Best Money

Internet fantasy lives blown apart by rifle blast in the car park

HE WAS an 18-year-old marine headed to war. She was an attractive young woman sending him off with pictures and lingerie.

Or so each one thought.

In reality, they were two middle-aged people carrying on an internet fantasy based on seemingly harmless lies.

When a truthful 22-year-old was drawn in, their cyber escape turned deadly.

“When you’re on the internet talking, you haven’t got a clue who that is on the other end,” Sheriff’s Lieutenant Ron Kenyon said. “You don’t have a clue.”

When Brian Barrett was shot dead on 15 September, 2006, outside the factory in New York State where he worked to help pay his college fees, investigators and his family were stumped.

Mr Barrett, 22, was an aspiring teacher, an accomplished high school athlete who had coached junior baseball all summer and helped his father coach football. Those who knew the Buffalo State College student described him as quiet and unassuming.

He had clearly been targeted. Mr Barrett was shot three times at close range in the neck and arm after climbing into his 4×4 at about 10pm at the end of a shift at Dynabrade in Clarence, 20 miles outside Buffalo. His body was found two days later when a colleague spotted his pick-up truck in an isolated part of the firm’s car park.

“He was just a nice kid, a gentleman,” said Starpoint High School athletics director Tom Sarkovics. “I don’t think anybody could say a bad thing about him.”

On 27 November, Mr Barrett’s co-worker and friend, Thomas Montgomery, 47, was charged with his murder. The motive, investigators said, was jealousy over Mr Barrett’s budding internet relationship with the same 18-year-old woman Montgomery had been wooing.

What neither man knew was that the woman was a 40-odd West Virginia mother using her daughter’s identity to attract internet suitors. Cyberspace, it seemed, was enough; she never intended to meet either man.

“The game would have been over at that point and time for sure,” Lt Kenyon said.

When Montgomery began chatting with the woman in 2005, the former marine portrayed himself as perhaps a previous version of himself - a young soldier preparing for deployment to Iraq, assistant district attorney Ken Case said.

For a time, they communicated strictly through chat rooms and e-mail.

Then the woman began sending gifts to Montgomery’s home, Mr Case said. Pictures of the woman’s daughter, lingerie and a set of custom-made military dog tags arrived at the pale yellow suburban house that Montgomery shared with his wife and two teenage children.

Montgomery’s wife intercepted one of the packages, Mr Case said. She wrote back to the woman at the return address, and included a family portrait to make her point.

“As you can see, Tom’s not 18,” Mr Case said she wrote. “He’s married and he’s a father of two. He’s 47 and I’m his wife.” And, believing she was writing to an 18-year-old: “You’ve obviously been fooled.”

The West Virginia woman - whom authorities will not identify - remembered a friend named Brian that Montgomery had mentioned. She recalled enough of his internet screen-name to contact Mr Barrett to ask him about what Montgomery’s wife had told her.

Soon, Mr Barrett was in regular contact with the woman. Despite knowing the truth about Montgomery, the woman remained in contact with him as well, Mr Case said.

The woman made no secret of the fact she was chatting with Mr Barrett, Mr Case said, and Mr Barrett talked about the relationship at work. Montgomery, authorities say, became jealous.

Investigators believe that Mr Barrett’s killer wore camouflage and a ski mask when he approached his victim in the car park with a .30-calibre rifle and fired at close range.

Montgomery is being held without bail after pleading not guilty to second-degree murder. Tall and with thinning hair, glasses and a moustache, he said nothing at a procedural court appearance earlier this month.

His wife has begun divorce proceedings, Mr Case said.

The internet crime expert JA Hitchcock, author of Net Crimes and Misdemeanours, said the case illustrated the dangers that lurk on the web.

“I’m hoping that this case will make people think twice about what they do online and what their actions can cause in the long run,” she said.

OSC drops case against former Atlas Cold Storage CEO

Securities charges against the former CEO of Atlas Cold Storage Holdings Inc. have been dropped after the Ontario Securities Commission said there was no chance it could get a conviction.

Patrick Gouveia and three other senior Atlas executives were charged in 2004 with offences relating to the alleged filing of “materially misleading” annual financial statementsfor 2001 and 2002.

But late Tuesday, the OSC asked that all charges againstGouveia be dismissed. The regulator said someone whom it described as a “key witness” had presented new evidence in early February evidence that the regulator said should have been brought forward two years earlier.

“The late production of this new evidence has impaired the ability of this key witness to provide useful testimony at the trial,” the OSC said in a statement.

“After a comprehensive review of the new evidence, the OSC has determined that there is no longer a reasonable prospect of conviction because evidence of the key witness was tainted by the late disclosure,” it added.

The first indication of problems at Atlas Cold Storage came on Labour Day weekend of 2003, when it announced that it would restate its 2001 and 2002 financial results because of accounting irregularities.

A subsequent investigation found that earnings were overstated. About $3.6 million in expenditures in 2002 had been incorrectly recorded as additions to capital assets. Another $1.6 million that had been booked as capital assets in 2001 would also be reclassified as expenditures.

The company subsequently fired its chief financial officer and its vice-president of finance.

In November 2003, CEO Gouveia quit. In December 2003, the Atlas Cold Storage Income Trustsaid it was suspending its distributions to unit holders indefinitely.

In October 2006, Atlas Cold Storage Income Trust accepted a $583-million buyout offer from the Avion Group of Iceland. At the time, Atlas had the second largest refrigerated warehouse network in North America, with more than 50 facilities across Canada and the United States.

China to continue buying US Treasuries - report

BEIJING (XFN-ASIA) - China will continue to purchase US Treasuries after the new foreign exchange investment agency begins operations, The Standard reported, citing central bank vice governor Wu Xiaoling.

Asked yesterday in Basel, Switzerland whether China would continue to buy US Treasuries, Wu said: “Yes.”

She is attending the bi-monthly meeting of central bank governors from the Group of 10 nations.

China plans to set up an agency to help manage its currency reserves, modeling it on Singapore’s Temasek Holdings to create what will become Asia’s largest government-controlled investment fund.

Yesterday’s statement by Wu came as governor Zhou Xiaochuan confirmed that Lou Jiwei, former vice finance minister, will head the agency.

andrew.pasek@xinhuafinance.com

For more information and to contact AFX: www.afxnews.com and www.afxpress.com

Upscale chocolate makers sweet success

BERKELEY, Calif. - Americans love of chocolate has become a dark and bittersweet affair, and it took a former vintner to make it so.

John Scharffenberger and Robert Steinberg launched the first U.S. chocolate manufacturing company in half a century, drawing heavily on Scharffenbergers refined palate and his past as a maker of sparkling wines.

Together, they set out to do for dark chocolate what fellow Californian Robert Mondavi had done for wine demystify, democratize and domesticate it.

Call it kismet, uncanny timing or creative chemistry, but in the 11 years since co-founding Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker they have watched the publics appetite for gourmet chocolate expand from a Valentines Day extravagance to an everyday indulgence.

Weve gone through a food revolution in this country, said Scharffenberger. Just as Americans have become more sophisticated about wine, whole-bean coffee, artisan cheeses and other products that once were the luxury of certified foodies have been mainstreamed to the masses.

The one thing that remained to be done was chocolate, and thats what we hit on, Scharffenberger said.

Like the label of a fine wine, the wrapper on a Scharffen Berger chocolate tells you exactly whats inside. It was the first U.S. chocolatier to feature the cacao count prominently on its wrappers the higher the number, the darker and more bitter the chocolate. And the source of the beans is also noted, for those who like knowing whether their chocolate got its start in Madagascar, Ecuador, Ghana or Peru.

Scharffen Berger bars now are prominently displayed in the checkout lines of grocers like Trader Joes, Andronicos and Whole Foods.

Yet venerable players like Reading, Pa.-based Godiva Chocolatier Inc., part of The Campbell Soup Co., and Ghirardelli Chocolate Co., now headquartered in San Leandro, Calif., jump-started the trend, said Marcia Mogelonsky, an analyst with the market research firm Mintel International. They popularized fancy chocolates with upscale, single-serving packaging, wider distribution and savvy marketing, she said.

Even The Hershey Co., the name synonymous with American chocolate, has invested heavily in premium chocolate, showing it is more than a fad, she said. Besides buying Scharffen Berger 1 years ago, the company has introduced its own line of premium chocolate bars and late last year purchased Ashland, Ore.-based Dagoba Organic Chocolate.

Between 2003 and 2005, U.S. sales of premium chocolates went from $1.4 billion to $1.79 billion, according to Mogelonsky. While it still represents only a fraction of the overall $15.7 billion chocolate market, the growth rate for the good stuff has been much faster 28 percent over the three-year period compared to annual rates of 2 to 3 percent for the industry as a whole.

People were ready for a change, said Mogelonsky. She relates the trend to Americans growing self-indulgence.

I cant afford a mink and a diamond, but I can afford a piece of really good chocolate, she said.

As with wine and coffee, the origin of premium chocolate has increasingly become a selling point. And consumers have also responded to manufacturers efforts to tout their relationships with growers in the developing countries where cacao typically comes from, she said.

The quality and quantity of cacao in a bar or bonbon is what distinguishes fine chocolate from the coating on a Snickers, according to Scharffenberger, who personally oversees the blending of 30 varieties of beans that go into the companys products and visits the ranches in Guatemala, Madagascar and other countries where it secures supplies.

We arent creating flavors that are earth-shattering, just delicious, he said.

The Food and Drug Administration requires milk chocolate to contain at least 10 percent cacao, but Scharffen Bergers milk chocolate contains a whopping 41 percent. Its darkest dark chocolate, 82 percent.

Before Scharffenberger and Steinberg set up shop, California already was home to plenty of chocolate makers both high-end and pedestrian. Besides Ghirardelli, they include Glendale-based Nestle USA, Guittard Chocolate Co. in Burlingame, Joseph Schmidt Confections, which also was bought out by Hersheys last year, and Sees Candies in South San Francisco.

The growth has been steady enough that by 2000 California had edged out Pennsylvania, home of Hersheys, to become the nations chocolate capital. In 2004, the last year for which figures were available, California had 136 companies churning out chocolate and cocoa products compared to Pennsylvanias 122, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Besides its reputation as a food snobs paradise, there is a practical reason the San Francisco Bay area, in particular, has emerged as the heart of chocolate activity: the consistent, moist climate, according to Scharffenberger.

Its a pain to make chocolate when its hot, he said.

Like a winery, the company offers tours of its Berkeley factory where participants about 40,000 of them a year receive morsels of chocolate trivia along with free samples. On a recent morning, a tour group learned, for example, that cacao beans are technically a fruit, that dark chocolate tastes better melted on the tongue instead of chewed, and that the actual cacao content of white chocolate is zero.

Adrienne Newman, an aspiring chocolatier from Austin, Texas, was taking the tour for the third time after making chocolate a full-time hobby. Over the holidays, she took her boyfriend to Switzerland so she could taste the local wares, and she mail orders chocolate from new companies whose products she wants to try.

For a long time, she could still enjoy a Hersheys bar, Newman said, but no more.

Im beyond that, she said. After three years of tasting exquisite stuff, there is no going back.” 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

SKorea Jan industrial output up 7.4 pct; at lower end of mkt consensus -UPDATE

SEOUL (XFN-ASIA) - Industrial output expanded 7.4 pct year-on-year in January backed by stronger production of semiconductor chips, machinery and chemical products, the National Statistical Office said.

The indicator accelerated from a 3.0 pct rise a month earlier when output suffered due to fewer working days in the month and the base effect from strong output a year earlier.

But the output figure was at the lower end of the market consensus of 7.4-7.94 pct.

Working day-adjusted industrial output grew at a modest rate of 1.4 pct year-on-year in January, compared to 7.6 pct growth in the month earlier term. The NSO said Lunar New Year holidays, which had fallen in January last year, seemed to boost the unadjusted output figure last month.

Month-on-month, output expanded 1.3 pct in January after a 2.8 pct contraction in the preceding month, backed by firmer output of handsets, chips and machinery.

“After hitting a peak in November, the economy has been showing signs of moderating a bit…But we have to wait and see whether the trend will set in as there is the possibility of a rebound as well,” said Choi In-Keun, head of the NSO’s economic statistics bureau.

Production at chipmakers expanded 11.4 pct year-on-year in January but it slowed from 13.2 pct growth in December. Month-on-month, chip output grew 1.4 pct last month following December’s contraction of 7.1 pct, the NSO said.

Production of machinery grew 17.4 pct year-on-year last month against the previous month’s 3.0 pct rise.

Private consumption, as measured by wholesale and retail sales of consumer goods, expanded 3.1 pct year-on-year in January, against a 3.3 pct rise booked in December.

Month-on-month, consumption grew 0.8 pct last month on stronger demand for communication devices, computers and kitchen utensils although the pace eased slightly from 0.9 pct in the preceding month.

Gross shipments grew 7.2 pct year-on-year in January, faster than the 3.0 pct rise a month earlier, with export shipment growth rising to 7.5 pct from 4.8 pct and domestic shipment growth accelerating to 7.0 pct from 1.8 pct.

Inventory grew 10.7 pct year-on-year in January due to higher inventory levels of chips and cars, faster than 6.2 pct a month earlier and the highest since growth of 11.1 pct in April 2005.

Corporate facility investment rose 16 pct year-on-year on increased investment in computers, machinery and cars. The indicator came well above the previous month’s performance of 2.3 pct and was the strongest since last September’s 17.7 pct.

Factory-use rates rose to 81.3 pct from 80.5 pct in the previous month.

January new domestic construction orders expanded 9.7 pct year-on-year on the back of brisk orders from the public sector but eased sharply from December’s solid growth of 29.8 pct.

The January coincident index - a key indicator measuring current economic trends -fell by 0.2 percentage points from a month earlier after a 0.2 point decline in December.

The index of leading indicators, which measures future economic trends, dipped 0.1 points from a month earlier following a 0.1 point fall in December.

shinsaeromi@xinhuafinance.com

For more information and to contact AFX: www.afxnews.com and www.afxpress.com