Sometime in the 80? there was a company who claimed to have invented a
fast method to chill soft drinks. I don?t recall anything about how it
worked, but the chilling process was self-contained in the soft drink
can and was triggered when you popped the tab. It took about 20 to 30
seconds for the chilling process to complete.

The company advertised in the Wall Street Journal and I recall seeing
their offering for stock. As it turns out, the whole thing was a scam.
Many large brokerage firms had raced to buy the stock and had quickly
bought it all up. The people behind the scam decided to somehow come
up with more shares. When someone figured out that they had sold way
more shares that were authorized, the scam began to unravel. Within a
month or two the whole thing was out in the open and many brokerage
firms were quite embarrassed to have been so easily taken in. I think
the year was 1984, 1985 or 1986.

I?d like a web page or two describing the whole chain of events and
the outcome. If you can?t find the outcome, I?d settle for the first
part.

Hello.

You're thinking of the scam involving the fictitious "Laser Arms
Corp," a purported maker of a self-chilling can.  The leader of the
scam was a man named Marshall Zolp.

Because this case happened so long ago, I'm sorry to report that there
is not a great deal of free information on the Web about it.

Here's what I've found:


" The most notable case brought during the 1980's that named
defendants having alleged links to organized crime was a joint action
by the SEC and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New
Jersey on October 2, 1986. This action, against Marshall Zolp, Lorenzo
Formato, and others, alleged that the defendants manipulated the stock
of Laser Arms Corp, a purported maker of a self-chilling can. In fact,
Laser Arms was a complete fraud. The company generated fictitious
financial statements and the product was non-existent. Zolp was
reportedly recruited by organized crime to conduct penny-stock
manipulations, including the Laser Arms manipulation."
source: Securities & Exchange Commission:
http://www.sec.gov/news/testimony/ts142000.htm

Here's a Forbes article from 1986:
"Desperately seeking Zolp. (Marshall Zolp's fake company makes
self-cooling beverage cans?)"
http://www.highbeam.com/library/doc0.asp?docid=1G1%3A4265901&refid=ink_pub_s4

Here are some New York Times articles that you can purchase from their archive:
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/nytimes/results.html?st=advanced&QryTxt=%22marshall+zolp%22&x=0&y=0&By=&Title=&datetype=0&frommonth=09&fromday=01&fromyear=1851&tomonth=12&today=31&toyear=1995&restrict=articles&sortby=REVERSE_CHRON


----------
search strategy:
"self chilling can" scam
google: zolp "laser arms"
alltheweb.com: zolp "laser arms"
new york times archive: "marshall zolp"

I hope this helps.

A super answer. Thanks.

Living in the UK, I'd never heard of this one before.

What a story!

Juggler-ga: I'm curious. Did you actually recall this story or did you
just find it by searching? And was it your first searh or several trys
before you found it?

Hi,
I'd never heard of the case before.  As indicated above, I located the
case with the google search:
"self chilling can" scam
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22self+chilling+can%22+scam&btnG=Google+Search

That wasn't my first search query.  I think it was my third or fourth.

The other searches that I ran were (approximately):
"self chilling soft drink" (too few hits)
"self chilling can" (too many hits)

Regards,
juggler