Greenbelt Resources Corp (GRCO)

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Connecticut, Forbes just slammed USSE as a scam, which it is. Here's part of the article, full article at Forbes. It's a no brainer. FORBES Covers USSE

http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2007/0226/078.html?partner=yahoomag

KissyKat And The Magic Diesel

Daniel Fisher 02.26.07

[EXCERPTS from longer article]


When the cry goes up, "Renewable Energy!" an army of penny-stock operators swings into action.

An aerial photo on the web site of U.S. Sustainable Energy Corp. shows a plant in Natchez, Miss. where the company says it will soon begin producing 1.5 million gallons a day of biodiesel-like fuel from soybeans. To put that in perspective, that's double the current biodiesel output in the entire country.

John Rivera, U.S. Sustainable's chairman, admits he gets some skeptical looks when he describes his "secret" process for turning soybeans into liquid gold at a rate (five gallons per bushel) that experts say defies the laws of chemistry and physics. "Everybody comes out here and says, 'Hey, you're full of it,' and then they see me do it," says Rivera, who in the 1990s promoted a similar process for turning used tires into fuel oil. "That's when I turn to them and say, 'Welcome to the Liars Club. Because now nobody's gonna believe you, either.'"

Somebody's buying Rivera's story. His company, which has not yet reported any revenue (it intends to start filing financials with the Securities & Exchange Commission "soon"), carries a market value of $227 million. Hey, that's nothing. A December news release from U.S. Sustainable says that the company could have "an immediate market value" of $12 billion.

Things only get more confusing if you follow the trail to EarthFirst, a Tampa outfit that told the SEC it loaned $3.3 million to U.S. Sustainable Energy last year. EarthFirst Chairman John Stanton put out a news release in April trumpeting U.S. Sustainable's revolutionary biofuel process. In the days before the release EarthFirst's trading volume spiked to 5 million shares from several hundred thousand and the stock price bounced to 17 cents, briefly arresting a long slide to a nickel a share.

No, no, says Stanton. That's a different U.S. Sustainable Energy. Rivera wanted to use the same name for his company, explains Stanton, who admits doing business with Rivera in the past.

Details, details. The big picture: Everyone is in love with renewable energy--George Bush, any congressman you could name, the eminent venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, Goldman Sachs. At the upper end of the investment spectrum the field has attracted $53 billion in private capital over the last three years for windmills, solar panels and low-carbon energy sources. At the lower end there are the penny stocks.

. . . .

EarthFirst, John Stanton's firm, claims to be at "the forefront of alternative energy sources," according to its Web site, but still gets most of its revenue from moneylosing waste-disposal and biodiesel-import businesses, and recently filed to allow Laurus Capital to sell 76 million shares, whose proceeds would be used to retire convertible debt held by Laurus. A self-described turnaround expert, Chairman Stanton doesn't disclose in EarthFirst's sec filings anything about the $157 million collapse of Keller Financial, a used-car finance firm in Florida he briefly ran. A plaintiff attorney reportedly claimed that Keller preyed on unsophisticated, elderly investors. Stanton later paid $181,000 to settle a bankruptcy trustee's claim.

Stanton owns stakes in U.S. Energy Initiatives, which lost $4.5 million on sales of $426,000 in the first half of 2006 trying to sell kits to reconfigure diesel engines so they run on natural gas; and U.S. Sustainable Energy, which claims a catalytic vacuum distillation process that sounds remarkably similar to the one John Rivera is cranking up over in Natchez. Both involve heating organic materials in a vacuum until they break down into carbon and vapors that can be condensed into a low-grade fuel oil. "Why you'd put soybeans in there, I don't know," says Thomas Adams, a biofuels expert at the University of Georgia. "Sewage works just as well."

Adams questions how Rivera can produce biodiesel without methanol--or transform 60 pounds of soybeans into 37 pounds of biodiesel, versus the 27 pounds generally considered the limit. Rivera says his process is a secret and now claims he means "biofuel." He's not the only one pushing the limits of science: In its sec filings EarthFirst claims it can create more than 20 pounds of carbon, fuel oil, combustible gas and scrap steel from a 20-pound tire.

While scrambling for green-energy investments they can trumpet in news releases, penny-stock operators invariably collide. That's what happened in Plaquemines Parish, south of New Orleans, where Earth Biofuels of Dallas last year announced plans to restart an alcohol refinery, closed since the first ethanol boom went bust in the early 1990s. Months later South-ridge Enterprises, a onetime mining operation now in the ethanol business, said it was buying $6 million worth of equipment from the same plant to build its own 60-million-gallon-a-year ethanol refinery. Its shares jumped 20 cents to $1.84 on the news.

Earth cried foul, saying it owned the equipment. Southridge has sued Earth's partner in the deal, blaming it for the loss of $60 million in market value. A lawyer for the Louisiana partners says he expects the case to be dismissed, but the point seems moot: Earth has since imperiled its own $27 million investment by failing to come up with $80 million to finish the refurbishment by a Dec. 4 deadline. Earth says the project is "still viable."