Markham vehicle cease-traded

The British Columbia Securities Commission has placed a permanent cease-trade order on the shares of American Gold Mining, which had been promoted by Ronald Markham.

Markham, who the commission says is facing criminal charges in Nevada and has been in custody since March, was the promoter of private company Mindoro Corp. in 1993. Mindoro — unrelated to publicly listed Mindoro Resources (MIO-V) — held a large block of ground in southwestern Oregon on which it claimed to have discovered a resource of 24 million tonnes grading 15 grams gold per tonne. The resource proved to be imaginary, as gold assays on samples from the property were found not to be reproducible.

American Gold Mining has been touting a resource of about 25 million tonnes with a gold grade of 24 grams per tonne at a property in Washington Cty., Utah, near the Nevada and Arizona borders. The private company’s pitch has been levelled at “New Age” believers in northern California and Oregon, but it has about 35 shareholders in British Columbia as well.

While American Gold Mining’s web site is currently marked “under construction,” earlier screen shots of the site’s “company profile” page identify Utah assayer Merwin White as a consultant to the company, along with White’s sometime associate James Cockrell. White has previously been engaged as an assayer to work on such projects as the Franklin Lake project in California, held by Franklin Lake Resources (FKLR-O), formerly Naxos Resources, and Markham’s 1999 promotion, the Blackhawk project in Idaho, held by then-public company Intergold Corporation. Independent technical audits at Franklin Lake and Blackhawk both concluded the gold mineralization the companies had claimed to have discovered was fictitious.