SURF DAY TRIES TO NET ON-LINE FRAUD.

Byline: Kethia Clairvoyant Cox News Service

Federal trade and securities industry officials Thursday said their surveillance found more than 200 Internet Web sites possibly involved in making misleading on-line claims for business opportunities.

The sites were identified during this year's Business Opportunity Surf Day in March, part of a monthlong federal surveillance campaign targeting fraudulent business opportunities advertised on the Internet, and made public during an America Online business forum by the Federal Trade Commission and the North American Securities Administrators Association, or NASAA.

This federal-state assault on misleading on-line claims dates to July 18, 1995, the first Business Opportunity Surf Day.

According to officials, the 215 sites found this year have been sent notices warning them that state and federal laws require them to have evidence to support all earnings claims they make.

Among other things, the results of the follow-up visits to those Internet sites on April 21 found that seven have removed the earnings claims; 37 sites have been removed completely; and 24 ads were only messages posted on forums and will disappear automatically.

The FTC said in a statement that it could not confirm or deny whether the remaining sites would be further investigated. But it noted that ``evidence of false or unsubstantiated earnings claims can land a firm in court.''

FTC officials were joined by securities regulators and attorneys general from 24 states, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and Canada and Norway in identifying the potentially fraudulent Internet ads.

``The Surf Day approach to policing fraud on the Internet takes advantage of a vast new medium that . . . could make it easier to perpetrate a deceptive scheme and get away with it,'' said Jodie Bernstein, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, ``(but it) turns that medium into a tool for warning potential scammers that they can't count on going undetected.''

Thursday's 45-minute on-line business forum, with more than 100 people participating, served three purposes, according to Eileen Harrington, FTC's associate director of marketing practices:

To educate on-line entrepreneurs about legal regulations.

To deter fraud.

To educate consumers looking for business opportunities about how to shop.