn, 310/788-2634
KEYWORD: CALIFORNIA
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS ENVIRONMENT ENMED COMED Today's
News On The Net - Business Wire's full file on the Internet
with Hyperlinks to your home page.
URL: http://www.businesswire.com
*** end of story ***
Yes it was posted and yes it was deleted, if no by ezcomngo2 then it was deleted by his assistant
See Matt, this is the chairman speaking. http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=392856
Sad, so Sad
He should be in Jail with me for making such a post
Dear wannabe stock tout,
Frank NG will post factual information on any board he pleases.
Frank NG posted factual information on the Investorshub HRCT board which was never posted on the thread.
The facts are you do not like what NG posted.
You do not make up the rules.
I-HUB does.
If Matt agrees with your post which looks like a third grader wrote then it should be included in the terms of service of I-HUB.
BTW, name calling is also against the terms of service.
Message In Reply To:
Hey FrankNG aka PITA !!!!! Let me set a couple of things straight w/ you....and anyone else reading this -----
1. There was no such post "removed" by me on the HRCT board....I think (if needed, and it's not) iHUB Admin. can
support that FACT !
2. As for your "visitation rights" on the HRCT board....here's the FAX-JACK we've all heard it before....fact/fiction/innuendos/bullshit/claims/counter-claims/libel/slander/unsupported cut/pastes / repetitive non-stop bashing / hyperbole to the 'nth degree it's all
for the viewing on the Hartcourt RagingBull board....historical and up-to-date. Anything.....trust me.....anything you post has been viewed 100 times over....and over and over ====== bottom line "old news" No Good !!
There are a good group of people who have resided on the iHUB HRCT board to communicate with one another about Hartcourt and pertinent other discussion points....most relative to China operations. If we want to re-visit the VERY AGED collection of cut/pastes from you.......it's simply a key stroke away on RagingBull......I'm sure you've visited it often to collect your historical data ----- right ?!?!?!?!? :)
You can master 'da debate (pun intended) all you want about HRCT in Jail ------- have a ball......rest assured, nothing's
changed on the HRCT board ------- read YOU are just NOT wanted .
Have a nice day !!
Just dont take my word for it Matt. Take it from someone you used to write research reports with back on your old site fattclub.com
Posted by: Francois+Goelo
Date: 10/25/2000 11:36:21 AM (ET)
Post # of 776
¶ HRCT, GVRG, from David Marchant, Offshore Alert...
http://www.ragingbull.altavista.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=CVRG&read=158
http://www.ragingbull.altavista.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=HRCT&read=49279
http://www.ragingbull.altavista.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=HRCT&read=61350
http://www.ragingbull.altavista.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=HRCT&read=61361
David is a reliable source of information and shareholders in these Companies should seriously reflect on these Posts... I know they should make JJ happy....
JMHO, F. Goelo + + +
------------------------------
here is one of those links Goelo posted;
By: obnr
19 Apr 2000, 06:37 PM EDT Msg. 61361 of 185540
(This msg. is a reply to 61357 by lotusly.)
Among other things, Regis Possino is a convicted drug dealer, disbarred attorney and former bankrupt who is a behind the scenes figure in several related penny stock scams, such as Hartcourt, Uniforms for America, NetVoice Technologies, XtraNet Systems, Mezzanine Capital, etc.
An all around splendid chap.
If the moron is reading this maybe he would like to sue me. A summons can be delivered to 123 S. E. 3rd Avenue, #173, Miami, FL 33131.
He was too afraid to return my calls before I exposed him in my newsletter about 18 months ago.
Still, it does not require a particularly large set of balls to fleece old ladies.
David Marchant
Matt, here is more information on career swindler Pattinson Hayton who according to Nevada Energys Law suit which is in their SEC filings if you go to the link at the bottom of this post. To read more about Hayton please visit http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/txt-srch-sec?text=Hayton&mode=Simple
f. 100,000 shares (or 600,000 pre-split) on
February 18, 1997 to The Hartcourt
Companies, another company owned and
controlled by Mr. Hayton;
32. Nevada Energy received no consideration for the issuance
of any of this stock.
33. This stock was obtained from Nevada Energy as part of and
in furtherance of a scheme and artifice to defraud in violation of the mail
fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. Sec.1341, and the wire fraud statute, 18 U.S.C.
Sec.1343.
H. THE HAYTON GROUP LOSES CONTROL OF NEVADA ENERGY
34. On or about August 11, 1996, John Goold resigned as a
director of Nevada Energy, as he was concerned (quite properly) that the
instructions he was receiving by telephone or facsimile from Mr. McCloy (on
behalf of the Hayton Group) were improper.
20
Mr. Goold was replaced by Stefan Tevis, whom the Hayton Group believed
(ultimately incorrectly) would do as Mr. Hayton and Mr. McCloy directed.
35. On or about August 28, 1996, Golden Chance failed to make
its scheduled payment of $500,000 under the Note. Because the board of directors
of Nevada Energy was under the control of the Hayton Group, they failed to
demand that Golden Chance make this required payment. Instead, on September 13,
1996, the then-President of Nevada Energy, Jeffrey E. Antisdel (who was
unaffiliated with the Hayton Group), wrote a letter to Golden Chance informing
it that notice of Default (as defined in the Note) was being given and demanding
the entire remaining balance as immediately due and payable. By the same letter,
Nevada Energy made a demand upon Waterford under the Guaranty as guarantor of
Golden Chance's obligations. Pursuant to the Hayton Group's scheme, neither
Golden Chance or Waterford responded to these demands.
36. On September 30, 1996, Nevada Energy's officers (Mr.
Antisdel and Richard A. Cascarilla, the Secretary and General Counsel, who also
was unaffiliated with the Hayton Group) attempted to file an electronic Form 8-K
on EDGAR with the Securities and Exchange Commission setting forth Golden
Chance's default on its obligations under the Note and the Subscription
Agreement. As the revelation of this information could have harmed the Hayton
Group's continuing scheme to loot Nevada Energy (which at the time was far from
completed), Nevada Energy's board of directors, pursuant to instructions from
Mr. Hayton and Mr. McCloy (using either or both the telephone and the mail),
immediately terminated Messrs. Antisdel and Cascarilla without cause.
Thereafter, they were replaced by
21
Mr. Tevis (as President) and Kenton Bowers (as Secretary), whom the Hayton Group
perceived as being more willing to follow Mr. Hayton's and Mr. McCloy's
instructions to loot the Company.
37. As Golden Chance never made proper payments under the
Note, and the cure period for those payments had long since run, a Default
existed under the Note. On December 4, 1996, after determining that such a
Default existed, the holders of all five shares of Series B Preferred Stock
(which included Mr. Cascarilla) executed a written consent, either personally or
by proxy, electing Michael R. Kassouff (a director of Nevada Energy prior to the
closing of the Transaction and a holder of one share of Series B Preferred Stock
who also was unaffiliated with the Hayton Group) as the Series B Director
pursuant to the Certificate.
38. On or after February 3, 1997, Mr. Tevis resigned his
positions as an officer and director of Nevada Energy, because he was concerned
(appropriately) that the Hayton Group's activities were illegal. Mr. Hayton
apparently replaced Mr. Tevis as President on February 10, 1997 (although he
purported to act as President beginning as early as January 23, 1997); Mr. Tevis
never was replaced as a director.
39. On approximately February 6, 1997, Mr. Bowers was
terminated as Secretary of Nevada Energy because the Hayton Group believed (with
good reason) that he would no longer do its bidding pursuant to their illegal
scheme and instead was cooperating with various investigations into the Hayton
Group's activities. Although the Nevada Energy board previously had purported to
appoint Mr. Quinn as Secretary (on January 21, 1997), legally this appointment
could become effective only after Mr. Bowers was terminated.
22
40. On February 13, 1997, three creditors of Nevada Energy
(including Mr. Cascarilla) filed a petition for involuntary bankruptcy against
Nevada Energy in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Nevada
(the "Bankruptcy Court"). On or about March 3, 1997, the Bankruptcy Court
appointed a trustee in bankruptcy for Nevada Energy, over the opposition of the
Hayton Group. In connection with the appointment of a trustee, Mr Quinn
purported to appear as an attorney on behalf of the Company and Mr. Hayton, even
though both Mr. Quinn and Mr. Hayton knew that Mr. Quinn had been suspended
from the practice of law as a result of his conviction of grand theft by
embezzlement from one of his clients.
41. On approximately May 9, 1997, Messrs. Cain and Cannell
resigned as directors of Nevada Energy, leaving only Mr. Kassouff as a director.
On May 19, 1997, Mr. Kassouff filled the vacancies resulting from Messrs. Cain
and Cannell's resignations with Mr. Cascarilla and H. Lawrence Herth (who also
was unaffiliated with the Hayton Group). On May 19, 1997, the new board of
directors terminated Mr. Hayton and Mr. Quinn as officers of Nevada Energy,
replacing them with Mr. Cascarilla as President and Mr. Herth as Secretary.
Thereafter, the new management of Nevada Energy continued their investigation
into the activities of the Hayton Group, which resulted in (among other things)
this lawsuit.
42. On August 25, 1998, the Bankruptcy Court confirmed Nevada
Energy's plan of reorganization, over the (withdrawn) opposition of Mortlake,
acting on behalf of the Hayton Group. During discovery into Mortlake's
opposition to the Company's plan of reorganization, Nevada Energy learned that
the Hayton Group (led by Messrs. Hayton
23
and McCloy) was actively attempting to prevent anyone from investigating its
illegal activities.
I. THE HAYTON GROUP'S ONGOING ILLEGAL SCHEME AND PATTERN OF
RACKETEERING ACTIVITY
43. The Hayton Group had good reason to fear an investigation
into its activities, because its illegal scheme was continuing, albeit with
another company.
44. In approximately October 1997, the Hayton Group began to
invest in Zulu-Tek, formerly known as Netmaster Group. The Hayton Group's scheme
with Zulu-Tek has used techniques similar to those used with Nevada Energy,
including:
a. Employing an attorney who had been suspended from the
practice of law for stealing money from clients (with Zulu-Tek, he served as the
registered agent for the company);
b. Setting up bank accounts nominally in the company's name
but actually solely under the Hayton Group's control to hold most of the
company's cash;
c. Withdrawing most of the funds from these bank accounts for
the use, directly or indirectly, of the Hayton Group;
d. Refusing to allow the proper officers of the company
access to the records of these bank accounts; and
e. Controlling the company without Mr. Hayton becoming an
officer or director.
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http://www.freeedgar.com/search/ViewFilingsData.asp?CIK=712803&Directory=950152&Year=99&...
Bob, I posted this factual information on the HRCT thread. Why did the chairman delete it? It was never posted before on the thread. As you can see it was on topic
As published in Offshore Alert on February 26, 1999.
Mezzanine Capital linked to manipulation of penny stocks
A Bermuda Stock Exchange-listed company whose minority shareholders include subsidiaries of the Bank of Bermuda and financial services firm Lines Overseas Management is caught up in what appears to be a scheme to defraud investors on the NASDAQ over-the-counter market, we can disclose.
We have uncovered an astonishing list of proven abuses and allegations of fraud and dishonesty against individuals and companies associated with Bermuda-registered investment holding company Mezzanine Capital Ltd., including its Chairman and President, Eric Chess Bronk, although we have found nothing to incriminate LOM or the Bank of Bermuda.
Bronk, some of Mezzanine's other shareholders and firms closely-linked with Mezzanine have been accused of using a variety of methods to ramp up stock prices to artificially high values so insiders can rake in profits.
These include entering into apparently bogus business deals, setting up sham firms and sending out false and misleading press releases about the prospects of companies.
Apart from allegations of share ramping, one of the companies linked with Mezzanine, Atlanta-based franchise firm Uniforms for America, has been accused by several US franchise holders of defrauding them by taking their $25,000 franchise fee and then offering no support.
One of the most damning allegations uncovered in our investigation involves a company whose stock is traded by Mezzanine, California-based XtraNet Systems, whose management includes Bronk and fellow Mezzanine Capital director Gary Davies.
An officer of XtraNet has been accused of physically stealing the financial statements of a Nevis-based Internet credit card processing company called DataBank International from its fax machine last month and then releasing them as XtraNet's a few days later, sending its stock price and trading volume soaring.
Shortly after releasing the allegedly stolen results over the Internet, XtraNet's stock went from about 16 cents per share to nearly $4 over a two week period before slipping back again to about $1.50. Trading volume, which had been almost non-existent, shot up considerably, with the biggest dump off occurring on February 1, when 1.8 million shares were sold.
Incredibly, XtraNet is currently featured as the 'Stock of the Month' for February by a promoter operating from www.hotstocknews.com, whose glowing review of XtraNet - for which it admits it was paid in shares - was largely based on XtraNet’s allegedly bogus financials.
XtraNet had indeed been negotiating to merge with the Nevis company and put out several press releases last summer announcing the deal.
However, after the deal was effectively called off in August, 1998 because the Nevis company's principal became suspicious of Bronk, XtraNet never announced the deal was off and, instead, put out a misleading press release creating the impression that it had gone through smoothly. To this day, Mezzanine's web-site at www.mezz.com still contains press releases that create the impression the deal went through.
Mezzanine Capital is a closed-end investment fund that was listed on the Bermuda Stock Exchange in the first quarter of 1995 before the current BSX regulations were in place. Its bankers are the Bank of Bermuda in Bermuda and its legal advisors are Conyers, Dill & Pearman.
The company was introduced to Bermuda by CD&P, which also represented another BSX-listed company, NimsTec, that was delisted in 1997 after we exposed its misleading and inaccurate share prospectus.
Indeed, Graham Collis, a senior partner of CD&P, helped prepare the share prospectuses for both NimsTec and Mezzanine Capital.
Although registered in Bermuda, Mezzanine is run by a group of businessmen operating out of California and Arizona and has 112 different shareholders from several countries, including the United States, Canada, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Turks & Caicos Islands, Panama, Ireland, South Africa and Israel.
The company's President and Chairman is Eric Chess Bronk, of Irvine, California. Other directors are Joseph R. Glenn (Vice President), of Phoenix, Arizona; Mitchell A. Saltz, Gary Davies and Sloan B. Jones, all of Scottsdale, Arizona; Carl T. Suter, of Anaheim, California; CD&P subsidiary Codan Services Ltd. (Resident Representative) and Bermuda-based CD&P attorney Wayne Morgan (Assistant Secretary).
Mezzanine's shares have never traded on the BSX. The company posts a net asset value each week that can be determined solely on the whim of its directors, according to the company's share prospectus. It appears that this NAV has deviated little from its original $10 per share, even though the stock in which it invests fluctuates wildly.
Mezzanine essentially sells its stock to a handful of microcap companies traded on the NASDAQ over-the-counter market so that it shows up as assets on these companies' books and enhances solvency. In return, Mezzanine usually receives stock in these companies, which it then trades in the marketplace, or pays cash for Regulation ‘S’ securities.
Although the Bermuda firm of Arthur Morris & Co. appears as Mezzanine's accountants on its prospectus, the company's accounts are done by Utah-based Schvaneveldt & Co., whose boss declined to comment for this story, as did all of the parties being investigated.
Mezzanine's financial statements sometimes contain remarkable items. For example, a Note to Mezzanine's fiscal 1997 financials stated: "In the fiscal year ended June 30, 1995, the Company issued 1,000,000 shares of its common stock to acquire German Bearer Bonds that they valued at $10,099,306. In the fiscal year ended June 30, 1996, it was discovered that there was no established quantifiable redemption value for the Bonds. The Company responded to this discovery by taking a temporary write down of $10,099,206. The Bearer Bonds are listed as an asset of $100. The Company is seeking a private placement to sell the Bonds."
Since Mezzanine never pays dividends to its shareholders and its shareholders are not entitled to redeem their shares, according to its prospectus, its very existence seems to be to provide 'assets' to highly dubious companies, some of which have close links to Mezzanine's officers and shareholders.
Mezzanine's officers appear to manage companies whose shares are traded by Mezzanine and some of Mezzanine's shareholders also receive commissions and fees through entering into seemingly dubious business transactions, some of which are currently being litigated following disputes alleging fraud.
Mezzanine has or has had positions in the following US-based companies: XtraNet Systems, The Hartcourt Companies, Uniforms for America, Conectisys Corp., Phone Time Resources (now Global Access Pagers), Beverage Store Inc. (now Fortune Oil & Gas), Net Voice Technologies, Paystar Communications and Hycroft Environmental Corporation (of which we can find no trace). The stock of all but the one we could not locatefluctuates between a few cents and a few dollars, while each firm continually loses money.
All of the companies have an appalling track record.
Conectisys Corp. was found guilty by the SEC five months ago of participating in a stock manipulation scheme, although neither Mezzanine nor any of its known associates were parties to the action.
On September 22, 1998, Conectisys Corp. was ordered by the US District Court for the Central District Court of California to "disgorge $175,000 of proceeds derived from its fraudulent conduct", according to an SEC press release.
In related judgments against Andrew S. Pitt, Devon Investment Advisors Inc., Mike Zaman, B&M Capital Corp. and Smith Benton & Hughes, the defendants were ordered to disgorge a total of $1.06 million they had made from manipulating Conectisys stock.
"Based on the evidence presented at the trial, the court found that Pitt and Zaman together planned the manipulation of Conectisys stock and Zaman and Smith Benton carried out that manipulation with Pitt's assistance," stated an SEC press release.
"In the course of carrying out the manipulation, Zaman and Smith Benton controlled the number of Conectisys common shares available for sale on the market, dictated the prices at which those shares traded, engaged in 'daisy chain' trading with market participants to fill retail customer orders and artificially increased the price of the stock purchased by retail customers.
"The court also found that Pitt and Conectisys offered and sold restricted stock to private investors based on material misrepresentations and that Pitt and Conectisys drafted a false and misleading business plan that was supplied to potential investors.
"Finally, the court found that Pitt, Conectisys and Devon sold unregistered securities in violation of Section 5 of the Securities Act."
Conectisys, which has Mezzanine shareholder Mandarin Overseas Investment Company as a holder of more than five per cent of its stock, reported a net loss of $2.7 million for fiscal 1997.
Accounting firm BDO Seidman, which took over the audit of Conectisys in 1996 after the company dismissed its previous auditors over "disagreements", said net deficiencies in the company's working capital of $1.24 million and $780,357 at November 30, 1997 and 1996, respectively, raised "substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern".
Despite the 1997 loss, the annual salary of its President, Robert Spigno, was increased to $160,000, while his wife, Patricia, received $80,000. All three senior officers, including the Spignos, also received a 'Staying Bonus' equivalent to 50 per cent of their annual salary, payable in restricted common stock, and each had options to buy 500,000 shares at "50 per cent of the average market value in the 30 days prior to it happening", according to documents filed with the SEC.
Another company closely-linked with Mezzanine, called The Hartcourt Companies, also featured on the periphery of a current investigation by the SEC into alleged stock manipulation by stock promoter Investor's Edge, although Hartcourt has not been officially implicated.
Investor's Edge has been accused by the SEC of being paid to write glowing reviews of stock that were presented to investors as impartial recommendations.
Investor's Edge recommended Hartcourt as a "strong buy" when its stock was at $1.40 but it has plummeted to 32 cents. Hartcourt's President Alan Viet Phan, who was interviewed as part of the Investor's Edge promotion, claims the promoter asked him for money but he refused to pay.
The Hartcourt Companies started an Investor's Bulletin Board for its stock last month but it was quickly taken down after a flood of negative messages from investors, some of whom claimed they had been ripped off.
Hartcourt's President Alan Phan, whose name has appeared as a director of another Mezzanine-related company called Uniforms for America, told us the bulletin board was taken down not because of the negative postings but because "someone planted a virus" and he said it would be back up again soon.
Despite the company's history of losses, Phan declared to investors that some of America's greatest companies were criticized by investors in their early days and he even likened himself to Microsoft's Bill Gates.
Hartcourt is currently suing two of Mezzanine's shareholders, Turks & Caicos Islands-registered Promed International and Mandarin Overseas Investment Company Ltd., claiming Hartcourt was defrauded in a deal to sell it 34 Alaskan gold-mines.
Hartcourt, which paid an up-front fee comprising 1.3 million Regulation 'S' Securities for the mines, reversed the deal when the defendants allegedly failed to provide a geological evaluation showing the mines were worth at least $10 million, as promised.
Hartcourt, which reported a loss of $1.6 million in 1996 and a loss of $474,372 for 1997 - $135,000 of which was due to the company issuing preferred stock dividends - now wants its shares back from Mandarin and Promed.
In another case, Eric Bronk and one of Mezzanine's other shareholders, Pagestar Inc., which appears to be operated out of Mezzanine's and Bronk's office in California, are co-defendants in a class action lawsuit filed in California on May 12, 1998 in which they are accused of stock manipulation.
Plaintiff Joseph A. Nigro claims he was conned into investing about $40,000 worth of shares in Satellite Technologies Corp. and the company it merged into, Pagestar Inc., based on false press releases about the firm's capabilities. The company's stock went as high as $3.75 based on hype but had plummeted to seven cents by September, 1997 when the alleged fraud was uncovered, states the complaint.
The statement of claim alleges that Bronk and the other individual co-defendants misled Nigro so they could "sell their own shares in the companies…and to indirectly benefit themselves by securing additional capital to pay their own salaries and bonuses as directors, employees and/or officers of the companies."
Spigno, whose attorneys are seeking between $2 million and $3 million, claims that Pagestar was nothing more than a shell company with no bona fide operations, a similar claim that has been leveled at XtraNet Systems.
There is similar discontent among investors in Uniforms for America, which sells franchises that supply medical and career uniforms.
In an investment package sent out by the company two months ago, there was a report dated August 12, 1997 by CSK Securities Research of California forecasting Uniforms for America stock price would be "in the $10 to $12 range in 1998 and in the $15 to $20 range in 1999". The reality is that, at February 25, 1999, Uniforms for America stock was trading for 56 cents.
Our research showed that CSK Securities is a business run from the home of Christina and Neal Kohlhaas, who started the company five years after being declared bankrupt in San Diego.
Uniforms for America, whose President is James D. Brockman, is facing another crisis at the moment and the possibility of a class action lawsuit from franchise holders who claim they have been defrauded.
Several of the 50 existing franchise holders in the US claim they paid up to $25,000 each for franchises but have received little or no support by the firm, as promised in contracts.
Apart from their franchise fee, some franchise holders told us they had paid Uniforms for America for merchandise but the company had failed to pay the manufacturers, who in turn eventually stopped delivering clothes to stores. One manufacturer was owed in the region of $1 million, according to one franchise holder.
It has also been claimed that Uniforms for America, which we have been told holds the leases on store properties, had failed to pay the rent to some landlords even though franchise holders had paid the rent to Uniforms for America, leading to problems for some franchise holders.
Additionally, it was claimed that Uniforms for America has tried to force some of the more successful franchise holders out of business so the corporation could take over their stores.
James Brockman failed to return a message from this newsletter.
Interestingly, Uniforms for America also holds stock in the Hartcourt Companies and Phone Time Resources, two of the half dozen or so companies Mezzanine has links with. Additionally, Hartcourt's President, Alan Phan, was listed as a director of Uniforms for America last year, although he denied to us he had been a director.
Further evidence that there might be a widespread conspiracy to defraud investors is provided by the fact that Regis Possino, a disbarred California attorney who runs Phone Time Resources, has also been involved with Hartcourt, as its corporate counsel (AFTER he was disbarred) and as an 'investment advisor' and is also a behind the scenes figure at Uniforms for America.
Possino's name appears in so many businesses linked with Mezzanine that it raises the question of whether he might be a hidden shareholder in the company.
Apart from disbarment in 1984, Possino's history includes being imprisoned for one year in 1978 for trying to sell $38,500 worth of marijuana to undercover Los Angeles cops, trying to place a monthly order for $680,000 worth of cocaine with the same officers, attempting to sell $5 million of stolen US treasury bills or bearer bonds to an undercover treasury agent, undergoing a $12 million personal bankruptcy and interfering with a witness at his trial on the marijuana offence, leading to her dismissal from the jury and his imprisonment for the rest of his trial.
"One evening during the trial, petitioner encountered one of the trial jurors as she was waiting for a table at a restaurant," reads the official record of his appeal against disbarment.
"He approached her, initiated a conversation and bought drinks for her and her companions. Although they did not discuss the merits of the case, petitioner asked the juror what she thought of the prosecutor. He also talked to her about himself, other persons involved in the trial and the judge. Learning that the juror was a religious person, petitioner discussed his own religious beliefs with her. The conversation ended when the juror and her friends were called to dinner."
Details of all of the above, with the exception of his bankruptcy, which was closed in 1992 with assets of $229,000 and liabilities of $12.18 million, were presented to the California Bar Association at his appeal against disbarment.
Although Possino's appeal against disbarment was thrown out, three of the eight members of the panel voted against disbarment and thought his licence should only be suspended for five years!
The involvement of so many businessmen with dubious pasts contradicts a claim by Mezzanine President Eric Bronk in the company's 1997 annual return with the Bermuda Stock Exchange that Mezzanine invests in companies with "strong management".
Bronk declined to discuss a list of questions we sent to him. "It appears clear that if you were interested in doing a fair article on Mezzanine Capital that you would not have waited until less than 48 hours before your publication to make any inquiries," he wrote by e-mail.
"Suffice to say that neither your questions nor the quality of your newsletter appear to merit serious or detailed response.
"Mezzanine Capital invests in emerging microcap public companies whose stock price can, by their very nature, be volatile. In the companies in which it invests, Mezzanine Capital takes only a minority position, usually less than ten per cent, and certainly has no input into the management or promotion of the companies". The last part of the sentence, however, is clearly false. In a document Mezzanine filed with the Bermuda Stock Exchange, Bronk and fellow Mezzanine director Gary Davies are listed as part of the 'Management' of XtraNet Systems.
Bronk is also listed as the Chief Financial Officer of XtraNet and Davies as one of its directors in official XtraNet documents and the telephone and fax numbers used for Mezzanine are not only the same as XtraNet's but also that of Net Voice Technologies, both companies Mezzanine holds or has held stock positions in.
Bronk, who is a licensed California attorney, has a colorful past. In 1991, he paid $1.1 million to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to settle an investigation into his role in a failed savings and loan institution in which regulators suspected fraud and embezzlement.
Additionally, Bronk and two of his companies were ordered to hand over an unspecified sum of money that was in a bank account in Los Angeles. Despite the settlement, Bronk denied any wrongdoing.
Our research shows that he has been a defendant in nine lawsuits filed at California State Court and there have been four judgments against him. Several of the cases involve allegations of dishonesty.
We have handed over details of our research to the SEC.
MORE INFO ABOUT REGIS POSSINO AND PATTISON HAYTON WHO CONTROLLED THE HARTCOURT COMPANIES AND HIS TIES TO FIRST CAPITAL NETWORK INC. ACCORDING TO THIS STORY PATTISON HAYTONS INVESTMENT BANKER WAS FIRST CAPITAL NETWORK WHICH WAS CONTROLLED BY STOCK SWINDLERS RAMON D'ONOFRIO AND FELLOW SWINDLER REGIS POSSINO. PATTISON HAYTON JOINS A LONG LINE OF FRAUDULENT PROMOTERS CONNECTED TO REGIS POSSINO. PATTISON HAYTON RECENTLY WAS CHARGED BY THE SEC FOR SECURITIES FRAUD IS YOU DO A SEARCH AT THE SEC WEB SITE YOU WILL FIND THAT MARK D'ONOFRIO WAS RECENTY CHARED ON ANOTHER STOCK FRAUD AS WELL. http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/lr16980.htm
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http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/lr17046.htm
Tradamax Group, Inc., Pattinson Hayton and Conrad Diaz: Lit. Rel. No. 17046 / June 21, 2001 SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION v. TRADAMAX GROUP, INC., PATTINSON HAYTON, AND CONRAD DIAZ, Civ. ...
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Investor With Checkered Past Controls Two Public Firms
By John R. Emshwiller
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
10/13/1994
The Wall Street Journal
An Australian investor with a checkered past takes control of two public
companies and trading volume soars in both stocks. Should that be a reason
for elation or concern on the part of other holders?
In the case of little Quadrax Corp., a Portsmouth, R.I., supplier of
composite materials, and Apogee Robotics Inc., a Fort Collins, Colo., maker
of computerized materials-handling systems, the answer for now seems to
favor caution.
The investor is Pattinson Hayton, a 44-year-old who hails from Orroroo,
South Australia, and sometimes adds "Jr." or "III" to his name. Despite a
history of legal and financial troubles, Mr. Hayton this year became
chairman and, through his investment firm, a major shareholder of both
companies.
The ease with which he did it is a reminder that a public stock listing and
Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure rules still give investors no
magical protection. That's particularly true for tiny stocks like these two,
which trade in the Nasdaq Small Cap realm.
Mr. Hayton has been an executive or major holder of small public companies
before. In one such case he was sued by the SEC, eventually cited for
contempt and fined $60,000 by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., for
failing to file required documents. But because all of this occurred more
than five years ago, it doesn't have to be disclosed under SEC rules. More
recently, in California, state banking authorities have issued a written
order questioning Mr. Hayton's integrity.
In general, stock-related misdeeds are still "much more prevalent at smaller
companies than larger ones," says Stuart Allen in Washington, D.C., a former
senior SEC investigator. Tiny stocks' prices are often easy to manipulate
because of the relatively thin trading, says Mr. Allen, now a senior
associate with the financial-investigations firm of Lindquist, Avey,
Mcdonald, Baskerville Inc.
Mr. Hayton declined to be interviewed. His lawyer, Timothy MacDonald, did
accept detailed written questions and replied with a brief statement saying
"the questions posed aren't accurate representations" of Mr. Hayton or his
investment firm, Conagher & Co. Mr. Hayton's defenders say he's a
respectable businessman who is simply interested in financing promising new
technologies.
According to Quadrax and a July SEC filing by Conagher, Conagher invested
about $3 million (plus some Conagher preferred stock) for a stake of about
29% in Quadrax. Quadrax had reason to welcome the money. Its $5.7 million
loss for 1993 greatly exceeded revenue of $1.6 million.
An August SEC filing by Apogee says that Conagher obtained about a third of
Apogee's roughly 18 million shares in a swap for some Conagher preferred
that Conagher was supposed to repurchase over time for $2 million. The
filing also said that Conagher planned to sell about five million of its
Apogee shares to "certain third parties." Apogee had a loss of $1.1 million
in the nine months through March 31, on revenue of $853,000. The company
hasn't yet reported its fiscal 1994 full-year results.
Since Mr. Hayton entered the picture, both stocks' volume has surged, as the
charts indicate (See related illustrations -- WSJ Oct. 13, 1994). But
shareholders haven't made a killing in either stock. Quadrax ended at
$3.9375, up 18.75 cents on Nasdaq Stock Market volume of 210,200 yesterday.
Apogee closed at 21.875 cents, off 1.5625 cents on volume of 129,400.
Mr. Hayton nearly bought control earlier this year of a third public
company, Out-Takes Inc. of Santa Monica, Calif. But after reaching a
tentative accord, OutTakes backed off.
"It was not the right transaction for us," says its president, Robert
Shelton; other financing was arranged. He adds that Mr. Hayton's investment
banker in the Out-Takes negotiations was First Capital Network Inc. of Santa
Monica and one of its officials, Mark D'Onofrio.
According to SEC records, Mark D'Onofrio's father and longtime business
associate Ramon has been convicted four times for criminal violations of
securities laws, enjoined from further violations more than a half-dozen
times in civil actions and in 1975 was described by a federal appeals court
in New York as "ubiquitously criminal." The son, Mark D'Onofrio, has been
the subject of three SEC enforcement actions. Just last month, according to
the SEC, he and his father agreed to a permanent injunction barring them
from promoting stock for any broker or stock issuer, settling the SEC
stock-manipulation case in federal court in New York by agreeing to pay
$940,000 in penalties.
At the D'Onofrios' office, a woman who answered the phone said that the
D'Onofrios were unavailable.
In 1983, First American Bank in Nashville obtained a $1 million default
judgment against Mr. Hayton in connection with a note he had guaranteed.
That judgment remains largely unpaid, according to a lawyer for the bank.
In 1988, the SEC filed a suit in a Washington, D.C., federal court against
Mr. Hayton charging that firms he controlled had failed to file required
disclosure documents. Mr. Hayton later was found in contempt and fined
$60,000 for failing to comply with a court order that the documents be
filed.
Two years ago, Mr. Hayton was in the public markets again through his
controlling interest in Rally Ventures Ltd., a Santa Monica company that
raised money from the public to invest in other companies. In early 1992,
Rally made a $5 million debt offering in connection with its effort to buy a
unit of the Bank of Beverly Hills that administered more than $500 million
in retirement accounts. That purchase was blocked by the California
Superintendent of Banks.
In a written order, the state official said Rally's "financial condition is
uncertain," pointing to the "unsubstantiated" value of the firm's assets,
including notes supplied by another Hayton company. The superintendent added
that Mr. Hayton's "integrity . . . is subject to question." And it said that
in 1991, the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service issued a
deportation warrant for Mr. Hayton, who failed to report for deportation.
(INS officials say they won't comment on the case, as such records are
confidential.)
The Rally Ventures debt offering is the subject of a lawsuit filed earlier
this year in a Madison, Wis., state court. Unhappy investors claim they were
falsely told the debentures were a "no-risk" investment, adding that their
money was improperly taken out of a trust account created to hold their
funds. The suit seeks a refund plus interest and damages.
Mr. Hayton isn't named as a defendant, although the suit alleges he helped
put together a prospectus that contained "intentional misrepresentations."
Roggensack says she didn't name Mr. Hayton as a defendant because she
thought it would be difficult to collect from him in the event of a
judgment: "He is supposedly very difficult to pin down."
Matt, here is some factual information On Hartcourt in there SEC filings. In Hartcourts SEC filings is a person named Robert Harper. If this where posted on the Hartcourt thread it would be deleted by the chairman even though it is 100% factual.
"Thus, it should be of more than passing interest to learn that D'Onofrio, his son Mark, and a man identified as his non-eponymous brother Robert Harper are now in the business of advising small publicly held companies through an outfit called United Atlantic Investments, described by one of its clients as "investment bankers" and by one of its associatesas "a loose-knit group that does deals."
Who ' s Riding This Horse ?
---
A Shady Tout
Backs an OTC Number
By Diana Henriques
05/09/1988
Barron's
(Copyright (c) 1988, Dow Jones & Co., Inc.)
LOS ANGELES -- No doubt about it: Ray D'Onofrio is back inbusiness.
Ray's name is not exactly a household word like, say,"Boesky" or "Vesco," so this news may not strike a chord of alarm with the investing public. And that's a pity -- indeed, perhaps a danger. For in the past 18 years, Ramon N. D'Onofrio has assembled a criminal record at least as colorful as that infamous pair, and rather more extensive.
He has pleaded guilty to criminal charges of securitiesand bankruptcy fraud and served a short stint in prison in the mid-'Seventies. His past co-defendents have included Wall Street notables and foreign financiers, some of whom he ultimately helped convict as the price of his own plea bargain with the government. His stomping grounds stretch from Long Island, where he helped loot a major dairy in the late 'Sixties, to Salt Lake City, where his stock deals again drew the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission as recently as 1982. The one common thread in D'Onofrio's varied and peripatetic career is this: When the dust settled, lots of small investors were left holding the bag -- usually a bag of nearly worthless over-the-counter stock.
Thus, it should be of more than passing interest to learnthat D'Onofrio, his son Mark, and a man identified as his non-eponymous brother Robert Harper are now in the business of advising small publicly held companies through an outfit called United Atlantic Investments, described by one of its clients as "investment bankers" and by one of its associatesas "a loose-knit group that does deals."
No roster of those deals is available, unfortunately, and neither D'Onofrio nor anyone at United Atlantic was willing to chat about their business. But Barron's has located at least one of United Atlantic's current investment-bankingclients -- a little Oregon company called Kinesis.
Fueled by exaggerated claims about the company's products and potential, stock in Kinesis soared from early 1987 levels of around $10 a share to well past $20 a share in January only to collapse in February. With somewhere around 14 million shares outstanding, according to Kinesis, the company's market capitalization of nearly $140 million stands in dizzy contrast to its sparse assets and limited track record. And throughout this roller-coaster ride, details of the company's financial affairs have been almost impossible
to come by.
Casual as its corporate structure seems to be, United Atlantic Investments sports an impressive address: Suite 640, 1801 Avenue of the Stars, Century City, Los Angeles. But that lofty home office turns out to be a rent-a-suite arrangement that the company shares with at least two dozen other small endeavors with names like "Beverly Hills Consulting Corp." and "Fortune Care USA." Two cheery receptionists field callers for one and all. Phones jangle in the back rooms, which are back-lit by the smoggy sunlight of SouthernCalifornia.
It's a far piece from here to the Long Island flatlandswhere D'Onofrio's first notable encounter with the criminaljustice system occurred.
On Feb. 8, 1971, in a federal indictment announced by then Attorney General John Mitchell himself, the government charged that D'Onofrio had conspired with co-defendant Joseph P. Pfingst, at the time a state Supreme Court justice in New York, to take control of the W.M. Evans Dairy Co. and the Evans Amityville Dairy Inc. The defendants, the prosecutors alleged, then sold off the dairy's assets and pocketed the cash before causing the dairy to file for bankruptcy. D'Onofrio later pleaded guilty to bankruptcy fraud in federal court in New York and testified against the judge, who was convicted in April 1971. D'Onofrio was fined $10,000 and given a three-year suspended sentence with two years'probation.
Before his probationary period was over, however, D'Onofrio had other problems. In November 1971, the SEC filed its own massive civil complaint in federal court in New York against D'Onofrio and 43 other individual and corporate defendants, alleging securities fraud and stock manipulation.
A second civil complaint was filed in the same court in August 1972, charging that D'Onofrio was "the architect" of a scheme to sell the public the unregistered shares of a company called Galco Leasing Systems Inc. at "artificially inflated prices." At the same time, D'Onofrio was again indicted by a federal grand jury in Manhattan, this time on criminal charges of bribery and stock manipulation. His co-defendants included Robert R. Hagopian and Stephen Sanders, both mutual-fund managers, and John Peter Galanis, a D'Onofrio associate who later built up a dubious tax-shelter empire that has attracted its own share of prosecutorial attention. This indictment charged that D'Onofrio, Galanis and co-defendant Akiyoshi Yamada had bribed the two fund managers to buy stock at inflated values, thus manipulatingthe price of the shares.
Only a few months later, in November 1972, federal prosecutors in New York announced yet another indictment charging D'Onofrio and New York broker George C. Van Aken with bribing investment fund managers to buy overpriced, unregistered shares in two companies, Academic Development Corp. and Science Systems & Technology Inc.
By that time, however, D'Onofrio had long been a fugitivesomewhere abroad. Nonetheless, in July 1973, D'Onofrio and Van Aken were indicted in New York federal court again, along with stockbroker William I. Strub; Swiss banker Alfred Herbert, formerly of Bank Hofmann A.G. in Zurich; and Peter Rosenthal, a stock salesman. Among other things, the defendants were accused of artificially boosting the price of stock in a company called Health Evaluation Systems from $1 to $20 in four months during 1970. In tandem with this indictment, the SEC sought a permanent injunction -- ultimately granted in November 1974 -- against D'Onofrio, charging that he and other defendants had manipulated the price of shares in a company called Meridian Fast Food Services. The SEC complained that the company's shares had been artificially kited from $5 a share in July 1971 to $20 a share in February 1972, when the SEC suspended trading.
In the summer of 1973, D'Onofrio was at last apprehendedin London. Facing extradition, he came home and, in July 1973, cut a deal with federal prosecutors and the SEC. He pleaded guilty in New York federal court to a small assortment of criminal-fraud charges, was sentenced to 18 months in prison, and agreed to testify for the government in a number of other criminal and civil securities fraud cases. In November 1974, he surrendered at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida to serve his jail term, less time off for good behavior.
Then, in 1982, D'Onofrio surfaced again in an SEC civilenforcement action in Salt Lake City. This time, the SEC accused D'Onofrio, Jack R. Coombs of Salt Lake City, and three other stock promoters of scheming to sell unregistered shares in two virtually worthless "shell" corporations, Total Investment Co. and Turk Corp., at prices inflated by "false and misleading shareholder communications." Specifically, the SEC complained that the promoters arranged in 1980 to merge Total Investment with Lyn-Jay Coin Inc., a private slot-machine distribution business controlled by D'Onofrio. A similar arrangement was undertaken in 1981, when Turk Corp. was merged with Specialized Game Systems Inc. of Los Angeles,controlled by D'Onofrio and co-defendant Barry M. Woodland.
The SEC complained, in part, that the information provided to shareholders was "false and misleading" because it failed to disclose D'Onofrio's role in the mergers and his criminalbackground.
But despite that same background, the SEC settled the case when D'Onofrio and his colleagues, without admitting or denying the allegations in the complaint, consented to be permanently enjoined from violating federal securities laws. "Further," the SEC reported, "defendant D'Onofrio, in settling this action, has agreed to (1) not serve, directly or indirectly, as an officer or director of any publicly traded company for five years, and (2) annually report to the commission for five years, on any affiliation he may have had during the preceding year with any public company, directly or indirectly, as an officer, director, 'significant employee,' control person, or owner of 5% or more of any class of equity security of such entity."
That five-year period did not expire until Dec. 28, 1987-- but by then, according to people who have done business with him, D'Onofrio was already active as a financial adviser in Los Angeles. One such person is Gerry Brodsky, the president of the aforementioned Kinesis Inc., headquartered in Salem, Ore., whose shares are quoted in the pink sheets.
Brodsky says that he first got to know Ray D'Onofrio andsome of the other people at United Atlantic Investments about six years ago through the thoroughbred business. Brodsky is a bloodstock agent, he explains, and he manages some of D'Onofrio's thoroughbred horses. And what does he understand United Atlantic Investments to be? ``They're basically investment bankers,'' Brodsky explains. ``They help takecompanies public and raise the capital.''
Which was just what United Atlantic Investments did for Kinesis, Brodsky says. In January 1985, UAI found a public shell company for Kinesis to merge into -- an easy way, he notes, to gain access to the public equity markets without all the fuss of a formal prospectus and registrations with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Some principals in United Atlantic Investments invested directly in Kinesis, Brodsky continues, and United Atlantic Investments "is obligated to finance us until we either make it or don't make it." According to Brodsky, Kinesis is a fledgling research and development endeavor trying to market several products -- horseshoes, athletic shoe insoles, athletic flooring, even a golf club -- all of which supposedly have the capacity to store and then return energy. Thus, a Kinesis-designed sneaker would absorb the impact of a runner's foot-strike and return it in the form of an extra boost for the runner's next stride.
It sounds like it was borrowed from the plot of WaltDisney's The Absent-Minded Professor. "Oh, you mean the one about 'Flubber'?" asks Brodsky with a genial laugh. "Yes, I guess it does." But there is a difference, he adds: There is no special patented material, such as the famous 'Flubber,' from which Kinesis products are made. Rather, the products employ existing compounds available from several suppliers.
And there are no chemistry professors, absent-minded orotherwise, tinkering away in some Kinesis laboratory. According to Brodsky, Kinesis "contracts everything out," including its scientific research, which is farmed out to a private Seattle company operated as a part-time venture by two members of the Kinesis board of directors.
Thus, Brodsky says, the company is able to keep itsoverhead very low; indeed, Kinesis is located in a second-floor spare room in Brodsky's modest home on a sidestreet near the Salem public library.
Besides establishing Kinesis as a public company and recruiting market-makers to trade its shares, United Atlantic Investments helped Kinesis raise money by selling shares to Ivanhoe Venture Capital Ltd. of San Diego, a "small business investment company" licensed and financed by the Small Business Administration. Until very recently, one of the general partners in Ivanhoe Venture Capital was Pacifica Management Co., just over half of which is owned by Bob Harper, who is the chairman of Kinesis and, according toseveral sources, Ray's brother.
The remainder of Pacifica Management is owned -- and the proxy on all of Pacifica shares is exercised -- by Exten Ventures Inc. of San Diego. Exten is an over-the-counter company that calls itself a "merchant banker." It advises small companies on going public and raising capital through a variety of techniques, including mergers with blind pools andsubsidiary spin-offs.
Exten Ventures has just named Ray D'Onofrio to its own board of directors. And what does D'Onofrio bring to the corporate party down in San Diego? "Oh, about 25 years' investment banking experience, plus international contacts in Europe," reports Edward F. Myers, president of Exten.
Myers says he has known D'Onofrio for years -- indeed, he acquired the shell that became Exten Ventures through D'Onofrio's firm back in 1970. The two men lost touch from 1971 until 1985, Myers continues. Then, when Myers reactivated Exten Ventures in San Diego in 1985, he got a call from D'Onofrio, who had also moved to the West Coast. The renewed acquaintance led to some business referrals,Myers added, with Exten occasionally splitting finders' feeswith United Atlantic.
As Myers explains it, United Atlantic is one of many "terribly loose-knit groups" across the country with which Exten Ventures does business. "They are two or three people who get together and work together and put deals together," he says. "I could name six more of them that we work with. It's a network. I've been in this business for 16 years. You get to know people all over the country. How do you find a blind pool? The answer is, you pick up the phone and you call five people that you know, and maybe one of them has one thatyou can use."
As for D'Onofrio's extensive criminal background, Myers says, "Yes, I was aware of it. But in my opinion, everything he's doing is trustworthy at the moment. Look, a lot of good people have a run-in with the law occasionally, and my feeling is if someone makes a mistake, he shouldn't bepenalized for life for it."
Besides, Myers adds, D'Onofrio owns a small stake in Exten and is only one of five votes on the board. "All we get from him is his expertise and advice. I wouldn't let him control the company; I wouldn't make him an officer. But I guess the point is, I feel this is all behind him."
Myers confirms that it was Ray D'Onofrio who introducedIvanhoe Venture Capital to Kinesis. "We did a big investigation on it before we invested," he recalls. "The story is this: Boeing developed a particular compound . . . a composite which has some special properties. The people who developed it sold the rights to this patent to Kinesis. They said, 'Wouldn't it be a great thing for racehorses?' So theydeveloped a horseshoe."
When advised that this story didn't remotely match what Brodsky told Barron's about the company -- that, for openers, there is no special patented material from which Kinesis products are made -- Myers cheerfully deferred to Brodsky. Anyway, Myers adds, the research done at D'Onofrio's suggestion prompted Ivanhoe Venture Capital to buy 400,000 shares of Kinesis.
Because of its modest shareholder list and limited assets,Kinesis is not required to file either a formal prospectus or any subsequent quarterly or annual financial information with the SEC or shareholders. But apparently the company has not provided such information even to all of its own officers and directors. Director DeVere Lindh, a respected engineer with Boeing Commercial Aircraft Co. and one of the part-time owners of the research company that is working on the Kinesis horseshoe, owns "somewhere between 4% and 5%" of Kinesis, he says. But Lindh says he cannot recall ever seeing a formal prospectus or any quarterly financial information, and board meetings are rare. "This may sound ridiculous, but Gerry has been handling all of that," Lindh says. "I think something is coming out soon." During a recent interview at a restaurant in Portland, Brodsky apologized that the closest thing he had to financial records on the company was a brochure publishedlast year by United Atlantic Investments.
That brochure is silent on such mundane things asownership, audits, assets, liabilities, and cash flow. But it is eloquent in its descriptions of the Kinesis horseshoe, christened the "Seattle Shoe," which "may have the potential to . . . absorb and reduce a significant amount of potentially dangerous concussive force incurred by race horses . . . . {and} temporarily store and then release the concussive force translating it to propulsive energy that reduces fatigue in horses and increases speed and endurance."
Both Brodsky and the United Atlantic Investmentspromotional material on Kinesis clearly link the development of the horseshoe to the invention of the "Seattle Foot," a patented and widely honored prosthetic device developed under a grant from the Veterans Administration and featuredrecently in DuPont Co. advertisements starring amputeeathlete Bill Denby.
But the claimed connections -- aside from their publicity value -- seem a bit tenuous. The design of the Seattle Foot was patented in 1984 by Dr. Ernest Burgess of Seattle and several colleagues, with certain rights retained by the Veterans Administration; it is made of synthetic materials trademarked by DuPont. "There's nothing special about thematerials we use," Burgess explained. "The patent is for thedesign."
So where does Kinesis come in?
As Brodsky tells it, one of his fellow investors in theownership of an injury-prone racehorse was Richard Colonel, an engineer at Boeing in Seattle. Colonel knew Lindh, who
worked with Burgess on the Seattle Foot, Brodsky continues. Colonel and Lindh formed Technology Innovations, which in turn contracted with Kinesis to develop a prototype of the Seattle Shoe for horses. Thus, any patents ultimately issued for the Seattle Shoe will actually be owned by Technology
Innovations, Brodsky says.
As for the Kinesis horseshoe itself, early test reportsare encouraging but the jury is decidedly still out, confirms Lindh. Selling the horsey set on a new and very odd contraption like the Seattle Shoe "is a lengthy process and one where you have to overcome a certain amount of preconceived misperceptions," Lindh explains. "But we're progressing at a reasonable rate, and I think that what has been said technically {about the horseshoe} has beenaccurate. That's all I can report on."
The Seattle Shoe is not expected to be put into production until September, at the earliest, and it has not been approved for use during races anywhere in America, Brodsky concedes. But, he adds, Kinesis already has expanded its horizons to other products that employ the same principles of energy storage and rebound, including a new mid-sole forhuman athletic shoes.
Here, according to the United Atlantic Investments brochure and Brodsky himself, Kinesis is really hitting its stride. In May 1987, the UAI brochure claims, Kinesis "signed a proprietary information agreement with Reebok, one of the world's largest manufacturers of human athletic and walking shoes. . . . After preliminary meetings, Kinesis entered into an agreement with Reebok for the joint testing and evaluation of the prototype. Testing is expected to be completed by October 1987, although no assurance can be given that the testing and evaluation will be successful."
Here, too, a little research raises doubts as to theaccuracy of the United Atlantic Investments information about Kinesis. John Gillis, a spokesman for Boston-based Reebok, says the contacts between the two companies were limited to a "very vague and very preliminary" proprietary information agreement. "They came in with a couple of shots at making the material in a form for a midsole, but it was nowhere near satisfactory," Gillis continues. "Then we learned that they
were using this relationship to boost their stock -- so ourlegal department jumped in."
Barry Nagler of Reebok's legal staff picks up the story. "The proprietary information agreement was terminated by letter dated Jan. 25, 1988, and sent to Kinesis," he reports. A short time later, he adds, investigators with the enforcement branch of the SEC asked Reebok for details about the Kinesis deal. "I don't know what they were looking for, but they were asking us questions similar to the ones you are asking." The SEC declined to comment on any pendinginvestigations.
While Brodsky insists there are no hard feelings between
Kinesis and Reebok, he does admit that Kinesis has egg on its face as a result of United Atlantic's European financingactivities on the company's behalf.
"We wanted to raise some funds in Europe, and our investment bankers -- United Atlantic -- went to Europe to do some private placements of stock. Somehow they contacted a company that was interested in placing our stock," Brodsky recalls. The foreign company, it turned out, was called Griffin-Hayhurst Ltd. in Gibraltar, which had put out its own newsletter "making statements about our company which were gross exaggerations," Brodsky complains. "They made a mess of things."
The Griffin-Hayhurst publication, in a curious echo of thethumbnail corporate sketch offered by Myers of Exten Ventures, reported that Kinesis "is involved in the research, testing, manufacturing and design of a high technology synthetic material. This material is currently used in products for athletic wear, golf and horse-racing."
What makes this non-existent Kinesis material special, the Gibraltar enthusiasts continued, is that "in layman's terms, it is like walking on a set of springs that, instead of bouncing you back up when you step on them, they push you forward and make you move faster."
The newsletter also repeated -- and expanded on -- theReebok connection, predicting that "the company is a particularly attractive growth opportunity since it has the
material that every shoe company will have to use if they are going to compete with Reebok. Look for a possible takeover bid from Reebok." And, in case any potential European investors remained unpersuaded, the newsletter added breathlessly: "During the month of January, we have learned that the Merrill Lynch Growth Fund in the U.S. has beenquietly acquiring substantial numbers of Kinesis stock."
The Merrill Lynch Growth Fund was doing no such thing, in January or any other month, a spokesman for the firm reports. When Merrill learned of the newsletter's claim, it reached for its own lawyers, who dispatched a huffy "cease anddesist" letter to the Kinesis office in Brodsky's home.
As the Griffin-Hayhurst fiction made the rounds in Europe, Kinesis stock soared past $20 a share late last year. It then retreated to mid-1987 levels and recently has barely drawn any quotes at all from its sole U.S. market-maker -- a development that Brodsky concedes has caused some very hard feelings among European investors who bought Kinesis sharesat $21 or more on the strength of the Gibraltar novella.
So how did United Atlantic come to enlist an overimaginative outfit like Griffin-Hayhurst as a Kinesis market-maker? "I don't know," Brodsky shrugs. "That's the first time they've operated in Europe, so far as I know. But we sat down with United Atlantic and said, 'We've got to stop this.' I think the company in Gibraltar has left -- we couldn't find them.''
Yet a telephone call by Barron's in mid-April toGriffin-Hayhurst in Gibraltar was promptly answered by a receptionist who, when asked about Kinesis, transferred the caller to someone named Jerry Sherman. Sherman confirmed that Griffin-Hayhurst still buys and sells Kinesis "for ourclients," and offered a bid-offer quote of "around $12-$14 ashare."
But when pressed for details about his company's Griffin-Hayhurst connections, Brodsky simply defers to Mark D'Onofrio at United Atlantic. "He might know," Brodsky adds. "Of course, it's a sore point with them, so if you call and say you're from Barron's, they'll probably panic." Panicked or not, neither the younger D'Onofrio nor his father would return calls from Barron's. "They told me to tell you the answer is 'no comment,'" the United Atlantic office managerreported.
For all United Atlantic's efforts on its behalf anddespite a handsome market capitalization, then, Kinesis remains an obscure company with no proven products, an uncertain pedigree and, by Brodsky's admission, no assets except its ties to the engineers at Technology Innovations --and its ownership of 10 racehorses.
Brodsky hastily explains that these last are all bargain-basement horses -- some were purchased as "test animals" in the Seattle Shoe development program. "We will learn what we can about the effectiveness of the shoes, and then we'll race them, and we'll sell them," he continues.
In fact, Brodsky's off-hand description of the current
state of Kinesis differs a bit from that portrayed so enthusiastically by United Atlantic Investments and by Myers at Exten Ventures. "We have all the problems of a small company," Brodsky concedes. "Unless one of our horses wins,we don't have any income at all."
But maybe Ray D'Onofrio will think of something.
RE:Poor documentation, dude->REGIS POSSINO WHO RAN THE DAILY AFFAIRS OF KHASHOGGI'S BOILER ROOM BANK WHICH WAS RECENTLY RAIDED IN AUSTRIA WAS PARTNERS WITH RAYMON D'ONOFRIO. RAMON PASSED AWAY LAST YEAR. MAY HE REST IN PEACE.
ACCORDING TO HARTCOURTS OWN SEC FILINGS REGIS POSSINO WAS THE SIGNER AND PRESIDENT OF FIRST CAPITAL NETWORK. POSSINO ALSO PROMOTED XYBR WITH MARK BERGMAN THE RENOWN STOCK ANALYST WHICH BTW OPERATED OUT OF 2224 MAIN STREET IN SANTA MONICA CALIFORNIA. THE SAME ADDRESS AS MOB TIED RAMON DONOFRIO
----------------------------------------------------------
HARTCOURT COMPANIES INC filed this 10SB12B on 01/21/1997.
"FIRST CAPITAL NETWORK, INC 4,500 /s/ Regis Possino President"
------------------------------------------------------
BELOW IS THE TRUTH ABOUT RAMON D'ONOFRIO CONNECTION TO FIRST CAPITAL NETWORK. RAMON D'ONOFRIO IS JUST ONE IN A LONG LINE OF FRAUDULENT PROMOTERS TIED TO REGIS POSSINO.
Easy Pickings: How Career Swindlers Run Rings Around SEC and Prosecutors ---
White-Collar Crooks Serve Little Jail Time, Leave Billions in Fines Unpaid
--- `The Bad Guys Are Winning'<?b>
By John R. Emshwiller
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
05/12/1995
The Wall Street Journal
SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- For more than a quarter century, Ramon D'Onofrio has
been playing games with the law -- and mostly winning.
The 67-year-old Mr. D'Onofrio, operating out of a modest office suite at the
airport here, is a master stock swindler. He is responsible for fleecing the
public out of tens of millions of dollars in the course of numerous stock
manipulations, say officials who have tangled with him in about 20 civil and
criminal investigations. A federal appeals court once referred to him as
"ubiquitously criminal."
Mr. D'Onofrio has been convicted of fraud-related crimes five times and is
once again under investigation, people familiar with the case say. Yet he
hasn't spent a day in prison in the past 20 years -- and he served only
about a year behind bars before that. His most recent criminal conviction
came in 1991; he received probation. While the Securities and Exchange
Commission has "permanently" enjoined Mr. D'Onofrio from future violations
of securities laws, it has done so seven different times. Meanwhile, he has
left unpaid about $11.5 million in fines and civil judgments.
Mr. D'Onofrio isn't alone. Hundreds of career swindlers, many of whom have
infiltrated legitimate industries ranging from securities to health care,
are laughing all the way to the bank -- with other people's money. "If you
have the aptitude and you're enough of a sociopath, there are few places
where the pickings are as easy" as swindling, says Scott Stapf,
investor-education adviser for the North American Securities Administrators
Association, a group of state regulators.
Data gathered from government agencies show that it takes far longer to
bring white-collar criminals to justice than perpetrators of other crimes.
Once apprehended and convicted, swindlers generally receive light sentences
-- frequently nothing more than probation and a fine. Often, as with Mr.
D'Onofrio, they aren't compelled to pay back what they have stolen;
extraordinarily, about $4.48 billion in uncollected federal criminal fines
and restitution payments is currently outstanding.
While nobody argues that high-priority battles against drugs and street
crime should be neglected, many white-collar-crime investigators contend
that the devastating impact of fraud isn't sufficiently appreciated. Rough
estimates by government agencies and others indicate that white-collar crime
costs Americans more than $100 billion annually. And increasingly,
free-lance stock swindlers are joining forces with organized crime, to the
benefit of both.
"These are people who are stealing millions from working-class Americans.
These are people who ruin lives," says John Perkins, until recently Missouri
securities commissioner. The former regulator still recalls a Thanksgiving
Day nearly 20 years ago when a local farmer, after having mortgaged his
property and lost the money in an investment swindle, committed suicide by
shooting himself in the head. Quinton Darence Cloninger, who was convicted
of helping run that swindle, was out of prison after three years -- and back
in the investment business. He couldn't be located for comment.
Over the years, Mr. D'Onofrio and his ilk have benefited richly from the
fact that civil authorities don't have much enforcement clout without the
backing of the criminal-justice system. Criminal prosecutors, in turn,
aren't always interested in white-collar offenses -- and may be becoming
less so.
Consider the SEC civil injunctions that Mr. D'Onofrio and others so often
ignore. Violations of such injunctions -- which often bar the individual
from working in the securities industry -- can lead to criminal-contempt
charges and jail time. But, SEC officials concede, contempt is a rarely used
weapon. Records supplied by the SEC show that only a handful of
criminal-contempt cases have been brought in the past five years.
For one thing, the agency has to persuade a U.S. attorney's office to
prosecute a contempt case. The chances of that happening are usually "slim
to none," says one SEC attorney, particularly since criminal-contempt cases
usually don't produce long sentences. Many prosecutors are loath to put in
time on a case where the potential payoff is small.
In 1990, at the SEC's request, the U.S. attorney's office in Salt Lake City
did bring a criminal-contempt case against Mr. D'Onofrio. According to a
complaint filed in federal court there, Mr. D'Onofrio violated a 1982 court
injunction requiring disclosure of his significant stock holdings, an order
that resulted from an earlier SEC lawsuit over stock manipulation. Mr.
D'Onofrio pleaded guilty, was given probation and continued his career
unimpeded.
Mr. D'Onofrio declined numerous requests for an interview for this article.
"Some people do talk to the press and some people don't," says his attorney,
Ira Sorkin, the former head of the SEC's New York regional office. Mr.
D'Onofrio "falls into the latter category," adds Mr. Sorkin, who won't talk
about his client either. (As an assistant U.S. attorney in New York 20 years
ago, Mr. Sorkin helped prosecute a criminal case in which Mr. D'Onofrio was
an unindicted co-conspirator.)
Contempt isn't the only criminal charge available in swindling cases;
frequently, scam artists can be prosecuted criminally under fraud or
racketeering laws. But Philip Feigin, a Colorado regulator and current
president of the North American Securities Administrators Association,
bemoans a "vicious cycle" in which securities regulators, investigators and
prosecutors often relegate criminal statutes to an "afterthought."
One reason is that white-collar criminal cases often eat up enormous amounts
of time and resources. Stewart Walz, a veteran federal prosecutor and former
head of the criminal section of the U.S. attorney's office in Salt Lake
City, recalls one complex white-collar case several years ago that required
a quarter of his section's attorneys for a five-month trial. Although
multiple convictions resulted, Mr. Walz asks: "How many other cases went
unprosecuted?"
On average, it takes more than 10 months for a white-collar criminal case to
be filed in court from the time it is referred to a federal prosecutor's
office, according to national statistics gathered by the Transactional
Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University in New York. That is
nearly three times as long as for the average drug case. Complex,
document-laden white-collar cases frequently take years to complete.
When prosecutors do bring fraud charges, they often end up disappointed with
the sentences that result. The latest federal prison statistics show that
the median jail term for fraud is just 12 months; even violators of
pornography and prostitution laws receive 33 months behind bars, while drug
traffickers are sent away for a median of 60 months. A check of state
sentencing statistics in California and Florida, two centers of white-collar
crime, also shows large disparities in sentences between fraud and drug
trafficking.
James Sepulveda, a prosecutor in the district attorney's office of Contra
Costa County in Northern California, says he has helped convict hundreds of
white-collar criminals during the past 14 years. Some 90% of them, he
estimates, received probation: "The bad guys are winning," he says.
Such experiences have made prosecutors increasingly reluctant to take on
many potentially promising cases. These days, if a case is worth less than
$1 million, some big-city prosecutors won't even touch it, experts say.
A major factor is the nation's war on drugs, which has been overwhelming
prosecutors' offices, courts and prisons. In 1985, for instance, only 34% of
the federal prison population was serving time for drug-related crimes.
Today, the figure is 62%. As recently as the early 1980s, the average
federal prosecutor handled about the same number of white-collar and drug
cases each year, according to the Syracuse University group. By 1993, that
same prosecutor was handling nearly twice as many drug matters as
white-collar cases.
Of the thousands of white-collar cases filed by the federal prosecutors
annually, only several dozen involve alleged securities fraud, according to
records of various government agencies. The SEC keeps only what an agency
spokesman terms a "spongy" count of such cases.
Though Justice Department officials agree that drug cases have been getting
more and more attention, they insist that the agency's commitment to
prosecuting white-collar cases hasn't diminished. They note that in recent
years the department has focused increasingly on particularly complex and
time-consuming white-collar cases. While not great in number, these
prosecutions tend to have a significant impact, they say.
Nonetheless, the scarcity of government record keeping in this area seems to
underscore the relatively low priority given to white-collar crime. The
Federal Bureau of Investigation, for example, annually gathers from more
than 16,000 local and state law-enforcement agencies detailed statistics on
crimes ranging from murder to auto theft. That survey doesn't include fraud,
for which much less detailed information is assembled. FBI officials say
they are working on a new reporting system that will gather more information
on white-collar crimes, but they don't expect it to be in place before the
end of the decade.
For its part, the SEC has established no formal system for identifying or
tracking repeat offenders. Nor does it always know their whereabouts. During
a recent interview, Thomas Newkirk, an associate director for enforcement,
proclaims that Thomas Quinn is safely ensconced in a European jail. But Mr.
Quinn, one of the major stock manipulators of the 1980s -- who regulators
say was responsible for as much as several hundred million dollars in
investor losses world-wide -- has been out of jail for months and is living
on Long Island, N.Y. Mr. Quinn says he isn't involved in the securities
business and "never will be again. I am just trying to get on with my life."
William McLucas, the SEC's enforcement chief, says there "should be a place
in the system" to deal "harshly" with securities-law recidivists, and that
the agency does its best to make sure they are brought to justice. But he
also notes that the SEC has to regulate thousands of public companies and
investment advisers and a vast mutual-fund industry. "We have a whole lot of
market realities we are trying to keep pace with," he says. "So we must make
some hard judgments about where to put resources."
Some of these judgment calls have made life easier for Mr. D'Onofrio. The
two most recent SEC lawsuits against him -- one filed in Los Angeles federal
court in 1993, the other in New York federal court last September -- were
years in the making and involve alleged stock manipulations that occurred,
in some cases, more than a half-decade earlier.
Such time lags aren't uncommon, SEC officials say. The continuing criminal
investigation, which involves some of the same activities as the two civil
cases, also seems to be moving at a glacial pace. Hovhanness "John"
Freeland, an alleged D'Onofrio confederate in one of the civil cases,
pleaded guilty to criminal stock fraud in a related case in New York federal
court. He entered that plea more than two years ago but hasn't been
sentenced yet. Mr. Freeland, who is back in the business world, declines to
be interviewed, and prosecutors won't comment on the criminal case.
When charges are brought against Mr. D'Onofrio, he is as likely to quit as
to fight. Indeed, Mr. D'Onofrio's success with the law has stemmed partly
from his willingness to cooperate when caught. This has helped keep his
incarceration time to a minimum, even though by the early 1970s he was
clearing as much as $1 million annually in stock manipulations, according to
one court ruling.
In one early instance of cooperation, Mr. D'Onofrio agreed to be the main
witness against his former business associate and onetime state-court judge,
Joseph Pfingst, in a bankruptcy-fraud case in Brooklyn, N.Y. Mr. D'Onofrio
was sentenced to probation after helping get Mr. Pfingst convicted; the
former New York judge got a four-month term.
In another case against an alleged co-conspirator, Mr. D'Onofrio testified
readily to his own role as a "manipulator of stocks" who causes "the price
of the stock to rise by fraudulent means and in the process makes a lot of
money," according to a federal-court opinion. But Mr. D'Onofrio has always
been extremely secretive concerning anything that might interfere with his
continuing prosperity. In one case, he was jailed 22 days for contempt
rather than discuss his overseas bank accounts.
Lately, Mr. D'Onofrio has been dabbling in new business ventures, aided by a
1990 SEC rule change. "Regulation S" allows a company to sell stock overseas
without going through the time-consuming and expensive disclosure procedures
normally required to sell new stock in the U.S. The idea is to give
companies a tool for raising capital. Such is the latitude of Regulation S
that the SEC doesn't even track which firms do such transactions.
Law-enforcement officials say they believe Mr. D'Onofrio and others have
been using Regulation S to obtain millions of shares of stock, which they
fail to pay for or buy at a deep discount, then resell to the public before
the price of the stock crashes.
The SEC has voiced concern about possible Regulation S abuses but has done
little to curb them. In 1991, the agency did file suit in Washington, D.C.,
federal court against several defendants in a Regulation S transaction
involving a small Tucson, Ariz., company, Work Recovery Inc. The SEC
obtained injunctions and disgorgement orders against the defendants, whom
the agency charged with failing to pay for 1.5 million Work Recovery shares
and then illegally selling a substantial number of these shares to U.S.
investors.
Though one of Mr. D'Onofrio's firms was Work Recovery's investment banker,
the SEC didn't name him or the firm in its suit. The agency declines to say
why. Work Recovery later sued Mr. D'Onofrio and others in Denver federal
court and won a default judgment of nearly $9.5 million in April 1993. It
remains unpaid.
In a 1992 interview, Work Recovery President Thomas Brandon recalled being
impressed by Mr. D'Onofrio's plush office suite, chauffeured limousine and
seeming dedication to helping small companies such as his raise capital
through Regulation S transactions. Mr. Brandon said the pitch "was almost
evangelical in tone."
Mr. D'Onofrio and his associates recently latched onto another small
publicly traded company, Madera International Inc., a Calabasas, Calif.,
firm with a bizarre past that included plans for an automatic-weapons
factory in China. By last year, Madera had a new business -- exporting
timber from Nicaragua -- and a new investment banker, First Capital Network
Inc.
Mr. D'Onofrio has been operating from First Capital's Santa Monica office.
According to several individuals who have done business with the firm, he
was involved in financing and stock transactions for First Capital, despite
an outstanding court order barring him from "acting as a promoter, finder,
consultant, agent or other person who engages in . . . the issuance or
trading of any security." Repeated requests for comment from company
officials, left by phone and in person at the firm's office, received no
response.
Madera Chairman Daniel Lezak says of Mr. D'Onofrio that "it was my
impression that he helped run the firm." Mr. Lezak says, and SEC filings
confirm, that First Capital arranged the transfer of millions of new shares
of Madera stock to itself or offshore buyers at no cost or at deep discounts
through Regulation S and other transactions. Mr. Lezak says he believes much
of that stock was quickly dumped in the U.S., a move he believes contributed
to Madera stock's dropping to about 10 cents a share from a high last year
of more than $3. Mr. Lezak says he fired First Capital as Madera's
investment banker, but says he still sometimes consults with firm officials.
Mr. D'Onofrio has had serious heart problems of late, law-enforcement
officials say. But he appears to be passing his accumulated knowledge to
others, including his 35-year-old son Mark, who for the past several years
has been working with his father.
Already, the younger Mr. D'Onofrio has been the subject of three SEC
injunctions for alleged securities-law violations. He recently pleaded
guilty in connection with federal conspiracy and fraud charges filed in Los
Angeles federal court as part of the criminal investigation that also
involves his father. Mark D'Onofrio remains free pending sentencing,
scheduled for later this year. His attorney, Mr. Sorkin, says the son, like
the father, doesn't talk to the press.
But Mr. Brandon, the Work Recovery executive, recalls a dinner conversation
where Mark D'Onofrio talked of how he "was proud of his father's doggedness"
and wanted "to follow in his father's footsteps
Matt Brown the early days http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/subject.gsp?subjectid=26518&startid=1
Here is a interesting link. http://web.archive.org/web/20000115214025/www.clubfatt.com/sitepages/welcomeNF.html
SeaView is under SEC investigation.
"lay it out there for us, bro. just do it, man
***KNOWN STOCK SWINDLERS CONNECTED TO HARTCOURT***
REGIS POSSINO - disbarred lawyer with convictions for fraud and drug dealing. Possino also been involved with Hartcourt, as its corporate counsel (AFTER he was disbarred) and as an 'investment advisor' and is also a behind the scenes figure at Uniforms for America. Apart from disbarment in 1984, Possino's history includes being imprisoned for one year in 1978 for trying to sell $38,500 worth of marijuana to undercover Los Angeles cops, trying to place a monthly order for $680,000 worth of cocaine with the same officers, attempting to sell $5 million of stolen US treasury bills or bearer bonds to an undercover treasury agent, undergoing a $12 million personal bankruptcy and interfering with a witness at his trial on the marijuana offense, leading to her dismissal from the jury and his imprisonment for the rest of his trial.
PATTINSON HAYTON - Stock swindler recently charged by the SEC.
http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/lr17046.htm
UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
LITIGATION RELEASE NO. 17046 / June 21, 2001
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION v. TRADAMAX GROUP, INC., PATTINSON HAYTON, AND CONRAD DIAZ, Civ. No. 01-589-GLT (USDC CD Cal)
JOANNE DALY - Ray Donofio's sister that did shame transaction with the Hartcourt Companies. Can be found in Hartcourts SEC filings. Ray Donofrio was Regis Possino's partner at First Capital which is also mentioned in Hartcourts SEC filings. Ray Donofrio was convicted for Securities fraud. Recently passed away.
ROBERT HARPER - Ray Donofrio's brother. WHO IS RIDING THAT HORSE?? Involved in shame transaction with Hartcourt and is found in SEC filings.
KEVIN JAMES QUINN - disbarred attorney in September 1997. penny stock swindler
http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/txt-srch-sec?text=quinn&x=1&y=2
ERIC CHESS BRONK - Mezzanine Capital linked to manipulation of penny stocks. Bronk, who is a licensed California attorney, has a colorful past. In 1991, he paid $1.1 million to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to settle an investigation into his role in a failed savings and loan institution in which regulators suspected fraud and embezzlement.
ALAN WOLFSON - Involved with sham deal with the Hartcourt Companies for a ISP in China. The deal never went through even though Alan Phan had insisted at the time that the deal was binding. Wolfson is currently under indictent for securities fraud. Bribing brokers is his specialty.
EDWARD WILLIAMSON - "Securities Recidivist' Had a relationship with Go Call Inc. Edward is a convicted murderer, has bribed FBI Undercover agents in a sting operation. Recently all of his assets where froze and has been charged with securities fraud for bilking investors in non existent conpanies. Edward is the nephew of Alan Wolfson. Hartcourt's relationship with Go Call Inc was recinded as well as the deal with the Alaskan Gold Mines which was another fraud that Hartcourt was involved in.
DENNIS HAAS - STOCKREPORTER.DE Wrote paid for strong buy report on Hartcourt Companies. The 30-year-old executive vice president and co-founder of World of Internet, says he and two friends came up with the idea for the business a few years ago when they were humanities students at a college near Hamburg. Although Mr. Haas often appears as the author of the analyst reports, he cheerfully admits to having scant business training.
Stockreporter relies on the companies to provide information for the reports.
"We don't have the time or the capacity to do all of the reporting," he says.
"We're not analysts.""
SHERMAN MURZUR - Convicted felon and good friend of Regis Possino. More on "Shermie" in the update
--------------------
CRIMINAL UPDATE
Police is investigating also in Vienna
FBI is acting against a gang of worldwide active financial artists who allegedly bilked gigantic 15 Billion ATS (1 Billion USD) from clients. Since last Autumn, the instigators of the gang own a banking corporation in Vienna. The police is investigating.
Behind the facades of the small "General Commerce Bank AG" which operated under federal administration since last year [the police] believes to find certain information about a large scale scam. Two weeks ago the US federal police has discovered the scandal after having conducted investigations for more than one year and through infiltration of undercover agents.
After the Australian exchange commission has been pressed by defrauded customers, 10 days ago a big sweep in Bangkok too place: Supported by the FBI, the local police arrested 81 suspects, mostly Europeans. The gang is accused of running a worldwide network of brokerage offices, so called "Boiler Rooms", first artificially raising the prices of worthless stocks and then selling them to thousands of clients. In the next days, sweeps are "scheduled" in further 9 cities on 3 continents.
The FBI dossier: Fraudsters bilked out one Billion Dollar
The format is exclusively in possession of the FBI report in which the shocking dimensions of the deals are described: It lists the names of 18 Boiler rooms, reaching from the Philippines over Thai to Singapore and Czechia, in which the gang has cashed in the amazing sum of 1 Billion Dollars, about 15 Billion Schillings.
For the Austrians it is very revealing what the FBI dossier says about the perpetrators of the affaire: In the organisation hierarchy ranked behind Manila and Los Angeles based Amador Pastrana, the "mastermind of the operations" according to the FBI are the US citizens Regis Possino and Sherman Mazur. 52-year old Possino appeared in Vienna last Summer for the first time where he resided in an "approbiate" luxury flat in Radisson SAS Palais (Rent: 62.500 ATS)
Kashoggi-Coup in Vienna
The Belgian Raoul Berthaumieu who grew up in Canada appeared as the new chairman of the banking corporation which is working with a restricted banking license as broker house: In turn, Berthaumieus particular contacts to glowing con artists resulted in a new shareholder for the bank: the legendary arabian arms dealer Adnan Kashoggi.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Die Wirtschaftspolizei ermittelt auch in Wien
Das amerikanische FBI geht gegen eine Truppe weltweit agierender Finanzartisten vor, die von Kunden gigantische 15 Milliarden Schilling abgenommen haben soll. Die Drahtzieher besitzen seit vergangenem Herbst eine Bank in Wien. Die Wirtschaftspolizei ermittelt.
Hinter den Fassaden der seit dem Vorjahr unter Geschäftsaufsicht stehenden kleinen General Commerce Bank AG in der Wiener Schlickgasse 1Bank vermutet man aufschlußreiche Antworten zu einem gigantischen Betrugsfall. Die US-Bundespolizei hat den Finanz-Skandal nach mehr als einjährigen Ermittlungen und durch die Einschleusung von Undercoveragenten vor zwei Wochen hat aufgedeckt.
Nachdem die australische Börsenaufsicht von geleimten Kunden bombardiert worden war, kam es vor zehn Tagen in der thailändischen Hauptstadt Bangkok zur ersten Großrazzia: Unterstützt von FBI-Beamten, nahmen Polizisten 81Verdächtige, großteils Europäer, fest. Der Truppe wird vorgeworfen, in einem weltumspannenden Netz von Börsenmaklerbüros, sogenannten "Boiler rooms", zuerst die Kurse wertloser Aktien künstlich in die Höhe getrieben und sie dann an Tausende Kunden verklopft zu haben. Dieser Tage sind Razzien in weiteren neun Städten auf drei Kontinenten vorgesehen.
Das FBI-Dossier: Finanzbetrüger ergaunerten eine Milliarde Dollar
Das FORMAT exklusiv vorliegende FBI-Dossier beschreibt die atemberaubenden Dimensionen der Deals: In 18 namentlich angeführten Boiler rooms, von den Philippinen über Thailand bis Singapur und Tschechien, hat die Truppe die sagenhafte Summe von einer Milliarde Dollar eingestreift - umgerechnet mehr als 15 Milliarden Schilling.
Aus österreichischer Sicht besonders aufschlußreich in dem FBI-Dossier sind die Protagonisten der Affäre: Hinter dem in Manila und in Los Angeles residierenden Amador Pastrana, laut FBI "Mastermind der Operationen", bekleiden nämlich die beiden US-Amerikaner Regis Possino und Sherman Mazur die wichtigsten Ränge in der Hierarchie der Organisation. Der 52jährige Possino tauchte im Sommer des Vorjahres erstmals in Wien auf, wo er standesgemäß eine luxuriöse Wohnung im Radisson SAS Palais (Monatsmiete: 62.500 Schilling) bezog.
Kashoggi-Coup in Wien
Als neuer Aufsichtsratschef des mit eingeschränkter Banklizenz als Börsenmakler tätigen Instituts, das im Herbst dann in General Commerce Bank AG umbenannt wurde, betrat der in Belgien geborene und in Kanada aufgewachsene Raoul Berthaumieu die Bühne: Berthaumieus einschlägige Kontakte zu schillernden Finanzartisten bescherten der Wiener Bank dann im Oktober einen neuen Aktionär: den legendären saudischen Waffenhändler Adnan Kashoggi
Correct Matt. Phan himself confirmed in his shareholder letter that he got his PHD from Sussex School of Technology. While we are at it maybe you can tell me what this means?
"has completed the acquisition of the ongoing economic proceeds of Kangrun Jia Yuan Technology Ltd."
Hartcourt Subsidiary AI-Asia Completes Acquisition of Kangrun
The Hartcourt Companies, Inc. (BULLETIN BOARD: HRCT) , www.hartcourt.com , announced today that AI-Asia, Ltd. (HK) www.ai-asia.com , its subsidiary, has completed the acquisition of the ongoing economic proceeds of Kangrun Jia Yuan Technology Ltd. ( www.kangrun.com ). Kangrun provides systems integration, networking solutions, modular networking products, computer systems and storage devices to corporate enterprises in China. Two major strategic partnerships of Kangrun are IBM-China ( www.ibm.com ) and Ortronics ( www.ortronics.com ).
Kangrun Technology Ltd., and Control Technology Ltd. comprise the two main components of Hartcourt''s operating unit AI-Asia, Inc. In 2001, Kangrun''s audited sales revenue was $60 Million RMB / $7.4 Million US and Control Technology had audited revenues of $24.6 million RMB / $3 million US with combined net profit of 1.6 million RMB / $195,000 US. The audits were completed by Jimmy Cheung & CO Certified Public Accountants of HONG KONG, Kangrun is one of the top IBM distributors (5 star) in China for PC, server, laptop, storage devices and solutions for corporate customers. They are the general sales agent for Northern China for Ortronics. Their clients include; Tsinghua University, Beijing University, China Telecom, SK Corp, People''s Daily, Tom.com, and the Chang Sheng Fund.
"The Kangrun Technology acquisition completes the initial steps of AI-Asia''s strategy to combine the strengths of Kangrun, Control Technologies and LogicSpace to form the core of Hartcourt''s Information Technology operations" said Dr. Wallace Ching, Hartcourt''s CEO. "Their extensive technology base, blue chip partners and clients, extensive sales and distribution networks and strong financial position combine to make AI-Asia an integral player in China''s rapidly emerging IT landscape. Our next step is to take AI-Asia public, which we believe will be completed in Q3 2002."
BTW Matt, wasn't Hartcourt one of the stocks "YOUR GROUP" profiled on your old web site?
In a shareholder letter dated Aug. 31, 2000, Alan Phan said:
“In 1970, Sussex College of Technology and the University of Saigon started a joint post-graduate program in Management. It took me six years to complete and I am proud of my achievement…In any case, this subject of which University my doctoral degree is from has nothing to do with our company’s achievements or the future of our company.”"
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=392657
I guess the only question is if Phan will be deported? LOL ha ha ha
Such degrees would be of no value in the academic world, and, perhaps mostimportantly in your situation (if you are in the US on a green card) couldcause real problems with the INS. A few years ago, a British man, workinglegally in Colorado, acquired a doctorate from the Sussex College ofTechnology (a British degree mill), and he not only lost his job, he wasdeported.
http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:hf3QzQ6aI1QC:follies.werewolves.org/archives/1PhrauD/DrBearOnLi...
Founder of Investors Hub could not figure out from post that Hartcourts DR. Phan is a fraud? I find this Interesting.
FURTHER VINDICATION!!
holding a "Ph.D." from the Sussex College of Technology in England, the British Embassy informed Jarvis that it did not consider the "school" or its diplomas valid. N.A.A. quietly disappeared after the California Department of Education warned Donsbach to stop misrepresenting the significance of N.A.A. "accreditation."
In 1979, Donsbach began operating Donsbach University, a nonaccredited correspondence school that awarded bachelor, master, and doctoral "degrees" in nutrition. The fact that his "university" was not accredited did not deter Donsbach from stating that it was-by the National Accreditation Association (N.A.A.) of Riverdale, Maryland. An investigation by the National Council Against Health Fraud revealed that this "agency" was formed in 1980 by a California chiropractor and had "accredited" Donsbach University a few months later. In 1981, Dr. William Jarvis, President of the National Council Against Health Fraud, visited N.A.A. in Maryland and found that its "office" was a telephone in the living room of its executive director, who said he received $100-a-month salary. Although N.A.A. correspondence had designated the man as holding a "Ph.D." from the Sussex College of Technology in England, the British Embassy informed Jarvis that it did not consider the "school" or its diplomas valid. N.A.A. quietly disappeared after the California Department of Education warned Donsbach to stop misrepresenting the significance of N.A.A. "accreditation."
http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:1521byuITUMC:www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/donsbac...
BTW Matt, since Phan lied about his PHD I have now wondered if he even graduated from Penn State. I will have that answer on Monday.
From Penn State.
Frank NG does not lie and does not support Education Fraud
Ko, here is where Phan studied. http://www.copenlabs.com/
Engraving for the Diploma Mill PHD cost an extra $100
Matt, here is where Phan got his PHD. Do you feel the lease bit sorry for deleting my post?
http://www.copenlabs.com/
Matt, I expect an applogy from you and expect you to reinstate my factual post about Hartcourts Fake PHD DOC. The proof was in my post. I understand that it must be hard to admit to your mistake but I hope you will be a man about it and that you will be a better person because of it.
Phan cleared up the fraud in a shareholder letter dated Aug. 31, 2000 where he got his PHD. The evidence below is 100% proof that his PHD was obtained through a diploma mill.
"In a shareholder letter dated Aug. 31, 2000, Alan Phan said:
“In 1970, Sussex College of Technology and the University of Saigon started a joint post-graduate program in Management. It took me six years to complete and I am proud of my achievement…In any case, this subject of which University my doctoral degree is from has nothing to do with our company’s achievements or the future of our company.”"
So, let’s see. According to SEC filings from the many companies Alan Phan has been involved with, his doctorate in management came from Penn State, or was that a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from Sussex College of Technology?
Make sure you go to this link . LOL http://www.copenlabs.com/courses.htm
And was that B.S. (what appropriate letters!) from Penn State or Sussex?
And how long has he been leading HRCT? Since 1990? Or 1994?
THE HARTCOURT COMPANIES (HRCT) SEC 10-KSB filing for 1996:
“Dr. Phan received his academic training and degrees at Pennsylvania State University (1967), and Sussex College of Technology, Sussex England (1975).”
AMG VENTURE SERVICES INC (AVSI), SEC 10SB12B filing dated May 6, 1999
“Alan V. Phan received his academic training and degrees at Pennsylvania State University (PhD-Management), his Master of Science degree from Sussex College of Technology and his Bachelor of Science in Environmental Engineering at Pennsylvania State University and has had over 30 years of experience in business management. Dr. Phan is currently Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of The Hartcourt Companies, Inc. (NASDAQ-OTB-BB) and its predecessor private company functioning in this capacity since 1994.”
AMERICAN VENTURE GROUP INC. (AVGI). SEC 10SB12B filing dated May 27, 1999
“Alan V. Phan received his academic training and degrees at Pennsylvania State University (PhD-Management), his Master of Science degree from Sussex College of Technology, and his Bachelor of Science in Environmental Engineering
at Pennsylvania State University and has had over 30 years of experience in business management. Dr. Phan is currently Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of The Hartcourt Companies, Inc. (NASDAQ-OTB-BB) and its predecessor private company functioning in this capacity since 1994.”
APOLLO VENTURE GROUP INC (AVGI) SEC 10SB12B filing dated June 1, 1999
“Alan V. Phan received his academic training and degrees at Pennsylvania State University (PhD-Management), his Master of Science degree from Sussex College of Technology, and his Bachelor of Science in Environmental Engineering
at Pennsylvania State University and has had over 30 years of experience in business management. Dr. Phan is currently Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of The Hartcourt Companies, Inc. (NASDAQ-OTB-BB) and its predecessor private company functioning in this capacity since 1994.”
THE HARTCOURT COMPANIES (HRCT) SEC SB-2 filing dated Aug. 24, 2000:
“Dr. Phan received his B.Sc. in Environmental Engineering from Pennsylvania State University, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Sussex College of Technology in England.”
ENOVA HOLDINGS INC (EHI), SEC 10SB12B/A filing dated Oct 18, 2000
Dr. Alan V. Phan, Chairman of the Board and Director. Dr. Phan has over 30 years of experience in business management. He obtained his academic training and degrees at Pennsylvania State University and Sussex College of Technology. As Executive Vice President of Em Kay Group and Eisenberg Company, he established 11 industrial projects including real estate developments in Asia and South America. Dr. Phan has been a founder and Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Hartcourt since August 1990.
In a shareholder letter dated Aug. 31, 2000, Alan Phan said:
“In 1970, Sussex College of Technology and the University of Saigon started a joint post-graduate program in Management. It took me six years to complete and I am proud of my achievement…In any case, this subject of which University my doctoral degree is from has nothing to do with our company’s achievements or the future of our company.”
Indeed!
====================================================
More on Sussex College of Technology
From huffman Wed Apr 22 09:19:43 1998Subject: Here's my understanding
To: rotbard@ix.netcom.comDate: Wed, 22 Apr 1998 09:19:43 -0700 (PDT)
Dear Mr. Eric Rotbard,
If/When it was clear to both of us that Derek didn't earn a PhD
at a bona fide school, my assumption has been that these negotiations
would likely go into a mode where you would just ignore/stall. It
appears that is now the case. So, there were a couple of loose
ends I'd like to try to clean up. First, list all the diploma mills
in Bear's book. Secondly, a note that may be of personal interest
to you and a preview copy of an update to my web page.
I collected the list of PhD scam diploma mills from Bear's book
that I mentioned to you previously. These are from his chapter 25
that I also mentioned in the same previous post. Here's some
detail Dr. Bear gives for one diploma mill, as an example.
"Sussex College of Technology, Sussex, England. Perhaps the oldest of
Britian's degree mills, Sussex is run by "Dr." Bruce Copen from his
home, south of London. At the same address, but with different
catalogs are the Brantridge Forest School and the University of the
Science of Man. Each offer "earned" degrees for which a few
correspondence are required, and "extension awards" which are the same
degrees and diplomas for no work at all. Honorary Doctorates are
offered free, but there is a $100 engraving charge. "Professor
Emeritas"[sic] status costs another $100. One flyer admits Sussex
is not "accrediated" [sic] but goes on to say that "No student who
has taken our courses and awards have to date had problems." This
statement would not be accepted by, among many others, a former
high-level state official in Colorado who lost his job when the
source of his Doctorate was discovered. Sussex continues to advertise
extensively in newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and worldwide.
In 1988, a new British law came into effect, forbidding such "schools"
to accept students who enrolled after May 1st. Sussex's solution to
this minor annoyance was to offer to back-date all applications to
April 30th, 1988 - a creative response that British law apparantly
hasn't caught up with yet."
The following list is not claimed to be complete. The nature of this
type scam would make that almost impossible. Also, it is apparantly
very common for the con artists to slightly change the name of their
"school" from time to time. They also sometimes like to try to pick
names that are very close to accredited schools. I assume that
Derek's PhD was purchased from one of these "schools", if so then,
his PhD is a fraud and in that case I wouldn't really expect to hear
from you again.List of Chapter 25 Diploma Mills that appear to be in England.
Academy College of Holy StudiesAcademy of the Science of Man
Albany Educational ServicesAvatar Episcopal University
Avatar International UniversityBrantridge Forest School
British College of Soma-TherapyBritish Collegiate InstituteBroadhurst University
California Institute of Higher LearningCentral School of Religion
City Medical Correspondence CollegeCollege of Applied Science London
College of Divine MetaphysicsCollege of Spiritual Sciences
Collegium Technologicum Sussexensis Britannia
Creative University of Southeast LondonCromwell University
Ecclesiastical University of SheffieldEpiscopal University of London
European College of Science and ManFaraday CollegeGordon Arlen College
Harley UniversityInter-State CollegeInternational Protestant Birkbest College
London College of PhysiologyLondon College of TheologyLondon Educational College
London Institute for Applied ResearchLondon School for Social Research
London Tottenham International Christian UniversityLyne College
Metropolitan CollegiateMinisterial Training CollegeMorton-Colwyn University
National Ecclesiastical UniversityNational University of Sheffield
Nebraska College of Physical MedicineNewcastle University
Northwest London UniversityObura UniversityOxford College of Applied Science
Oxford Institute for Applied ResearchSaint John Chrysostom College
School of Applied SciencesSchool of Psychology and PsychotherapyShield College
South Eastern Extension CollegeSouthern Eastern University
Sussex College of TechnologyTrinity Collegiate Institute
United Free University of EnglandUniversal Ecclesiastical University
Universitas IltiensisUniversitates SheffieldensisUniversity of London
University of CoventryUniversity of EnglandUniversity of England at Oxford
University of SheffieldUniversity of Sulgrave
University of the Old Catholic ChurchUniversity of the Science of Man
University of WinchesterWest London College of Technology
Western Orthodox UniversityWhitby Hall CollegeWordsworth Memorial University
..............................................................
I was planning on updating my web page. Here is a preview copy
that you may review. I would, of course, be very interested in any
thing in here that you believe to be false or misleading. If you
let me know I will, of course, correct it. What may be of personal
interest to you is copies of our correspondence that I plan on
making available as "BACKGROUND INFORMATION". Unless I hear
differently from you, my plan is to censore out the phone number
of your law firm, okay? I don't plan on censoring out your email
address, okay? Based on postings to the news groups from you that
I read, I assume that this is the way you want it.
..............................................................
Ph.D. Frauds
(last modified 4/22/98)
Derek Smart, author of a mediocre computer game called Battlecruiser
3000ad (BC3K), is widely known on Usenet as being the focus of the
largest and longest running flame-fest ever seen, this occurs primarily
in the comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic (c.s.i.p.g.s.) news group.
INTRODUCTION
Derek Smart has claimed to have a PhD in almost every post he's made
over the past few years. Prior to the PhD wars (8/8/97 - present),
whenever anyone had asked about details he was strangely silent. The
biggest braggart many have ever seen being silent on such occasions
seemed very "out of character". This coupled with my observation of many
months of Derek lies, lead me to suspect that Derek's PhD was a fake.
After gathering further evidence, it's believed this is now an
inescapable conclusion.
Here's some things Derek has said about his studies. He has said that he
studied only part time. He's said that he studied in the USA and England.
He's said that it was a mail order college. He's more recently said his
school is in England. He's stated it wasn't important whether his school
was accredited or not. He's said it's a renowned accredited college. He's
said it's a small tech institute. He's said he grew up in England and
moved to the USA in 1989.SUMMARY
This presentation argues that Derek's PhD is a fraud. It consists of
four firmly established facts. These facts taken together, show that his
PhD is a probable fraud. Derek has not earned a PhD at any accredited
university.FACT 1: Derek Smart's PhD dissertation is not listed anywhere.
(Almost all PhD dissertations are listed in DAI or somewhere.)
FACT 2: Derek has not provided simple information.
(Derek hasn't named his alma mater, among other things.)
FACT 3: Derek Smart has changed the story about his PhD.
(He said his dissertation was published now, he says it's not.)
FACT 4:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1998 19:35:22 -0400From: Eric Rotbard
To: Bill Huffman
CC: Derek Smart Subject: Re: Here's my understanding
Mr. Huffman,
<snip stuff to protect the privacy of others , basically Mr. Rotbard says
that I made mistakes and that I'm incorrect. This has bothered him and
Derek and made them unhappy with me. He warns that I had better not
make the changes to the web page. He points out some specific examples
of areas that he believes are fallacious.>
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
I am still awaiting a certification from Derek's registrar. Once I
receive it, I will take appropriate action.
I found your proposed amendments offensive and fallacious. I can prove
Derek's Ph. D. any time I wish by revealing this information. I am,
however, awaiting a certification from the registrar which I will
provide to Charles Curran, Esq. and/or Whowhere (and also to annex to a
federal complaint if need be).
To say that "negotiations continued on for over a month and it seemed
that the lawyer's position just kept crumbling more and more." is also
false. We have not been negotiating for over a month. Our negotiations
were limited to the nature of proof that would be acceptable to both
parties which was agreed from close to the outset. The fact that I have
been waiting for a certification has no bearing whatsoever on the
underlying merits, and does not constitute negotiations. If you feel
that you do not want to wait for me to provide this information, that is
your choice.
Your "conclusion" that Derek received his Ph. D. from a "Ph. D. mill" is
false and defamatory.
You are also categorically incorrect by stating that the onus is on
Derek to prove his Ph. D. He doesn't have to prove anything until he
files suit. At that time, you will be held accountable for what youpost.
If your intent was to further antagonize Derek and annoy me, you have
succeeded. Your web page is defamatory as it is. If you amend it
further to include the material in your message to me, I will recommend
to Derek that we go forward and file suit.
My approach to practicing law is that a good lawyer keeps his client out
of court. This approach works when the parties are reasonable.
However, your web page as well as the history of your posts demonstrate
that you are on a personal crusade to villify Derek. I do not believe
that the courts will protect this "speech". If you continue on this
path, I do not see any alternative than litigation. If you amend your
web page, I will take it as a rejection of my attempt to resolve this
matter, and I will take appropriate action.
)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))Sincerely,
Eric Rotbard
Matt, have you ever signed up on ragingbull and used multiple alias's?
You say you don't dodge questions so here is your chance yo come clean