DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT LANCER OFFSHORE INC. AND MILLIONAIRE.COM?
Share ownership is based on 10,977,237 shares of common stock outstanding on December 31, 2001. Unless otherwise noted, the address of each shareholder is c/o Millionaire.com, 18 Plantation Park Drive, Bluffton, SC 29910.
Percent of Shares
Beneficially
Name and Address of Beneficial Owner Number of Shares Owned
W. Kenneth Costanzo 112,000 1%
112 Meilland Drive
Greer, SC 29650
Lynn Dixon 877,357 8%
311 S. State Street
Salt Lake City, UT 84111
Douglas Lambert and Jenny Lambert 470,000 5.2%
1924 Bayhill Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89117
Lancer Offshore Inc. (1) 1,250,000 4.3%
375 Park Avenue, Suite 2006
New York, NY 10152
Frank Osborne 160,000 1.5%
1 Stillwater Lane
Bluffton, SC 29910
David Strong 160,000 1.5%
30 Wimbledon Court ~ 9A
Hilton Head Island, SC 29920
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LANCER OFF IRISH STOCK EXCHANGE
By CHRISTOPHER BYRON
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March 20, 2003 --
The bad news keeps coming for Park Avenue's teetering Lancer hedge fund empire.
Yesterday the company disclosed that its flagship operation, the Lancer Offshore Fund, has been suspended from listing on the Irish Stock Exchange.
The news is the latest setback for the once high-flying Lancer family of funds, which said last autumn it had more than $1 billion of assets under management.
Now the group, headed by an ex-Wall Street analyst Michael Lauer, is struggling to meet redemption demands from investors worried about the quality of Lancer's audits and the stocks in its portfolios.
Lancer's problems began to mount last summer after the U.S. Department of Justice charged a man identified as a Lancer managing director named Bruce D. Cowen with conspiring to bribe an FBI undercover agent, using stock held in a Lancer portfolio.
SEC filings show that Cowen, who is currently under a five-year SEC ban from serving as an officer or director of a U.S. public company, has been a joint investor with Lancer in at least 10 different companies.
Lancer and Lauer are now suing The Post for its coverage of the matter.
According to yesterday's press release, issued by the Irish Stock Exchange, where many offshore hedge funds are quoted, the Lancer suspension followed an announcement by Lancer in early January that Lancer Offshore would cease redeeming its shares for cash and instead issue investors shares in a new fund containing assets identical to the existing fund.
The press release said the arrangement "may not comply with the requirements of the Irish Stock Exchange," and that the Lancer Offshore listing was being suspended until the matter could be resolved.
The heart of the Lancer problem appears to be the ultra-generous valuations given by the company to the stocks in its portfolio, the bulk of which look to be illiquid penny stocks.
One such company, Biometrics Security Technology Inc., is now trading on the OTC Bulletin Board for $3 - giving the company a market value of $314 million - even though 97 percent of its stock is held by Lancer.
The company's latest address is listed in a Dec. 20, 2002, SEC filing as Suite 305W of 1900 Corporate Park, Boca Raton, Fla., and the company's president as Laurence S. Isaacson.
But two other companies in which SEC filings show Lancer to have recently held 97 percent stakes - Lionshare Corp., and Centrack International Inc. - use the same address and phone number as Biometric.
What's more, the same people seem to shuffle back and forth through all three. Thus, SEC filings identify Isaacson (the current CEO of Biometric) as the former CEO of Centrack.
Other filings show an individual named George Weast as the former CEO of Centrack as well as the CEO of Lionshare.
Last month, Weast stepped aside to make room for the current CFO of Biometric, Jeff Baracos, to succeed him as CEO of Lionshare.
Isaacson himself is listed in SEC filings as not only the past or present head of both Biometric and Centrack, but as CEO of Thornhill Group Inc., which also uses the 1900 Corporate Park address.
Filings with the National Association of Securities Dealers list Thornhill as a NASD broker/dealer.
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