OTHER NEWS - Aug. 24, 1996

Comparator Auditor Quits: The Newport Beach-based company said its longtime auditor, Eli Buchalter Accountancy Corp., has resigned. In a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, Comparator Systems Corp., which calls itself a maker of high-tech fingerprint scanning devices, said it has hired the Farber & Hass accounting firm as its new auditor. Buchalter has withdrawn its opinion of the company’s June 30, 1995, financial statements, according to the SEC filing, and “has requested that the company notify holders of [those] statements to return them . . . and to not place any further reliance” on them. Neither Buchalter nor executives at Comparator could be reached for comment. Comparator’s stock was delisted from Nasdaq in June amid regulators’ suspicions that the stock was being manipulated and SEC charges that the value of the company’s patents and other assets had been vastly overstated. Company executives have denied wrongdoing. That case is still to be decided.