UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Litigation Rel. No. 17117 / September 6, 2001

   SEC SEEKS EMERGENCY RELIEF AGAINST NEW YORK CITY BROKER ENGAGED IN
   IDENTITY THEFT AND MARKET MANIPULATION

   SEC v. Robert C. Ingardia (United States District Court for the
   Southern District of New York, C.A. No. 01 CV 8356, filed September 6,
   2001)

   The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it filed a
   complaint today seeking emergency injunctive relief against Robert C.
   Ingardia, a 25-year old registered representative at the New York City
   brokerage firm of Joseph Stevens & Co. the complaint alleges that
   since at least June 2001, Ingardia has engaged in a complex fraud
   involving identity theft, unauthorized transactions and penny stock
   manipulation. To effect this fraud, Ingardia and unidentified third
   parties working in concert with him have impersonated investors at
   large brokerage firms and made more than $1 million worth of
   unauthorized trades in these unsuspecting customers' brokerage
   accounts in an effort to manipulate the market for two thinly-traded
   penny stock companies, Converge Global, Inc., a Utah corporation
   headquartered in Santa Monica, California and Equity Technologies &
   Resource, Inc.

   The Complaint alleges that Ingardia obtained confidential identifying
   information about brokerage customers through accounts that they held
   with him at his current firm, Joseph Stevens and from brokerage firms
   with which Ingardia was previously associated. Some of this
   confidential information included the location of other brokerage
   accounts that the customers held. In June 2001, Ingardia began placing
   telephone calls to Fidelity, Charles Schwab and Brown & Co. and other
   firms in which he falsely claimed to be one of the account holders. He
   then provided the firms with information such as dates of birth,
   addresses and social security numbers in order to effectuate trades.
   Often, as part of the scheme, Ingardia would also request an address
   change, to prevent the account holders (who lived in various states,
   including New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island) from receiving
   confirmations of the unauthorized trades.

   The Commission alleges that through this scheme, Ingardia successfully
   liquidated more than $800,000 worth of stock from unsuspecting
   investors' accounts and used the proceeds to purchase or attempt to
   purchase approximately one million shares of Converge stock and
   approximately two million shares of Equity Technologies stock.
   Transactions effected by Ingardia often accounted for a large
   percentage of all shares traded in Converge and Equity Technologies on