LIVINGSTON, Scotland - Adrian Charters was thinking of his 8-year-old daughter's future when he bought shares in a U.S. biotechnology company from a broker who said he represented a large Japanese investment firm.

Charters had set aside a modest amount of money for his daughter's education. He checked out the company, Stem Genetics Inc., and the investment firm, Sukumo Group Ltd., on their Internet sites.

The self-employed geologist also talked it over with his accountant. "He said, 'If you can afford to lose the money and it looks legitimate, then it's worth a waggle,'" Charters, 43, recalled in an interview at his home outside Edinburgh.

So, Charters decided to get in on the ground floor, wiring $11,700 in late 2002 for shares in Stem Genetics, a Salt Lake City research company, which had filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public stock offering.

Other Sukumo brokers sold him shares in three more small companies last year, pushing his total investment to just over $100,000.

Charters had no inkling of any problems until the date for Stem Genetics' stock offering came and went without a word from his broker in Japan.

Because he had misplaced the phone number, he went looking on the Internet. First, he found Sukumo's name - misspelled - on a warning list put out by the Financial Services Authority, the organization that oversees stock market activity in Britain.

His Sukumo broker explained that away, saying the company on the warning list was a different firm.

But last Aug. 28, Charters found an online message board full of postings that suggested Sukumo was a scam, a classic "boiler room" telemarketing operation.

"And then that big black hole opened up," he said. "I just took the dog for a walk for about three hours and thought about what the hell had happened and what I was going to do."

Charters' mother-in-law had just died, and he didn't want to trouble his wife with more bad news. So he waited about six months, suffering in silence with his predicament.

When the truth and the tears finally came, he said, she was remarkably understanding.

Charters began corresponding via the Internet with other British investors who bought shares from Sukumo, actually operating out of Laos. And he joined a group dedicated to exposing the scheme, identifying the perpetrators and pushing the SEC and FSA to bring charges.

When the SEC filed a fraud suit in October against Sukumo, Stem Genetics and 19 other businesses and individuals, it submitted affidavits from Charters and some of the other investors leading the charge against the boiler room ring.

Charters has agreed to testify if the case comes to trial in the United States, and he has continued compiling his own evidence. "I'm going to make it as difficult as possible for them, without making it a personal crusade."

Although Charters admits to a trusting nature, he never thought he could fall for the type of investment schemes regularly spotlighted on British television.

"I always look at those shows and say, 'How could they be so stupid?'" he said. "And here I got done myself."

His last correspondence with Sukumo was an e-mail he sent in October. He scanned a photograph of his daughter into his computer and sent it with a letter to his Sukumo brokers, appealing to their sense of decency and asking for help in recouping at least some of his investment.

Charters isn't expecting that to happen. He plans to take on more work to make up for his losses, estimating that it will take four to five years to fill the hole in his savings.

Charters counts himself luckier than many of his fellow investors. "I've still got my house, I've still got my family," he said. "And I've got a business I can be successful in and put it behind me."