Buyants, keep posting. You know more than I do. The more people understand the history here, the more intrigued they will become about the future prospects. The CFO name you were looking for is Dave Buckel. It's hard to know where to place blame for the financing difficulties. Apparentley the company never anticipated the software problems(not smart) and if things had gone as planned Fletcher would probably be the only institutional investor. The original terms were pretty good. And the enactment of the "down round" protective clause probably happened naturally, but....if Fletcher had anything to do with helping it along, Frank should do everything in his power to set it right. And I'm pretty sure Fletcher was considered before Dave came on board. I still really want to know exactly what went down in regards to the ACS's problems. How can a product get to the point of being inside IBM hardware, winning awards, IBM putting on road shows for the product, glowing comments by IBM bigwigs, and then about one years later it comes to a screeching halt because of some undetected problems??????
If you go way, way back some interesting history come to light. Chopp days.
"On May 9, 1986 the Company was advised that a class action suit had been filed against the company for $400,000,000.00 by a shareholder. Subsequent events determined that the action had been initiated by the accountant of an ex-IRS attorney by the name of Alexandr Laurins. Mr. Laurins in association with Lawrence Merryman, an attorney from Orange, California and Nash Dowdle, an oil promoter from Midland, Texas had decided that the plans of Chopp to build a new supercomputer were a pipe dream and in fact part of a stock scam. Unknown to the company Mr. Laurins was already under investigation by the FBI and the SEC for among other things, selling $150,000,000.00 of non-existent shipping containers as tax shelters.
The class action mentioned above became the center-piece of an Investment Advisory Letter, called the Durant Livermore Cutten & Bliss Report which was mailed to all of the shareholders of the company whose names had been listed with the SEC when the company had filed its SEC 12(g) exemption, as well as brokers all over Canada and the U.S. The newsletter was in fact prepared and distributed by Laurins from his office on Union Street in San Francisco, and was filled with lies and mis-information about the Company. Laurins printed 10 or 11 issues up to June 30, 1986.
Laurins, Merryman & Dowdle had made illegal short sales of approximately 100,000 shares of the company for approximately $ 1.25 million, without borrowing the shares to offset their short position. The stock price did not go down as they had anticipated so they manufactured the bogus newsletter to help things along. This all became apparent when the Secretary-Treasurer of the company was approached and was advised by Mr. Dowdle that the matter could be resolved if a meeting could be arranged between the Secretary-Treasurer and the three conspirators. It took about three weeks to arrange for a meeting in San Francisco to take place on June 26, 1986.
Once the meeting had been arranged the Company's attorney contacted the FBI and arranged for the Secretary-Treasurer to be wired, but only after convincing the FBI that the only purpose of the meeting was to attempt to extort the 100,000 shares that the three were illegally short. The meeting took place in the Presidio where Laurins, Merryman and Dowdle did, in fact do exactly that. The entire conversation was recorded and was the basis for the Company being awarded a $30,000,000.00 RICO award, jointly and severally against the three conspirators. Unfortunately the court system moved very slowly as the case did not come to court to be resolved until September, 1990. The victory saved the reputation of the Company, but legal fees ate up everything recovered to date. "
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