Friday, September 01, 2006
Eternal Technologies (ETLT) auditors haven't skipped town
I suppose this is my own "distress release" (press release with news so underwhelming that it's frightening) regarding ETLT (combined links). The auditors (see here and here for more info) haven't skipped town. Hooray!
The auditors website has been down (for I don't know how long) and I wanted to get a voice-on-the-phone status on what's going on. The auditors got back to me after I left a message with the receptionist for whoever handles ETLT to call me back. The same guy who I exchanged e-mail with back in May got back to me. He said that they're working on overhauling the website. I mentioned that investors get nervous about little things like that and he seemed genuinely surprised to hear it. I asked him if they were still the auditors for ETLT and he said that they were.
Ham, Langston & Brezina, L.L.P. is a reputable accounting firm in the Houston area with lots of good credentials. NOTE: Other than their website going down, there's no reason to believe they would have disappeared. I don't want to start any rumors.
Some investors (myself included) have experienced the horror of having senior management of a public company, even one on the New York Stock Exchange, simply skip town leaving far less cash in the bank than should have been there. In that case, the red flags were far redder and far more numerous that anything at ETLT. If you invest in shady, gray-market stuff, where you know there's huge amounts of bribery and stolen cars, you're liable to get burnt. If you dig up the New York Times Select article on them, you'll be truly amazed at how bad they were. There was talk about car bombs (supposedly someone with ties to the company narrowly avoided one), arms smuggling, and links to al qaeda.
The auditors website has been down (for I don't know how long) and I wanted to get a voice-on-the-phone status on what's going on. The auditors got back to me after I left a message with the receptionist for whoever handles ETLT to call me back. The same guy who I exchanged e-mail with back in May got back to me. He said that they're working on overhauling the website. I mentioned that investors get nervous about little things like that and he seemed genuinely surprised to hear it. I asked him if they were still the auditors for ETLT and he said that they were.
Ham, Langston & Brezina, L.L.P. is a reputable accounting firm in the Houston area with lots of good credentials. NOTE: Other than their website going down, there's no reason to believe they would have disappeared. I don't want to start any rumors.
Some investors (myself included) have experienced the horror of having senior management of a public company, even one on the New York Stock Exchange, simply skip town leaving far less cash in the bank than should have been there. In that case, the red flags were far redder and far more numerous that anything at ETLT. If you invest in shady, gray-market stuff, where you know there's huge amounts of bribery and stolen cars, you're liable to get burnt. If you dig up the New York Times Select article on them, you'll be truly amazed at how bad they were. There was talk about car bombs (supposedly someone with ties to the company narrowly avoided one), arms smuggling, and links to al qaeda.
// posted by Bruce @ 12:34 PM 
