1. When Scottish geologist Adrian Charters got an unsolicited call in 2002 from a broker offering him shares of a hot American biotechnology company that had filed for an initial public stock offering, he was skeptical. He visited the Internet site of the brokerage, Sukumo Group Ltd., which listed its headquarters as a Tokyo highrise.



2. He checked out the Web site of the biotech company, Stem Genetics Inc. of Salt Lake City.



Charters even talked it over with his accountant before investing.

Charters had no inkling of trouble until the date for the Stem Genetics' stock offering came and went, with no word from his broker, in the summer of 2003. Because Charters had misplaced his broker's number, he went looking for Sukumo on the Internet.

3. Instead, he found this warning from Great Britain's Financial Services Authority, which included a list of unauthorized brokers but misspelled Sukumo's name.



4. Charters later discovered an Internet message board where investors were comparing notes about their dealings with Sukumo. He and some of the other investors got in touch with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which already was investigating Sukumo and Stem Genetics.

Last October, the SEC announced this civil fraud suit:


http://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/comp18413.htm

Charters has not heard from Sukumo broker since the SEC action.

But he and other investors have heard from new firms, offering to buy back the shares they hold at a hefty premium. The tempting offer came with a catch; the sellers would have to put up a percentage of the deal's value in advance, as a sort of a bond.

The companies calling Sukumo customers have included: RJL International Group, which claimed to be based in Cambridge, Mass;



Miller Bosses Acquisitions Inc., which says it's in Minneapolis; InterTrade Asset Management, which says it's in Cleveland; and InterGlobal Mergers and Acquisitions, which uses a San Franciso address. All four of the operations have since been added to regulatory warning lists.

5. To get around that obstacle, the new telemarketing "boiler rooms'' are directing potential clients to the Internet sites of organizations that purport to help investors avoid fraud. However, the warning lists on those sites omit the above firms.

InterTrade and InterGlobal have been sending people to International Public Shareholder Protection Services, whose headquarters address in Boise, Idaho corresponds to a nightclub called the Big Easy.



Miller Bosses has been referring people to a similar site for another entity, the International Shareholder Protection Department, which lists a headquarters address in Iowa, Iowa.



Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin filed an administrative complaint and a cease-and-desist order in April against RJL International. He said investigators responding to investor reports of losses could find no sign of the company at its purported address. RJL's Web site is no longer active.