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Re: Watney99 post# 13941

Monday, 08/01/2005 10:34:12 AM

Monday, August 01, 2005 10:34:12 AM

Post# of 157299
August 1, 2005 -- WE just knew it was out there some where, like the Yeti, and after all these years and decades of searching, we have found it at last: the ultimate, all-in-one Penny Stock With Everything.
We're talking more than just phone numbers that never answer, or the $50 million joint venture partner that may not exist, or even the crooked promoter and the listing on the American Stock Exchange.

Beyond all that we're talking about a company that increased its stock price by nearly 500 percent earlier this year by launching itself into a business, 65,000 feet over the snake-infested jungles of Colombia, that looks to be based, both literally and figuratively, on the ultimate marketing tool of Wall Street itself: actual hot air.

The company in question, which goes by the name of Globetel Communications Inc., is only one of many such in-your-face promotions that have lately sprung to life before the glassy-eyed stares of the regulators.

Who among us still remembers a stock from last winter called Stinger Systems, Inc., which took a bow in this space back in January as one of several over-hyped "stun gun" stocks in the so-called Homeland Defense sector?

Two weeks ago the company notified shareholders that the Securities and Exchange Commission had been investigating Stinger Systems since last December and had now decided to ratchet the case up a notch and maybe even file a lawsuit against the company and its top management.

During those eight months, Wall Street pump-and-dumpers put Stinger's stock through the complete heavy wash cycle, sending it soaring from pennies to nearly $50 between Thanksgiving and Christmas, followed by the inevitable bailout that has sent it crashing back to its current — and still-inflated — price of less than $5.



Meanwhile, the company's two top officials have quit, and with the place in a shambles the bumbling gendarmes of the SEC have arrived, late as usual, to harrumph about maybe possibly sending somebody a really nasty e-mail.

IT'S pretty much the same story with Globe tel Communications, Inc., which has been kicking around Wall Street under one name or another for nearly the whole of the last quarter-century.

Beginning as a Nevada homebuilder, the company switched thereafter to the beckoning opportunities of the shock absorber business, followed by a foray into syphilis detection test kits. After that came the computer business, and finally, the "voice over the Internet" telecommunications business, which the company operated out of a 600-square-foot office in Hickory Hill, N.C., under the name of American Diversified Group Inc.

At the start of 2000, the company merged with a Miami-based outfit called Global Transmedia Communications Corp. and changed its name to Globetel Communications.

Yet it wasn't until the combined companies hooked up with another telecom outfit, called Sanswire Technologies Inc., in early 2004 that Globetel's stock price at last began to gain some lift.

That's because Sanswire had a hot story and was already shopping it around using the services of a South Florida firm of stock promoters known as Wall Street Capital Funding.

By acquiring it in April of last year for what looks to have been no more than $3 million worth of stock, Globetel turned Sanswire's Big New Opportunity into its own — namely, a plan for bouncing telephone calls off a specially created network of geosynchronous relay stations 12 miles above the surface of the earth, where the stratosphere meets outer space.

Sound cutting edge? In fact, it gets even better because these relay stations weren't going to be plain old humdrum satellites at all, but something far more intriguing. So, are you ready for — blimps?

That's right, folks, instead of satellites, Globetel's infrastructure is going to be assembled out of blimps — the same things you see floating over used car lots on summer Sundays, bearing messages on the sides like, "Blowout Special" and " '98 Dakota — Klean and Mean."

(Globetel press releases say not to call them blimps because they're rigid-framed, 21st century aircraft. But the company has a picture of one on its Web site, and frankly, it looks like a blimp to me.)

Anyway, since bold new thinking is best conveyed with bold new words, Globetel is using its own trademarked name for its (don't call 'em) blimps in space: stratellites — the first of which is set to float heavenward by year's end, reaching a sub-orbital, stationary position 65,000 feet above the earth where it will soon be joined by four others.

THERE's just one thing: That pre-determined, sub-orbital position at the doorway to outer space turns out to be 12 miles above the jungles of Colombia, which is not yet what you'd call a booming market for voice-over-the-internet telecommunications services.

(On the other hand, high above the jungles of Colombia is one place where you could say you've got 500 of the things in orbit, and who is going to say otherwise?)

We wanted to ask a company spokesman why a squadron of (don't call 'em) blimps over Colombia promised to become anything more than the high concept for a "Seinfeld" routine, but couldn't get further than a voice recording for the PR person, which said "high call volume" meant not to expect a return call anytime soon.

Next we came upon a press release announcing plans by a Florida company called Apogeo Enterprises Corp. to invest $50 million in Globetel's not-blimps project, and tried to call them up, too, since anyone planning to invest $50 million in something must surely know what he's doing.

Unfortunately, it proved impossible to locate a business by that name in Florida or anywhere else.

Another possible source of information might have been a man named Paul Taboada, who issued a large number of press releases for the company during 2002 when it was still known as American Diversified Group Inc.

A search of SEC filings revealed that Taboada is now a private investor and consultant to Globetel, and has already invested $500,000 in the company, which is apparently being used as tide-me-over money until that big $50 million rolls in and construction of the not-blimps gets going in earnest.

Unfortunately, Taboada didn't turn out to have the credentials for which one might have hoped.

During the period when he was writing press releases for American Diversified Group, Taboada was working as Director of Corporate Finance for the firm of Hornblower & Weeks.

In that capacity, Taboada issued a research report for American Diversified that turned out to be so over-hyped and distorted in its thumbs-up analysis of the company's prospects that the National Association of Securities Dealers wound up suspending not just Taboada but the entire firm of Hornblower & Weeks from issuing any reports about any companies for six months.

Now he's working for American Diversified's renamed successor from the inside and apparently has half a million dollars on the line, so who could possibly trust a word he'd have to say about anything regarding Globetel?

Bottom line: Remember the name because Globetel Communications Inc. is one penny stock company embodying so much of what is wrong with Wall Street that they ought to make it a case study in business schools.

But don't tell that to the sleepy-heads at the SEC, you might wake them up.

cbyron@nypost.com


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