Smart Technology Inc

We have been offered shares in a company called Smart Technology Inc who they say are aiming to launch on the American Stock Market or the NASDAQ through a broker Wellington-Duke & Associates from Switzerland. The money is to be sent through Amgrove Finance Ltd. whom we cannot seem to find any information about on the Internet apart from a mention in one of these Forums.
I have talked with Smart Technology in the USA who have a web site and seem to be a real company although there is little about them on the Internet.
I have never heard of Wellington-Duke who say they were one of the brokers that handled the Pre Public Launch of Google.com and cannot find any information about them on the Internet either.
How do you go about checking if these people are legitimate or not? Are they registered anywhere as legitimate and trustworthy companies? What protection is there when you are purchasing shares like this?

Richard

I have just been offered shares in an IPO for Smart Technology Inc, which does seem to be a real company (by their web-site ???). One day after initial contact, suddenly they heard the IPO is going ahead in Dec..... and so we need to secure a part of it quickly.
Tha offer is coming through a cold call from Cameron Price of Omega Equities. Contact is 0870 7120614. They state that they helped in the IPO of BayDo (spelling?) the Chinese = of Google. On their web site they are based in Belize.
When the payment details came through the initial bank is based in Switzerland but the Final Beneficiary Bank account is
In Favour of: First Curacao International Bank N.V.
Kaya W.F.G. (JOMBI)
Mensing 18, Zeelandia
P.O. Box 2299, Curacao
Netherlands Antillies
Swift Code: F C U R A N C U

Final Beneficiary Name is Amgrove Finance Ltd.
Account number: 01-205-300946-01

I cannot find anything on Amgrove Finance Ltd.
It is all sounding too rushed and too good to be true. Also .... where did they get my number from?

sounds like it is almost certainly a boiler room scam. You should read all of the thread below before you consider doing anything with this firm:

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/show...089#post206089

probabilities are high you will lose all the money you put into this.

I too have had a cold call from this Cameron Price just this morning offering the same. The name of Amgrove Finance was mentioned by him as an afterthought. Undertaking my own due diligence came across Trade2Win board and joined this forum as appears others have already experienced this case. Agree it all looks too coincidental and not one to pursue.

We too have been offered the same deal (in Netherland) about Smart Tech., by Wellington-Duke. Our main contact was Sheldon Greene, a well spoken gentleman. We have seen Smart Tech's very impressive website too, AND their affiliated French site (can't remember the name).
I have even checked out Smart Technology on the US SEC site - it seems to be a genuine, registered company, although in their deposition they do repeatedly comment that they may never make any money (?!?)
Wellington-Duke can be found at www.wdassociates.net. While professional in appearance, there's not a lot of info (lazy?).
We decided to buy some of the shares offered, because I'd done all the checking I could. However, once we'd given the go ahead, we received fund transfer banking instructions, with the money ending up in an account owned by Amgrove Finance Ltd in Curacao / Netherlands 'Antillies' (they didn't even spell 'Antilles' correctly!).
We'd been told that the money would go to Smart Technology, so I looked for Amgrove on the internet.
The only link I got for that was an entry in another forum "The Motley Fool" (www.fool.co.uk) where I found an ongoing discussion about scams connecting various "advisory" organisations and several "real businesses" we could invest in.
We will have the paperwork within the next day or so, but we'll be saving energy and ink (and money) by chucking it in the bin (or perhaps keeping it as a reminder that fools and their money are (almost) soon parted. )
Good Luck
FF

Postscript: 30-09-2005

This morning I had two calls from Duke-Wellington.
The first was from 'Sharon', who had no idea I had been in communication with her 'colleague' Sheldon, and who started the whole 'spiel' from scratch with "Hallo, remember we talked about IPO's a couple of months ago? Well, I have something that might interst you..."
Reason for that opening? IT IS ILLEGAL TO MAKE COLD CALLS! If I politely said "Er, yes", then they have it on tape that they have not made a cold call.
Sharon continued, even after I mentioned the obvious lack of interbal communication, but when I said that we hadn't spoken earlier she slammed the phone down in mid sentence.

The second call was from Sheldon. I couldn't stay on the phone as I was talking on the other line. Sheldon said "That's OK. I just wanted to congratulate you, you're $750 in profit, as the price of the shares has just gone up to $8.50."

EASY MONEY! I haven't even transferred the funds and I'm in profit! I wonder if Sheldon would take my 750 profit and buy some more shares for me....

After reading this board, I contacted this co. and confirmed I would not now be buying shares. They 'threatened' I would be contected by their legal dept. .... not heard yet!!!!!!

Sheldon called again today, to ask if I'd organised payment yet. I told him that due to a misspelling, the bank was hesitant, so he's correcting the paperwork and sending a new batch.
I asked a bout "cold-calls". He said 'Yes, we make cold calls. We buy contact lists of previous investors. When dealing with this sort of business which nobody knows about, we have to market it like this. Anyway, we don't fall under the FSA, so it's not illegal'.
When asked which governing body they do fall under he didn't know (first time he couldn't answer a question), but he had heard of one in Germany, but didn't know what it's called.
Amgrove, he said, is a clearing house working for Smart Technology - I couldn't find any connection because there isn't one, except that Amgrove is working for S T.
All businesses use clearing houses.
I also mentioned "Sharon's" call.
"Oh, yeah, I know Sharon (can't remember her last name). She's new. I'll have a word with her about her telephone manners..."

Is anybody interested in a continuing blow-by-blow? Or is it a waste of time ? IS there any way to stop them??

Just tell them:
a: you are an experienced investor and have set yourself standards
b: because of bad experiences in the past, you only deal with FSA regulated companies with a UK office, for legal reasons. ( no foreign based advisors )
c: you only invest in companies with a capitisation of £30M or more
d: you only trade in companies with a daily trading volume of 300,000 shared or more, for liquidity reasons
e: you only trade through certain brokers because you have accounts with them

Tell them if they dont meet your criteria, you wont deal with them. Simple.