$216,000 or $2,000,000?

For months, How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market by Dancer Nick Darvas has been high on bestseller lists (120,000 copies sold). Last week the New York attorney general threw the book at Darvas. His story, charged the state, is "unqualifiedly false." It could find "ascertainable" profits of only $216,000. Darvas and Publisher Bernard Mazel, head of American Research Council, an investment-advisory service, were ordered to come in and prove that the dancer had indeed made a market killing. The action was the first to be taken under a broadened state law that bans fraud or misrepresentation in giving investment advice.

State investigators granted that they had not been able to track down all of the dancer's brokerage accounts--and he had them in Manhattan, Panama and Switzerland--so he could have made all of the money he said he did. In one account alone, he reportedly made the amount the state listed as his total "ascertainable" profit. In Paris, Darvas called the charges false, a "cynically irresponsible action, book burning by publicity." As soon as he gets a copy of the complaint, he said, he will explain all.

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