With every gold rush come gold diggers.

With the continued bandwagoning in cleantech/greentech, it’s getting harder to tell the real companies from the, well, perhaps slightly less real companies.

And to be a greentech reporter looking at so-called penny stock companies, it seems you need the stamina of an ox, and the x-ray vision of a superhero. Because sometimes, not everything is as it appears to be at first glance.

Take small California company Green Star Products (OTC: GSPI). It’s been in the news for building super-secret bio reactors for a South African company (see Cleantech.com’s Green Star showing its biodiesel reactor - sort of.) But it seems the company and its affiliates have also been variously touting a secret cellulosic ethanol story, talking about using ethanol instead of methanol in making biodiesel, claiming to be conducting algae research in Mexico and selling a super industrial lubricant to railroads in Russia.

Issues of focus aside, this tiny publicly traded company is also wrapped in a confusing corporate structure. For instance, a little digging revealed unclear equity relationships between it and a company called Pure Energy of Paramus, NJ and a company called Bio Clean Fuels of Chiang Mai, Thailand. Green Star – whose published phone number is the personal phone of company president Joseph LaStella and wasn’t accepting voice messages at this writing because its mailbox was full – also claims to have positions in companies called SuperBat, Dolphin ACI, American Biofuels, Green Star Ethanol Research, L.L.C. and Green Star Ethanol Production, L.L.C.

A source who recently probed the company’s business and its structure called it “a strange little operation.”

In the words of an investor your friendly Avenger ran into at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco this week, “if it sounds too good to be true, it often is. But the reason I'm in this business, and I suspect the reason you are too, is that occasionally stuff comes along from these sorts of companies that DOES change the world.”

So, we’ll keep pinching the pennies.

Cleantech.com made inquiries with Green Star, Pure Energy and Bio Clean Fuels for clarification, but they weren’t returned.

A green company CEO’s green car mandate

Stephan DeLuca, COO-turned-CEO of solar cell manufacturer DayStar Technologies, recently received a nice perk, with strings.

According to an SEC filing, in addition to a $50,000 raise (bringing him to $250,000/yr, for the record), DeLuca is getting another $10,000 a year to buy or lease the vehicle of his choice.

The catch: the car must be a gasoline-electric hybrid, a fuel-efficient, low-emission diesel engine or equally "environmentally friendly" automobile, in keeping with his company's green image.

DayStar makes thin film solar material. The company has been struggling to raise additional capital, and recently closed a $5M round of funding on its way to landing more.

Will DeLuca opt for, say, the manly VW Touareg V10 clean diesel TDI, like Martin Tobias of Imperium Renewables? Perhaps the flashy Tesla convertible? Or will he send a statement to his employees and investors and shoehorn himself in and out of one of ZAP’s solar-powered Xebras every day, we wonder?

Our money is on a Prius. It’s safe.

Work at SunPower, drive a Prius

Speaking of Priuses, (Priui? PRE-eye? Prees-US?), Toyota’s eponymous hybrid isn't actually standard issue at SunPower. It just seems that way.

In recent aerial maneuvers over the sea of Silicon Valley tilt-up office buildings – as your friendly Avenger, donning tights and cape, is wont to do – I glanced down on SunPower headquarters, and was surprised to see a Prius as practically every second car in the corporate parking lot. There they were: rows on rows of tiny boxes in conservatively muted colors (the sort of colors a free-spirited Mini or Beetle would never be caught wearing.)

Which gave me pause. As much as your friendly Avenger extends a metaphoric tip of the hat to anyone driving a high mileage vehicle, I’m looking forward to the day where one’s personal greenness need not be asserted in such a patently cookie-cutter way.

All-electric, or (gasp!) fuel cell cars for the mass market are still a ways off. But I’ve had enough of the particular boxy, conservatively styled Prius as a badge of honor, already. Kudos for Toyota for showing hybrids could be done. Shame on other automakers for taking so long.

Driving is for sissies, anyway. Do what I do: just find a good stiff breeze, and leap!