I just happened to come across this from a previous ihub post. Daniel Bland sounds like a very dishonest, shady character...crook!
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inversor86 Saturday, 04/04/15 02:25:53 PMRe: Leedur post# 548?0Post # of 2714
I thought it would be better to do some more research on my own before leaving a disparaging article about the CEO's involvement in prior companies on here. I have no ill intent and do hold shares of BARZ. Many CEO's of successful companies have several failed startups in their closet. So far I haven't found any additional info to confirm or deny the opinion of the author. I know 5Barz is not smoke and mirrors, this is more about Bland's integrity.
Below is the post I removed. I can't restore it because of Ihub rules about the age of the post.
Does anyone know anything about the CEO's involvement in prior companies? I came across this article last night and have to say it is unsettling.
U.S. newsletter writer hypes Vancouver-connected company
Tim Fields predicts 5Barz International Inc. will be his next '10-bagger', but past experience indicates this is unlikely to be the case
By David Baines, Vancouver Sun April 9, 2011
vancouversun.com
Exciting news! U.S. newsletter writer Tim Fields has pegged 5Barz International Inc. as his next 10-bagger.
"5Barz patented, award-winning innovation is forever changing the face of wireless ... you could see 1,080 per cent returns by July 4, 2011!" he trumpeted in his newsletter, Untapped Wealth.
To realize Fields' prediction, the stock, which is trading at $1 on the OTC Bulletin Board in the United States, will have to surge to $10.80 in the next three months.
Fat chance.
The president and sole director of 5Barz is Daniel Bland. According to company filings, he lives in Blaine, but according the company's answering service, he lives in Vancouver. That's certainly where I got to know him.
In May 1993, while serving as president of Vancouver Stock Exchangelisted Empyrean Diagnostics Inc., he announced the company had developed a test kit that could tell if a person is HIV-positive within seven minutes. Bland said Empyrean planned to blanket the Third World with the kits: "This is going to be like Coke and Pepsi," he gushed.
In ensuing months, the company made a series of exciting announcement about prospective sales that never seemed to materialize. Still, the stock managed to levitate to $4.55 by September 1995 when the VSE halted trading "pending clarification of the company's affairs.'"
That's when Bland issued a release admitting, among other things, the company had granted options on 2.4 million shares to 44 people, but only nine were bona fide directors or employees.
He also qualified many of the company's sales announcements. For example in January 1994, he told shareholders the company's joint-venture partner, Majesco Medical Marketing, had secured an order for one million of its quick AIDS tests. Delivery was to begin March 1994.
"However," Bland confessed, "there was no commitment or promise to purchase one million of these kits." Rather, sales were to be on a bestefforts basis. By May of that year, he said, it was evident sales would not materialize but shareholders were not told.
And in June 1994, director Fraser Martin announced an agreement with Jin-Greene Biotechnology to distribute a minimum of 18 million HIV tests -representing $35 million US in gross revenues -to the United Arab Emirates. Shipments would begin in July and a minimum of 900,000 would be shipped by December 1994.
Bland again admitted the "agreement'" was simply a letter of inquiry and the company did not have the capacity to produce even the initial delivery amount.
The VSE insisted that Martin and a fellow director, Charles Beal, step down as directors, but permitted Bland to continue "for continuity."
Meanwhile, Bland belatedly filed insider reports showing he netted more than $1.3 million on his stock dealings at the same time he was exaggerating the company's financial prospects.
Empyrean continued to be a prolific money-loser and was eventually delisted.
In April 2000, Bland acquired control of a Nevada-registered bulletin board shell company by merging it with his private company, Upgrade International Corp., which owned some credit card technology.
One of the company's co-directors was Malcolm Burke, an amiable Howe Street promoter who has been involved in some horrendous promotions, initially on the VSE and later on the bulletin board.
His most dreadful bulletin board deal was SHEP Technologies Inc., which was pumped by various U.S. newsletters, including The Intrepid Investor, which declared that SHEP's vehiclebraking technology "could be one of the great discoveries of our times."
In 2004, the SEC commenced an investigation into possible fraud and manipulative trading in SHEP through accounts at Lines Overseas Management Ltd., a Bermuda-based brokerage firm.
LOM and several individuals eventually agreed to pay large fines and submit to heavy sanctions. Burke, although he served as SHEP's president and CEO, was never accused of any wrongdoing.
Upgrade International, with Bland and Burke on the board, was also heavily promoted. In 2000, unhappy shareholders filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that Bland had made false statements regarding the "market readiness and technological capabilities" of the company's credit card technology, thereby artificially inflating the stock.
The court dismissed the complaint, then the plaintiffs appealed, at which time the parties settled. The company, meanwhile, was a colossal bust. By June 2003, it had racked up nearly $98 million in cumulative losses and eventually disappeared.
Bland's latest promotion, 5Barz International, was a bad moon rising right from the start.
Originally called Bio-Stuff, the company filed a registration statement with the SEC in March 2009 as a prelude to going public on the bulletin board. It proposed to develop and market a "bio-ashtray" that beach-goers could use to park their cigarette butts. It had no revenues and total assets of only $24,336.
The company's lawyer was Diane Dalmy of Lakewood, Colo., a wellknown facilitator of dodgy U.S. over-the-counter stocks, many with connections to Vancouver. She has the dubious distinction of being banned by the lowly Pink Sheets market in the United States due to substandard work. Bio-Stuff's president was a Lisbon furniture designer named Joao Prata dos Santos. He acquired 7.1 million shares for one-tenth of a cent each, and sold another 1.76 million shares for one cent each to group of private Portuguese investors.
It is highly unlikely this was a serious business effort. It is much more likely that the plan was to take the company public, then gather up all the shares, thereby creating a tightly held shell that could be used for some future promotion.
Sure enough, as we have seen so many times before, after the SEC cleared the registration statement, control passed to a third party, Daniel Bland.
In October 2010, Bland arranged for Bio-Stuff to acquire a half interest in a line of "cellular network extenders" developed by a Nevada-registered company called CelLynx Group Inc., of which Bland and his old pal Burke are principals. He then changed the company's name to 5Barz International Inc.
The share price almost immediately leaped from five cents to $1.50, undoubtedly due, at least in part, to the tight share structure. The stock has also been heavily promoted, most notably by newsletter writer Fields.
"Call your broker or log in to your online trading account to grab BARZ ... It could be the smartest (and most lucrative) moves you make this year!" he enthused.
The small print at the bottom reveals that the newsletter is part of a $400,000 promotional campaign financed by Talon International Corp. As always, we don't know who is behind this firm, but we can guess it's somebody close to the company.
dbaines@vancouversun.com
vancouversun.com
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