"They make it sound like you could make $2,000 a week," said the first I called, a retired teacher who figured he had earned $1.10 an hour-not counting the opportunity cost of his investment. No wonder Antares had buried the local contacts. That FTC settlement required Antares to provide five references in my county of residence they were listed in the middle of an all-capital, hard-to-read block of type. I wanted to talk to some buyers other than Antares' handpicked sources, who were listed in easy-to-read Antares' literature. A 75% haircut in a year? It didn't make the Antares machine look like a good long-term investment. On a vending machine site (I found people trying to sell Antares machines-often less than a year old-for as little as $1,500. I called some dealers, rivals of Antares, who suggested that the company was selling overpriced merchandise to people who didn't comparison-shop. That was less than half the Antares price. Total: $17,987, or $6,000 a machine.įair price? Back on the Web, I located independent dealers selling comparable machines-even made by Antares' own private-label manufacturer, Edina Technical Products-for around $2,500. The minimum purchase-three machines-would cost $19,137, less a $1,150 discount. The IBM Intellectual Property Network-all patents since 1974, but makes no mention of Bashor, Orion Products or Antares Corp.Īntares salespeople handed out a disclosure form mentioning the FTC action but not the specific allegations or the $1 million fine. Even that claim could be reviewed easily. It was built like a refrigerator, with a door that dispensed snacks and an inner compartment that held cans and bottles.Ī big-screen video showed a trim, bearded, confident Bashor talking about how he had designed the machine. On the appointed day I went to a hotel ballroom and examined the company's compact vending machine. After ordering back copies and a book on operating vending machines, I was prepared for the Antares presentation.
I then used Web search engines to track down vending machine trade organizations, which mailed me literature and trade publications. A call to the 95-cent-a-minute Better Business Bureau hotline (90) revealed that Antares had satisfactorily settled all 26 complaints against it (in response, Antares called the number of complaints insignificant). "Antares settled it pretty quickly," plaintiff attorney Michael Fatall told me. unfair and unnecessary."Ī 1996 Kansas City Star story detailed a fraud lawsuit against Antares (a suit KnowX had missed). An Antares press release called the FTCcharges "unwarranted. (It's all summarized on the FTC's Web site, The defendants admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to reforms. Among the civil charges: misrepresenting potential earnings and the ease of finding locations for vending machines. It turned out Bashor, Antares and Orion Products had paid a $1 million fine to the Federal Trade Commission in 1996. I downloaded articles onto a diskette and reviewed them at home.
I then went to a library that offers terminals for browsing Dow Jones Interactive, Lexis-Nexis and Dialog-media databases that contain the full text or abstracts of thousands of newspapers, magazines and television news shows going back ten years or more.
Orion, an affiliate of Antares, settled by paying $2,500. That search showed that in 1991 Connecticut had brought a cease-and-desist action against Orion Products Corp.-Dana Bashor, president-for selling without a filing.
That nationwide database, not carried on the Web, includes disciplinary actions in the securities field.
For another $15, KnowX provided a fuller description, including the names of parties, filing dates, names of courts and docket numbers (beware of similar names and gaps in database coverage).Īfter finding the number of my state's securities department, at I called and requested a check of names through the Central Registration Depository. KnowX turned up about half a dozen lawsuits since 1990 against Bashor or Antares Corp., mainly in California, as well as a $46,175 tax lien placed by the California State Franchise Tax Board in 1997. Its fee: just $1.50 per name and category searched. My first stop was (a service that checks county and federal courthouses nationwide for tax liens, judgments, bankruptcies and lawsuits.
You can be tarred and feathered on the World Wide Web. There was a time when a salesman of miracle products could travel from city to city, not worrying much about his reputation.