Many of you probably have done some research on investments using the Internet, and might even receive e-mails promoting stock. The following story about two teenage college students and a 20-year-old Web site operator, detailed in a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) notice of administrative proceedings against them, should serve as a warning against accepting advice from these Internet touts.

The administrative action was made against Millennium Group of New York, LLC, Roman Suleymanov, Alex Rovner, and Gennady Favelyukis, even though, as is standard in such cases, they neither admitted nor denied their involvement in ripping investors off.

Suleymanov and Rovner, both 19 years-old and New York area college students, founded Millennium in 1999, through which they operated Realstocks.com, an Internet site on which they published recommendations for various stocks.

Suleymanov was the "chief editor" of the website, and Rovner was responsible for operations.

They are alleged to have promoted the stock of UN Dollars Corp. to about 30,000 e-mail newsletter subscribers. UN Dollars, which didn't have any business operations to speak of, was a publicly traded company on the OTC bulletin board until it was suspended from trading in March 2000.

The New Yorker magazine cartoon with the caption "On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Dog" applies here. Deal only with reputable dealers, or advisors, who clearly state who they are, who are registered with a regulator, and who have a physical office. Suleymanov and Rovner claimed to be investment whizzes, even though they did no research or had no basis for their predictions, the SEC stated.

They probably thought they hit a jackpot when, in February 2000, Turks and Caicos-based Carib Securities, Ltd. hired Millennium to tout UN Dollars' stock on Realstocks.com. Millennium agreed to distribute a profile on UN Dollars to 100,000 e-mail subscribers over a three-month period.

In return Carib Securities agreed to pay Millennium with 100,000 shares in UN Dollars. The profile on UN Dollars was published in February 2000, stating that Realstocks.com was "upgrading" the company to a ''strong buy'' and predicted a six-month price target price of $4. At that time, UN Dollars traded at between $0.80 and $1, the all-time highs for the stock. The profile stated that the $4 prediction was based on UN Dollar's status as a multinational development company, a conglomerate and diversified holding company that was on its way to establishing a presence as a world-leading company through acquisitions. Throughout all of this no actual type of business was ever mentioned.

What's strange is investors believed this nonsense, even though the profile carried a disclaimer disclosing the compensation of 100,000 shares from Carib.

"Suleymanov also admitted that he picked the $4 price target to boost interest in the stock among investors and without any supportable methodology," the SEC stated.

Millennium received 33,000 UN Dollars shares in March after the profile was published. The two then paid 26,500 shares as a finders fee to those who introduced Carib to Millennium. They then sold the remaining shares at $1.10, for a total return of $6,954.

As a part of the campaign, Rovner and Suleymanov signed an agreement with Favelyukis, who according to the SEC operated StocksNetwork.com and Winningstocks.com. However the SEC must be wrong about the spelling of the latter site. StocksNetwork has a link to Winningstock.com (without the "s"), which is owned by Rovner.

Winningstocks.com is a paid-subscriber investment newsletter service owned by Boston Analytics Research & Trading, which states that it does not accept shares, money or any other compensation from companies, or promote stock.

Favelyukis agreed to distribute the profile to his 30,000 subscribers.

Rovner and Suleymanov agreed to pay Favelyukis $2,000 for his efforts.

Favelyukis adopted the recommendations written by Suleymanov and sent them to subscribers as Winningstocks' and StocksNetwork's own recommendations with the disclaimer that the profile was based on research by Millennium.

The profile was also posted on Favelyukis' Internet sites as "stock pick of the week" on 2 March 2001. He cut out the statement that Millennium had received 100,000 shares from Carib to tout UN Dollars stock. Favelyukis also bought 20,000 UN Dollar shares prior to publication and then sold the shares at the time of publication, realising a trading profit of $1,404.

In total, the SEC required the three to pay back $11,323.

The regulator probably didn't crack down on them harder due to the small part they played in a much larger investor rip off made through Carib Securities and other individuals that resulted in $30 million worth of illegal profits.

However StocksNetwork.com and Winningstock.com's Internet sites are still operating on the Internet. By checking the Internet registry database at Whois.org, investors would have found some incestuous connections among the sites being touted.

Favelyukis is listed on the Internet registry database as the domain-name owner of www.stocksnetwork.com. The administrative contact is Winning Stock.com LLC. The www.winningstock.com domain owner is Alex Rovner. Both sites link back to each other.

The WinningStock.com site admits that companies featured on the website pay money or shares for electronic dissemination of profiles and notes that it would sell "part or all of any such shares during the period in which Winning Stock.com LLC is performing such services".

The Otcinsider.com, a site linked from both sites, is listed as registered by Favelyukis. Expertprofiles.com is owned by Winningstock.com and administered by Rovner. Woopty.com is promoted on Stocksnetwork.com as an automatic online system through which buyers and sellers exchange goods for barter dollars called "Woopties". The Woopties can then be exchanged for other goods on the site. As a bonus for signing up you will receive 200 Woopties "Absolutely FREE!". Get your Woopties now. But wait, Woopty.com is owned by Rovner and Favelyukis and is registered by Millennium Group of New York. I guess they dumped Suleymanov.

lTech Tattle deals with topics relating to technology. You can contact Ahmed at editoroffshoreon.com or (33) 467901474.