Middle School Playground

[sarals]

Good vs. Evil?

To:mmmary who wrote (3987)
From: mst2000 Wednesday, Aug 1, 2001 6:04 PM
View Replies (1) / Respond to of 3995

The post I am responding to is a classic example of why people react so poorly to you. Snowman was 100% accurate in saying that the reason people get so aggravated by you is that you seem so intent upon trying to make this a matter of "good v. evil" -- when it is strictly a matter of whether a speculative small cap can make it in the face of countless obtsacles, delays, etc., despite its best efforts and good faith. Your spin is that they are bad people, that anybody should be able to see that (especially since you have so selflessly enlightened us when we all have our heads in the sand) and that you are merely expressing a few negative opinions and shouldn't be vilified for that. But let's look at your last post and examine what you are actually saying -- it may give you some insight into why so many of us are fed up with what we perceive as distortions and misstatements. Here is what you said (in quotes) and corrections or clarifications needed to make the statements complete (and not misleading):
YOU SAID: "ipo company first united ran an astn boilerroom and had mob connections during their marketing of the stock. Managing director of fue is still a director. see sec.gov for litigation release."

RESPONSE: Yes, the IPO company (First United) ran a boilerroom -- but it was not an "astn boilerroom" -- your language (an "astn boileroom") implies without any evidence (and in the face of the FACT that ASTN was not implicated in a highly publicized indictment) that ASTN was involved in the operation, rather than the being an unknowing vehicle (one of many) through which FUE violated the law. You then say "managing director of fue is still a director" (of ASTN) -- what you should say is that "one of several" managing directors of FUE "who was not implicated in any way in the indictment of more than 25 FUE principals and employees" is a still a director of ASTN. The clearly intent of your statement is to lead us to believe that ASTN has, as a director, a person who was up to his eyeballs in illegal activities and was probably connected to the mob. The reality is that Ivan Gothner was NOT indicted, was NOT named as an unindicted co-conspirator, was NOT implicated in any way in any known statement by the FBI, DoJ, SEC or NY State Attorney General, and, based on what is now publicly known about the FUE investigation, appears to have had no involvement whatsoever in any illegal activity.

YOU SAID: "astn stock promoter westergaard sued by sec for fraud perpetrated during his astn promotion. see sec.gov for litigation release."

RESPONSE: When you say that Westergaard was sued by the SEC for "fraud perpetrated during his astn promotion", the clear implication is that the suit was about his ASTN promotion. But isn't it the case that the suit concerned Westergaard's failure to include a legally required disclaimer in promotional activities relating to a different company -- and that the ONLY connection to ASTN is your contention that he did "the same thing" with ASTN (i.e., not include the disclaimer in every post he made to the Yahoo Message Board, etc.), NOT that the SEC formally took legal action over his failure to do so in relation to his ASTN activity? In other words, where in the SEC suit (or action) does it indicate that the ASTN promotions were the subject of the SEC's action? It seems to me that your sole basis for this contention is that SEC investigators with whom you claim to have had discussions regarding the ongoing SEC investigation of Westergaard have told you that he failed to use the disclaimer on all of this ASTN activities, and also viewed his "mortgage the house" reference on a Yahoo message board as inappropriate. Please point out where the SEC has formally stated (or taken legal action) involving Westergaards activitied specifically related to ASTN, or stop saying (or implying) that they did.

YOU SAY: "next stock promoter CCE sued by SEC for fraud and insider trading. see sec.gov for litigation release"
RESPONSE: You might have added "having nothing to do with ASTN" at the end of the statement -- because those actions by the SEC have absolutely nothing to do with ASTN.

YOU SAY: "chairman of philly exchange owned astn shares when he voted for astn vwap approval. He later resigns over the incident. see thestreet.com article"

RESPONSE: What you fail to point here was (i) that after the PHLX Chairman (Vince Casella) resigned, it was apparently determined that he had disclosed his indirect interest in ASTN (the shares were actually owned by Medford, which is a company in which Casella owned an interest and which had provided venture capital to ASTN) to the other members of the PHLX Board BEFORE the vote on the UTTC contract with the PHLX was taken, and (ii) that the SEC cleared ASTN of any wrongdoing in connection with the entire incident. This incident added a year of delay to the ASTN eVWAP approval while the SEC investigated the PHLX (and other regional exchanges accused of similar questionable conduct) -- but ASTN was ultimately cleared and as we all know, eVWAP was ultimately approved by the SEC.

YOU SAY: "current director Valentine's firm Kernaghan has six securities invesitgations in canada and he personally has numerous lawsuits from theft of money from a calp II account of one of his clients, to stock manipulation and fraud. check canadian news articles and US lawsuits."

RESPONSE: Of course, none of this has anything to do with ASTN. And despite all these lawsuits and investigations, TK is still very active in Canada, is still licensed in Canada, and still managed to get eVWAP approved as a facility of the Toronto Stock Exchange by Ontario securities regulators (and, as we all know, the TSE has scheduled its launch of eVWAP in Mid-September of this year). As I re-read this "warning sign", I am struck by the following question -- how many investigations are the 5 largest brokerage houses in the US involved in because of customer complaints, company's they investment banked going south, etc. -- and does that mean that every company they do business with is tainted? Did you read today's WSJ, regarding analysts employed by respected brokerage houses who recommend stocks in which their employers hold an interest (or worse yet, are selling their own positions while recommending that their customers buy the stock)? Is every company that does business with these major brokerage houses tainted because of that? Do you think that they are all involved in the activity? Do you think someone who states as a fct that every such company is tainted has an obligation to determine that what they are saying is true before they publish it as fact?

YOU SAY: "They are getting ready to do some toxic financing from a company that is currently being sued for stock manipulation and fraud. A director in teh company arranged it with the company of another director, Valentine's holding companies. see US lawsuits"

RESPONSE: Well, they are doing an equity financing that could fairly be characterized as "toxic" -- Of course, the "toxicity" of the financing depends entirely on (i) whether, when and to what extent ATG actually avails itself of the equity line, a decision which they largely control, and (ii) what the equity investors do with the stock once they get it -- you apparently think that millions of shares of the stock will be issued while the stock is still trading at 80-90 cents a share (or less), and then sold immediately to pocket 6-10 cents a share, despite TK's considerable existing equity stake in ASTN -- but the fact is that in 1998, with regard to a very similar $18 Million equity financing by substantially the same Canadian investors, that is not what the investors did. So we will have to wait and see whether this proves to be toxic or not -- and, for the record, I think the concerns raised by you and others over this financing are fair and (for the most part) reasonable, but I also think the concern of running out of money is at least equally serious - and in choosing between the two alternatives, survival is, in my opinion (and that of many other longs), clearly the more immediate and important concern.

YOU SAY: "There are numerous holding companies controlled by one insider entity mark valentine which own numerous shares in the company. They have not disclosed the control over all the holding companies. dominican, advantage, southshore, southridge, tk holdings, calp II... cross reference ownership of these holding companies"

RESPONSE: I can only assume that this is an adjunct to your last two comments about Valentine and TK -- but the relationship of TK and Valentine to ATG is well known (heck, Valentine has sat on ASTN's Board of Directors for over a year) and I'm not sure what difference it makes to ASTN? This point, as you express it, is very muddled and opaque. What exactly are you trying to say?

YOU SAY: "They filed their last sec document incorrectly and now are liable for $2M in possible losses from possible lawsuits from shareholders. see latest sec doc from astn admitting to this"

RESPONSE: No, they disclosed that the mistake had been made and stated that this may (key word: MAY) expose them to liability (not that they "ARE" liable. That liability ultimately depends on (i) whether there are actual losses, (ii) if the "selling stockholders" in fact take legal action over it, (iii) if the losses derive from the mistake, and (iv) if they do not have other affirmative defenses to any such claim. The SEC filing discloses the potential exposure, does make light of it (and for what it is worth, it was the one item in the 10K that came as a surprise to me) -- the 10K disclosure does not constitute either a consent judgment or an admission of liability.

YOU SAY: "fred rittereiser was brennan's partner in first jersey. there's an article here about it or go here mary.cc/astn"

RESPONSE: Actually, Fred was brought in to take over the day-to-day reigns of First Jersey AFTER Brennan was in trouble with SEC regulators, in order to clean it up and spruce up its image -- a fact that is clearly reflected in the N.Y. Times Article from 1986 that I posted to this message board. You make it sound like Rittereiser and brennan were co-conspirators in illegal activity -- when it appears that exactly the opposite is true. I didn't write the 1986 NY Times Article -- but you certainly have been ignoring it as you attempt to tie Fred's character to Brennan's.

YOU SAY: "fred got into astn through dover then became the ceo later, for "some" reason. where are the ipo documents? how come only one person could find them?"

REPLY: What's your point? What difference does this make? I have tried to pull up the prospectus from Free Edgar but it is no longer there -- do you think ASTN has something to do with that? And what difference does it make whether Fred "got into ASTN?" through a consulting company in which he had an interest? His involvement, an economic interest, have been fully disclosed in all SEC filings, as has been his relationship to Dover. Where's the smoke? Where's the fire?

* * * * *

Here's my summary. In your attempts to paint ASTN as evil, you are prone to distorting the facts to make them sound far more ominous than they really are. Investigations having NOTHING to do with ASTN are distorted to make it sound as if ASTN is the main target of the investigation. People who are, in fact, NOT implicated in wrongdoing are asserted to be in the middle of it, and specifically in relation to ASTN. You make heavy use of "guilt by association" as a tactic for painting ASTN in a bad light. Throw enough mud and maybe some of it will stick. I know this is your style, because you have engaged in it with me -- you have distorted three years of my posts in the same way, characterizing me (and what I have said on these boards) as somebody vastly different than who I really am (and what was actually said) -- putting words into my mouth that were never there, and stating as fact that I have committed fraud, that I have lied, that I should be sued (while saying out of the other side of your mouth that nobody should ever be sued for what they say on a message board), that I am insane, and many other defamatory things. And when the people who support ASTN and what they are trying to do -- people who have invested their money in the company and want to see it succeed -- get upset at how fast and loose you play with the facts, at the hatchet job you have engaged in here, you accuse them of criminal activity, insanity, dishonesty, stalking and god knows what else.

In my opinion (and that of a great many others who have actually met these people and tried to do more than just "google" them, as you put it the other day), ASTN is not an evil company, it is not a scammy company and the choice we are facing as investors is not a matter of good v. evil. It is a company, founded and run by people ranging from good to impeccable reputation, which is taking on very powerful interests in the stock trading business, which is trying to make its way through a regulatory and competitive thicket to succeed financially -- and which has been struggling to succeed. We have had our frustrations with delay, failure to execute, and the painting of rosier pictures than turned out to be the case, and as encouraging as things are at the moment, we are not out of the woods, and there is still a chance that it will not work out. But if it doesn't, it will not be because of dishonesty, it will not be for lack of trying, and it will not be becuase they have associated with evil people. Most of us (me included) beleive that the people who run ASTN have been working very hard to achieve success, and have been doing so in good faith from Day 1. They appear to be closer to success than they have ever been (see, e.g., increased eVWAP usage), but they are not there yet.

At almost the moment ASTN's prospects for financial success began to improve -- due to a higher level of active usage of the eVWAP trading system -- usage that clearly evidences the presence of some fairly large players who have an interest in using it -- you showed up (along with an entourage of people you claim to have no association with, but who had never posted about ASTN before your arrival) and have engaged in a non-stop 24/7 campaign on the internet to convince an audience that despises you that ASTN is a scammy company whose only apparent interest is defrauding its investors. Lately, you have conceded that it may be legit and may even succeeed, but only if it achieves profitability instantly, and does not take on the so-called toxic financing. Truthfully, I have no factual basis to disbelieve you when you say that your reason for engaging in this activity has been because some people treated you rudely when you got here (and given its connection to your broader mission to stalk John Westergaard, and the FUE situation that was surfacing at the time of your arrival, it clearly was a natural fit to fill out your days and nights, however much your doing so may reflect some degree of extreme or irrational behavior on your part). However, in doing that, you have stepped over the line quite a few times and were sued by ASTN because of statements you made concerning mob involvement, and now you have made it your life's mission to target ASTN despite the fact that you have only a nominal financial stake in the outcome (and a long one at that, or so you claim). And in doing so, you have lost touch with objectivity and fairness (assuming you had it in the first place) -- and when you get called on it, you act as if you are just some disinterested Jane Doe, merely expressing a reasonable negative opinion, and are the victim of a bunch of organized hypesters who grossly overreact every time you exercise your constitutional right to express your "opinion" because you are getting in the way of our efforts to commit securities fraud. Uh huh.

When you distort what others do or say to argue against it more effectively, it is not only transparent, it also reduces the effectiveness of the message you are trying to deliver. If you had come to the message board and said "gee, I know ASTN has an SEC approved system, some reputable people working for them, and that things are looking better operationally than they have in the the past, but if you look at the financial structure, the low cash on hand, the beaten down chart, the terms of the Jameson financing (and some of the problems Jameson has had with other companies they have financed), the problems TK and Valentine have had in similar situations, the Rose Glen situation (and the possibility that they could cause insurmountable financial problems for the company), and the history of delays and rosy projections that didn't pan out, it's no wonder its trading at a buck, and it is way too risky for my taste" I seriously doubt you would have been treated as you have been. We would have argued the issues, no doubt, and a few of the more extreme characters on Yahoo would have been rude, but you would not have been treated by the mainstream long as a dishonest menace -- when you chose to go over the line, and make this a matter of whether good versus evil, of whether ASTN is scammy, mob-related, fraudulent, etc., well, it's no wonder people reacted the way they did.

Yeah, I know, this post is too long for you to read -- your eyes are no doubt glazing over. Too bad. I have the right to express my opinion just as you do.

MST

http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/msg.gsp?msgid=16157412