It was quintessential San Diego: the son made news stiffing his stock-brokerage customers while the parents made Burl Stiff's Union-Tribune column glorifying the Beautiful People. It went on for years, and the parents were part-owners of the wayward son's dubious enterprises.

As Davis prosecuted the Natural Born Carvers case in 2002, I got wind of B.J.'s role in GISBeX and did a column on it. Now David Marchant, the Miami-based reporter who covers smelly Caribbean financial activity in his Offshore Alert newsletter, has thoroughly probed GISBeX -- beginning with confirmation that B.J. controls it through his mother and the Vegas lasses. "A notorious penny stock swindler currently in prison for fraud is secretly behind a Costa Rica-based Internet 'stock exchange,' " Marchant told his readers in his February 28 issue.

Marchant figures that since late 2001, the GISBeX exchange has listed more than 50 stocks. Collectively, the companies have reported losses of more than $640 million over that period. A Canadian who headed two different companies listed on GISBeX pleaded guilty to fraud counts in 1993. An Ohio attorney listed as auditor on five different GISBeX stocks claimed he had heard of only one of them. Later, the lawyer was described as "consigliere and mastermind" of an alleged mafia-related stock swindle, but the complaint was dismissed.