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Silver Bullet Firing BlanksBob Moriarty Over the past twenty-four years or so I have visited something like 400-500 mining projects. I don’t bother traveling very much anymore because all I would be doing most of the time is visiting areas I have already seen. During this period, I soon realized that the people running mining companies often withhold what you really need to know to make an investment decision. And since failure is the norm, not the exception, what you aren’t told is most often what you actually need to know. So, in the best of times information was withheld from me and the worst of times management would simply lie to me. But I only got scammed one time. (Click on image to enlarge)
I participated in a couple of private placements in Silver Bullet Mines (SBMI-V) in their early days going back 3-4 years. It seemed a good story if it was true. I visited the silver project of theirs in Arizona probably fifteen years ago when it was owned by another company that went teats up before John Carter put it into Silver Bullet. The mine is where the native silver came from that the Indians used to shoot at settlers traveling through their lands. Firing silver bullets at white guys looking for mines is probably a bad idea. The silver bullets became part of the folklore found in the Long Ranger series first on the radio and then going to the silver screen of television in the early days. In any case John Carter kept pressing me to write about the company. It wasn’t enough that I helped finance the company, he wanted me promoting the company for free as well. In 2022 the company began to talk about Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) showing up in the assays. When the company processed some material through their plant and ran it across their shaker table, they couldn’t melt the material and needed to know if it was the elusive PGMs or what. I would put in a link to some of the press releases but the company has chosen to not link their 2022 press releases on their website for some reason. It could be because the TSX had a fit over claims Carter was making about PGM assays from a fly-by-night assay lab. I actually attended grammar school in Phoenix back in the mid-1950s. One thing every ten-year-old boy knew in Arizona back then was that there was a lot of magnetite in the dirt. Every rain or sprinkle would serve to gather little lines of magnetite to play with. All the kids I knew would carry a magnet and collect samples of the iron. It was just something children did back then like shooting marbles and playing with tops and yo-yos. If you were running a shaker table for gold or silver in Arizona and ran into material that didn’t melt with a blow torch, the first thing you would do is pass it next to a magnet. If management didn’t have one handy, they could always ask any ten-year-old kid. He would have one. John Carter assured me that the first thing they did is hit the material that wouldn’t melt with a magnet and it wasn’t iron, it was definitely a PGM. That’s even though the area had been mined for 150 years and no one ever reported PGMs. “But the lab says we have PGMs,” Carter claimed. I told him he had to have an independent lab test the material and if he had PGMs that would prove it. Carter pressed me to make an investment so they could get the mill started and get the assays done at the same time. He would send the material for testing to a second lab owned by the same company. I told him he had to have a totally independent lab do the assay. I made an investment and as a gift Carter didn’t even lower the price even though the shares had dropped by 10% by the time he did the placement. So, I did a placement over market based on management assuring me they weren’t running any sort of scam. Eventually Carter released the results from the independent laboratory. There were no PGMs. The metal that wouldn’t melt was magnetite from the beginning. All he had to do was put in a magnetic separator in his plant and he could go to work. I got scammed. I was sitting on a lot of SBMI shares from the earlier PPs and the last one. None of Carter’s claims of progress ever seemed to come true. The stock kept tumbling and eventually I actually realized I wasn’t ever going to make money from this piece of shit so I dumped all my shares at a 50-60% loss. Carter is back to his same old tricks. He insists on reporting the grade of the material coming off the shaker table. That is utterly meaningless. “which include the December 11, 2023 results of the concentrates averaging 24.2 ounces per ton (829.7 grams/tonne) silver, with the high-grade line on the shaker table then assaying at 334 ounces per ton (11,451.5 grams/tonne).” Who gives a rat’s ass about the grade of the concentrate or the material coming off the shaker table? The only assays that matter are those of the material before it is fed through the plant, not after. Carter knows that but he is counting on naïve investors (such as me) not understanding that those grades may measure the efficiency of the shaker table but not of the ore. The company has two big payments now past due. “a convertible promissory note with a face value of $650,000.” And “the Company issued a note payable with a face amount of $319,575.” Both payments show up in the latest financial report with payment due in early February 2024 but I see no press releases suggesting the company has done anything about them. Silver Bullet has a couple of interesting projects that could be economic but not under management as comfortable with lying as John Carter. Silver Bullet has never been an advertiser. I have participated in several private placements but have sold all of my shares at a big loss. If I was going to give free advice to John Carter it would be to suggest to him that he not scam financial writers. They have a way of getting even. Silver Bullet Mines Corp ### Bob Moriarty 321gold Ltd |
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