Oil Expert, in answer to your question about dilution, read 57's earlier post. I will later re-post today all of the post on Lanza's past activities and past untrue PR. You don't yet seem to get or haven't had time to read up on Lanza...
Posted by: 57tbird
In reply to: soso who wrote msg# 8048 Date:8/10/2007 7:37:57 AM
Post #of 8057
ANother reason to rejoice when Lanza is GONE - as in left the building...and let BD prosper for the financial gain of all investors.
UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
LITIGATION RELEASE NO. 15371 / May 22, 1997
ACCOUNTING AND AUDITING ENFORCEMENT
RELEASE NO. 915 / May 22, 1997
SEC v. MEMBERS SERVICE CORPORATION, et al., 97-CV-01146 (May 22, 1997)
United States District Court for the District of Columbia
The Securities and Exchange Commission today filed a civil action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against ... Joseph Lanza, ....alleging violations of the antifraud, registration, and reporting provisions of the federal securities laws.
Members, which was based in Winter Park, Florida, purported to acquire and operate private companies engaged in various businesses, including oil and gas production, the sale of cellular fax machines,and the development of a synthetic blood substitute. The complaint alleges that, beginning in 1992, certain defendants issued false and misleading press releases, prepared false and misleading financial statements, and made undisclosed payments to salesmen and others to manipulate the price of Members stock from $2.50 to a high of $12 per share.
According to the complaint, the scheme began when stock promoter Sung and Arthur Feher, Jr., the now-deceased former president of Members, obtained 1.4 million shares of unregistered Members stock in sham transactions designed to circumvent the registration provisions of the federal securities laws. In one transaction, Feher allegedly caused Members to issue 200,000 shares to his nominee, a 96-year-old retired nursemaid who lived with him in Florida. In an effort to invoke Regulation S, which provides exemption from registration for sales made abroad, Feher allegedly caused Members to issue the stock to the woman as payment for consulting services that she had not performed, and moreover caused records to reflect that she lived abroad. The complaint alleges that the unregistered stock was deposited in nominee accounts at Union Securities in Vancouver, British Columbia, where Gilbert worked as a stockbroker.
The complaint alleges that Sung, Feher, Moore, Lanza, and Gilbert met in Boca Raton in May 1992 and agreed to undertake a series of actions to raise Members' share price artificially, to sell more than one million shares of unregistered Members stock that Sung and Feher controlled at Union Securities, and to share the proceeds from the sales. Members thereafter allegedly issued various false and misleading press releases about its involvement with companies tha were developing synthetic blood and producing oil and gas. The complaint alleges that, in one press release, Members falsely stated that it had acquired a synthetic blood company when, in fact, it had not. In another press release, Members allegedly predicted that drilling on its oil and gas properties would generate substantial revenues, but the release failed to disclose that there was no reasonable basis for the prediction.
As part of the alleged scheme, Moore and Payne caused Wall Street strategies,a New York Investment advisor, to recommend the purchase of Members stock to its clients, and Lanza recommended the purchase of Members stock to others. According to the complaint, Wall Street Strategies, Payne, and Moore failed to disclose the compensation that they received for promoting the stock. The complaint alleges that Lanza was paid at least $540,000, that Moore was paid $282,000, and that Payne was paid nearly $70,000 for promoting the stock. The complaint also alleges that First New England Securities, a Boca Raton brokerage firm that Silseth controlled, sold Members stock to customers at prices that included excessive, undisclosed compensation to the brokers.
