Dot Com Startup Charged With Defrauding Investors
from the it-took-them-four-years-to-figure-this-out? dept
The SEC has charged a New York dot com startup for misleading investors to raise $2.3 million. Apparently, the dot com set up a boiler room type of operation, and would say just about anything to investors to get them to put in their money, such as saying that the company was about to go public. Apparently, they sold nearly 7 million unregistered shares this way to 350 investors in 1999 and 2000. While, these days, it's no surprise to find out that dot com startups during the bubble could find investors with too much money and no interest in doing even the slightest due diligence, you have to wonder why it took four or five years to catch this scam.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
