Ex Xybernaut IR and Sex Offender/Felon/ex stockbroker promoted Eat at Joes
The Wall Street Group Inc.
Ron Stabiner, 212/888-4848
or
World Vision Financial Group
ORVILLE BALDRIDGE, 888/345-6060
or
Eat At Joe's Ltd.
Joseph Fiore, 914/725-2700
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Registered Felon
Sex Offender
ORVILLE BALDRIDGE JR
Frontal
02/06/2001
Glasses
02/06/2001
Profile Left
02/06/2001
Profile Right
02/06/2001
Rear
02/06/2001
ID Photo
08/13/1999
REGISTRATION -- Date: 02/06/2001
RFN: 3735 Registered in Absentia: No Gomez Release: No
Extreme Offenses: Sex Offender
DOC#: 202675 OBTS: 012317885
ALSO KNOWN AS
Alias: ORVILLE DAMION / ORVILLE L
LAST REPORTED ADDRESS
Reported: 02/06/2001 Address: 1154 GALAHAD DRIVE
CASSELBERRY, Florida32707
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS
Race: White Gender: Male Height: 5' 8'' Weight: 180 lbs.
Hair: Brown Eyes: Brown
BIRTH INFORMATION
Date of Birth: 03/21/1945 Birthplace: PIKEVILLE, Kentucky Real: Yes
EMPLOYMENT
Reported: 02/06/2001 Occupation: REAL ESTATE INVESTOR
REGISTRATION OFFENSE INFORMATION
Qualifying Offense(s): LEWD LASCIVIOUS CHILD <16
Prison Release Date: Facility:
Probation Termination: 02/03/2001
CRIMINAL SUMMARY
Summary: SUBJECT WAS ARRESTED IN ESCAMBIA COUNTY FLORIDA ON 09/06/1990 AND SENTENCED TO TEN YEARS SUPERVISED PROBATION ON 02/04/1991.
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MLB Investments, Ltd. (Denver, Colorado), Kenneth L. Lucas (Registered Principal, Englewood, Colorado), Jeffrey E. Modesitt, Sr. (Registered Principal, Littleton, Colorado), James W. Magner (Registered Representative, Denver, Colorado), Charles W. Day, Jr. (Registered Principal, Pensacola, Florida), Kristi D. Edwards (Registered Representative, Pensacola, Florida), Raymond R. Parmer, Sr. (Registered Representative, Mobile, Alabama), Kevin R. Smith (Registered Representative, Pensacola, Florida), ORVILLE BALDRIDGE, Jr. (Registered Representative, Pensacola, Florida), Jerry F. Wilson (Registered Representative, North Bergen, New Jersey), and Scott Schaeffer (Registered Principal, Holiday, Florida).
The firm was fined $15,000 and ordered to disgorge $100,048.74 to the NASD, jointly and severally with Lucas, Modesitt, Magner, and Day. Lucas and Modesitt were also suspended from association with any member of the NASD in any principal capacity for one month. Magner and Day were suspended from association with any member of the NASD in any capacity for one month. In addition, Edwards, Parmer, Smith, BALDRIDGE, and Wilson were suspended from association with any member of the NASD in any capacity for one week. Schaeffer was suspended from association with any member of the NASD in any capacity for one month and ordered to disgorge $19,982.63 to the NASD. The sanctions were imposed by the NASD's Board of Governors following an appeal of a decision by the District Business Conduct Committee (DBCC) for District 5.
The sanctions were based on findings that, in contravention of the NASD's Mark-Up Policy, the firm, acting through Magner, Day, Edwards, Parmer, Smith, BALDRIDGE, Wilson, and Schaeffer, engaged in securities transactions with public customers on a principal basis at prices that were unfair. In addition, this activity was found to have been fraudulent in nature on the part of the firm, Magner, and Day.
Specifically, the respondents entered into purchase and sale transactions in a common stock that were not reasonably related to the current market price of the securities in that they imposed excessive markups ranging from 10 to 139 percent above the firm's contemporaneous cost. In conjunction with these transactions, the firm, acting through Magner, Day, Edwards, Schaeffer, Parmer, Smith, BALDRIDGE, and Wilson, failed to disclose to investors that excessive markups and markdowns were charged. Furthermore, the firm, acting through Magner and Day, neglected to inform the investors that the firm dominated and controlled the market for the securities and that the prices charged were not determined by an active, competitive market.
Lucas and Modesitt failed to exercise reasonable and proper supervision over the other respondents in connection with the aforementioned activity. In addition, Lucas and Modesitt failed to establish, maintain, and enforce written procedures governing the imposition of markups and markdowns on principal transactions.
Lucas and Modesitt have appealed this action to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and their sanctions are not in effect pending consideration of the appeal.
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For further information, please contact:
The Wall Street Group Inc. World Vision Financial Group 32 East 57th Street 238 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 149 New York, N.Y. 10022 Casselberry, Fla. 32707 212/888-4848 888/345-6060
Attn: Ron Stabiner Attn: Orville Baldridge vice president CEO
thefreelibrary.com
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Guru With Mug Shot: ORVILLE BALDRIDGE Has Arrest Record
by Christopher Byron
Bloomberg News
Would you take investment advice from a man who turns out to have been arrested for driving under the influence? Big deal, you say, happens all the time. Then what if your stock guru's rap sheet also includes an arrest for carrying a concealed firearm? What if he's been arrested for burglary, criminal mischief, petty theft, violating probation, sexual battery, flight from justice, and lewd and lascivious acts in the presence of a minor? What if he's been branded as a sex offender? Still want to buy what this man is selling? Well, this is your lucky day, folks, because here we've come up with a whole list of publicly traded companies that have lately been promoted by one ORVILLE BALDRIDGE, 55, of Casselberry, Fla., whose qualifications as a stock genius are listed in the paragraphs above. Mr. BALDRIDGE says he hasn't been in the stock promotion business for over a year. But a number of recent press releases from a company Mr. BALDRIDGE claims to control-Worldvision Financial Group-say otherwise. More about that in a minute, but first a brief update on who Mr. BALDRIDGE actually is. Mr. BALDRIDGE says that, these days, he's involved in "a little real estate and that sort of thing." And he also claims to run a charity called All God's Children Ministries Inc.-all from his home at 1154 Galahad Drive, in Casselberry, Fla. But documents obtained from the Florida Secretary of State show him also to have been recently involved in an extensive stock promotion and investment business in and around Casselberry. What's startling about all this is simply that Mr. BALDRIDGE simultaneously turns out to be a registered felon and sex offender at the Seminole County, Fla., sheriff's office, which maintains a Web site showing a mug shot of the man and giving his "last known address" as his home at Galahad Drive. In an interview for this column, Mr. BALDRIDGE said that what the Web site says about him isn't true, but declined to state what specifically is false. This is the type of individual one encounters more and more these days in what has become a whole new and growing arena of abuse on Wall Street-the so-called "pink sheets" sector of the old Over the Counter market. In an effort to crack down on fraud in the penny-stock market by companies that make grandiose claims about their business prospects but don't file any audited financials to back them up, the National Association of Securities Dealers last year began requiring all companies quoted on Nasdaq's OTC Bulletin Board to file audited financials or lose the right to be quoted on the Nasdaq-maintained system. Yet nearly 5,000 penny-stock companies have escaped the crackdown by simply refusing to file audited financials. In so doing, they've become so-called non-filers that are now publicly quoted over the Internet on an electronic system maintained by the National Quotation Bureau, which has recently renamed itself Pink Sheets LLC. This has become the new, anything-goes market where stock promoters have migrated en masse because oversight is lax to nonexistent and it is almost impossible to check out the validity of their claims. It is the market where stocks now soar overnight to unimagined heights, then crash in minutes in convulsions that have all the earmarks of classic pump-and-dump operations, fleecing millions from those gullible enough to believe what they learn via press releases and Internet message boards. Mr. BALDRIDGE, the registered sex offender, comes up in all this in connection with a number of different companies that have lately been jumping in the "pinks." One of these is an outfit bearing the name Biofiltration Systems Inc., which has soared more than 30,000 percent in value since January, from one-tenth of a penny to a peak of $2.28 on August 16, before collapsing to its current price of around 98 cents per share. With 512 million shares outstanding (the result of a 100-for-one stock split in April), the company reached a momentary market value of more than $1 billion, and at latest look was still worth something in excess of $500 million. But the company, which claims through press releases to be in the pollution-control business, is not actually worth even a fraction of that amount. In an attempt to become quoted on the OTC Bulletin Board, the company filed a registration form back in February that describes Biofiltration as a "development stage" company with $2,000 of revenues in its entire lifetime and only $3,000 of cash in the bank. Since then it has raised some $800,000 from investors and booked about $150,000 of business. ORVILLE says he hasn't written press releases for the company in over a year, but acknowledges that he recently held 6 percent of Biofiltration through a Galahad Drive-based company called the BALDRIDGE Group. ORVILLE says he sold his stake back to Biofiltration in a "private placement." Biofiltration's chief executive, Mr. Alpha Keyser of Longboat Key, Fla., says the company sold Mr. BALDRIDGE the shares at 25 cents each so Mr. BALDRIDGE could resell them to the public at a markup and "get the stock going." But, says Mr. Keyser, Mr. BALDRIDGE "never did a damned thing and just wasted eight months of my life so we bought them back." Meanwhile, Mr. Keyser and his wife, Victoria, have been big sellers of their own stock, dumping 6.6 million shares of their holdings since June for $1.2 million. Orville's company, Worldvision Financial Group, appears on other recent press releases for penny-stock companies. There's Academy Resources Inc., which claims to be in the Internet business. The stock soared from 50 cents to $1.80 earlier this year, then collapsed and is now selling for 30 cents. The latest press release from Worldvision on this company is dated June 8. Since the start of the year, Worldvision has also issued press releases for a company called Mustang Ventures Inc.(which has since changed its name to Self Help Zone Inc.), for an outfit called Freedom Golf Corporation, and for a third calling itself Hawaiilove.com. There are others as well. ORVILLE also turns up as the founder and head of a company calling itself B.N.K. Corporation. Documents on file with the Florida Secretary of State list one of the principals in the company as having been a Charles R. Kiefner. Records on file with the NASD show Mr. Kiefner to have been a broker with the notorious, now-defunct penny-stock firm of Blinder, Robinson & Company and, as such, the subject of disciplinary proceedings by both the NASD and Florida state regulators. Mr. Kiefner says he is Mr. Baldridge's ex-brother-in-law. He says he hasn't been involved with B.N.K. since 1997, but a Florida Secretary of State document deleting Mr. Kiefner's name from the company's list of officers and directors wasn't filed until Aug. 4 of this year. Other Florida state documents show Mr. Kiefner and Mr. BALDRIDGE apparently to have been linked through a company called Sterling Consulting. Sterling appears in a document filed last November, by a company bearing the name of Definition Ltd., as the seller of 500,000 Definition shares to John Anderson, the husband of Definition's president, Ms. Donna Anderson. A recent Florida State filing shows that Mr. Anderson has now emerged as a director of Sterling Consulting, replacing Mr. BALDRIDGE. All three-Mr. Kiefner, Sterling Consulting, and B.N.K., along with a fourth individual listed as a B.N.K. director, one Laura M. Kough-appear as selling shareholders of a total of more than 1 million shares of Definition, last October. Subsequent to the filing of an S.E.C. registration for the sale of the shares, Definition, which changed its name to Epersonnelmangement.com in May, saw its stock soar from 50 cents to almost $2, then collapse to its current price of 30 cents. This is the world of penny-stock promotion that the S.E.C. seems unable to stamp out no matter how hard it tries-a world in which, it now appears, even a registered felon with a rap sheet that includes packing a piece, sexual battery, and lewd and lascivious acts before a minor feels safe to crank out press releases praising doubtful stocks to the skies.
You can reach me by e-mail at cbyron@optonline.net
Christopher Byron is a columnist for Bloomberg News.
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PENNY-STOCK PAYDAY By CHRISTOPHER BYRON
January 24, 2005 -- LAST week we poked through the hodge podge of conflicting information that a North Carolina-based stun-gun company called Law Enforcement Associates Corp. (LEA) has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the last couple of years.
Now, still more information has come to light showing how the company's filings helped hide the role that a North Carolina politician named John H. Carrington played in orchestrating the sale of his family's law-enforcement supply business to a Nevada penny-stock company in December 2001.
Public investors were never informed — by Carrington or anyone else — that at the time of the sale, Carrington himself controlled both sides of the penny-stock deal, making all that followed inherently suspicious, whatever the deal's terms eventually turned out to be.
Until recently, investors in the shares have done well. Law Enforcement Associates' stock price has risen from pennies per share to a peak two weeks ago of $12.70 on market excitement over news that the company would soon be introducing a "non-lethal electric stun gun" for the law-enforcement market. But stun-gun stocks are now falling, with LEA's share price tumbling nearly 46 percent in little more than the last week. The slide has been worsened by LEA's own top brass, who have emerged as big sellers of shares in their own company.
According to federal filings last week, the company's president, Paul Feldman, sold 14 percent of his LEA stock for roughly $800,000 during the preceding workweek, and his boss, Carrington, LEA's controlling shareholder, pocketed a similar amount from stock sales of his own. Neither man returned phone calls for comment about their stock sales or several related matters.
The stock that they sold two weeks ago began its life seven years earlier, in May 1998, with the founding of a Nevada penny stock shell company called Academy Resources, Inc.
With a Canadian stock promoter named Nolan Moss as its one-man board of directors, Academy made at least two failed attempts to merge with private businesses and begin promoting itself as something worthwhile to invest in. Press releases trumpeting these stillborn deals were issued on behalf of Academy by an ex-con Florida sex offender named ORVILLE BALDRIDGE.
FINALLY, in June 2000, Academy Resources announced a merger with a New York outfit called Myofis Inc. Company press releases described Myofis grandly as "a start-up Internet service provider [that] provides dial-up access to the Internet for a flat fee of $14.95 per month from any of its 152 access nodes located in the nation's largest cities."
In fact, the Myofis operation was worthless, and as a subsequent SEC filing eventually showed, Academy Resources acquired it by issuing 21.09 million shares of its own worthless stock, valued at one cent per share, or just $21,093 for the entire business.
By the end of 2000, Academy had written off the entire investment and begun looking for some other private business to take over, which is when the shell company and Carrington found each other.
An SEC filing by the two merged companies more than a year later shows that Carrington, then a member of the North Carolina state senate, became a private investor in Academy Resources in August 2001 — four months before the creation of LEA — via an initial $50,000 cash outlay for which he received back five million shares of Academy stock valued at one cent per share.
But no known SEC filing by the company disclosed that barely six weeks later, on Oct. 16, 2001, Carrington made a second, larger — and, at least so far as the public was concerned, entirely secret — investment in Academy, buying 13.6 million more shares of its stock for $115,000. This stock didn't come from the company itself but, as we now know, from several of Academy's so-called "Myofis" investors.
We'll turn in a minute to how we know this, but for the moment it is enough to say that as late as of last week, even one of Carrington's own hand-picked LEA board members seemed unaware of the fact that Carrington had already secretly acquired control of Academy before merging it with his family business.
That individual is yet another North Carolina politico: State Senate Democratic Leader Anthony Rand, who told The Post last week that Carrington had explained that he, Carrington, hadn't purchased the Myofis shares until after the merger. Be that as it may, the two purchases, when added together, gave Carrington roughly 60 percent of all Academy shares in existence, making him secretly, though indisputably, the company's largest — and controlling — shareholder.
SIX weeks later, on Dec. 3, Academy Re sources issued 25 mil lion shares of its stock to purchase Carrington's family-owned policing equipment business, then changed its name from Academy Resources Inc. to Law Enforcement Associates Corp. Next, the company ordered a one-for-three reverse stock split to reduce the total shares outstanding from 56 million to fewer than 19 million, thereby making them three times more appealing to investors on their scarcity value alone.
Then the company began issuing stock-hyping press releases about LEA's bright new future in the post 9/11 world. Several of these releases were signed by a New York-based stock promoter named Guy Cohen, who had been the Myofis group's eyes and ears with a seat on Academy's one-man board of directors.
Cohen soon moved on from LEA to promote other penny stock deals, operating out of a swanky office on Park Avenue. In fact, the office in question turns out to be a mail drop and message center that was raided last December by state investigators seeking evidence against a ring of Caribbean scamsters who had been using the place as a mail drop for an investment swindle that preyed upon immigrants.
As for LEA, it took seven more months before the combined company filed any SEC documents purporting to describe what had actually happened in the merger with Academy Resources. And when it finally did so — in July 2002, by way of a so-called 10SB "registration statement" — the company adjusted most, but not all, of the stock-related calculations in the filing to reflect "post-split" instead of "pre-split" share totals, making it almost impossible for outside investors to figure out what went on.
Worse still, when Carrington finally filed his own papers with the SEC, on Sept. 11, 2002, to show the number of LEA shares he actually held and how he had acquired them, he gave Aug. 29, 2002 — and not Aug. 29, 2001 — as the date when he purchased the 5 million shares from Academy directly.
And when it came to the 13.6 million shares that he acquired on Oct. 16, 2001, from the Myofis group, Carrington provided no date at all, saying only that he acquired them from "other shareholders."
Much of this has now come to light from the company's own lawyer, Eric Littman, who is himself currently facing SEC charges for an alleged role in a separate penny-stock swindle. In extensive interviews last week, Littman insisted that his client's SEC filings were accurate, then to prove it, he proceeded to spell out the previously undisclosed details of Carrington's pre-merger stock purchases.
Of such elements is the penny-stock world composed, so what else is there to say but, beware.
cbyron@nypost.com
LENF - Law Enforcement Associates Corporation Responds to NY Post Article and Restates Operational Highlights
Monday January 17, 4:30 pm ET
YOUNGSVILLE, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 17, 2005--Law Enforcement Associates Corporation (OTCBB: LENF - News), a surveillance and security technology company, responded today to reporter Christopher Byron's article that appeared in the January 17,2005 N.Y. Post.
In commenting on the article, Paul Feldman, President of Law Enforcement Associates stated, "It was not only erroneous but contained serious mistakes of fact. It is obvious to us that Mr. Byron has an agenda that is not genuine. It was no coincidence that his article immediately appeared on our rival's message boards. To set the record straight, federal agents did not raid LENF. Furthermore, the Company doesn't even know most of the people he mentioned, most of whom pre-dated our involvement with the Company. The Company's filings with the SEC are up to date and accurate. All one has to do is read his vague reference to ORVILLE BALDRIDGE, a person unknown to the Company and a person who Mr. Bryon does not even remotely connect to the Company. Why is it that Mr. Byron spends his time on events which occurred before present management took control of the Company and doesn't even mention the Company's current products or revenues? This is just another attempt to discredit our business and reputation. All we can say to our investors and stockholders, is consider the source and to rely on facts, not unsupported innuendoes. Mr. Feldman added "I would like to extend an invitation to all current investors and potential investors to visit our company to see for themselves what we do and how we do it."
About Law Enforcement Associates Corporation
Law Enforcement Associates, Inc. (LENF.OB), headquartered in Youngsville, N.C., manufactures and markets a diverse line of undercover surveillance products including a complete line of audio surveillance equipment. LEA currently markets to the Military, law enforcement, security and corrections personnel throughout the world, as well as governmental agencies, multinational corporations and non-governmental organizations. For more information on LEA, visit www.leacorp.com.
The total orders placed with LEA since January 1, 2005 total $1,093,788.90.
Law Enforcement Associates has a backlog of $2,306,990.70 in unshipped orders as of January 12, 2005.
LEA reported fiscal 2003 revenue of $6,123,104.
North Carolina Senator Anthony (Tony) Rand, John H. Carrington and retired Four Star General James Lindsay sit on LEA's board of directors. Mr. Carrington serves as the company's chairman.
LEA maintains a 40,000 square foot manufacturing, research and development, distribution and training facility in Youngsville, N.C.
Forward-Looking Information:
The statements in this news release contain forward-looking information within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve certain risks, assumptions and uncertainties, including the inability to generate and secure the necessary product sale, or the lack of acceptance of the company's products by its customers. In each case actual results may differ materially from such forward-looking statements. The company does not undertake to publicly update or revise its forward-looking statements even if experience or future changes make it clear that any projected results (expressed or modified) will not be realized.
Law Enforcement Associates Corporation is a featured Company on www.HomelandDefenseStocks.com
For full details, click here: homelanddefensestocks.com |
