From: Gregory Alan Bolcer (gbolcer@endtech.com)
Date: Sat Aug 12 2000 - 10:13:27 PDT
I have some really good connections for the Orange
County Business community. At one point I was asked
to be on a panel to discuss the trial and tribulations
of getting funding. Because it was widely promoted,
I've ended up getting onto a whole variety of lists.
Twice every week I get a call from Guru Financial telling
me about some great pre-IPO company that I can buy into
at $1-$5 per share. I tend to humor the guys when I accidentally
pick up the phone when the caller ID says "private caller"
and ask them a lot of questions about their stocks. Most
of them seem like meat packing & distribution stocks or
something equivalently odd. Every time I tell them to
send me the paperwork for the offering and I'll go through
it and make a decision. Every time they won't send it
to me. I am dying to get the paperwork/prospectus, do the 1/2 hour
research on the stock and do a nice writeup to the SEC on
stock scams and cold calling. I don't know what it is
that pisses me off about them. No information about them
on or offline, cold calling, averse to answering straight
questions, trite sales techniques.
If you've ever seen Boiler Room, it's straight out of there. Scam,
scam, scam. Boiler room is a movie about an off-Wall street chop
shop that's a cross between Wall Street (the Sheen/Douglas movie)
and Glengary Glen Ross (or however you spell it). How do they
think they can exist in this day and age? Do people really get
scammed by these guys? Anyways, for the record, two links
on how to deal with stock scams and an interesting article
on the practice.
Greg
http://www.financialweb.com/edtarticle.asp?PageID=skd&ArticleID=3250&ColumnID=67
Hell Hath No Fury Like an
Investor Scammed
By Lynn D. Duke
Monday, August 07, 2000 11:46:00 AM
Most of the investigations into securities fraud that make
headlines, large or small, deal with schemes that have already
been launched. There's little in the way of preventative
measures that regulators can take, save for educating
investors so they can spot fraud for what it is.
But millions, perhaps billions of dollars are lost each year to
securities fraud that most people never hear about: private
placements, or "pre-IPOs," that are hawked over the phone, via
email and occasionally through direct mail solicitation. It's
often only after money has changed hands, outrageous
promises have gone unfulfilled and investors are frantic that
regulators step in.
http://www.financialweb.com/skdindex.asps
STock Detective.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Aug 12 2000 - 10:17:33 PDT