IBCL which was halted. well lookie here
IBCL & Aero Financial, Inc. From the 9/30/02 10-Q
The Company entered into a credit agreement to borrow up to $1,000,000
under a line of credit, which it has currently used. In addition, in 2001, the
Company entered into a $2,000,000 purchase order line of credit with Aero
Financial, Inc. To date, the Company has not elected to use this source of
additional financing, however, in the future; the Company may elect to use this
credit facility as necessary to facilitate the continued operations of the
Company. We cannot assure you that we will be able to obtain additional capital
from this or other investors. Our inability to successfully renegotiate these
agreements could cause the company to dramatically curtail or cease operations.
======================================================
Aero Financial director MURDERED.
Wednesday, August 29, 2001
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Bill might have come due for slain scam artist
Police say shooting `not a random act'
By J.M. KALIL
REVIEW-JOURNAL
A 53-year-old mortgage broker gunned down outside his southeast valley home last week was accused of bilking millions of dollars from dozens of investors in a nationwide Ponzi scheme, according to court documents.
Federal bankruptcy documents filed against Richard Wood in 1999 claim he defrauded investors of $4 million to $6 million by swaying participants in finance seminars he taught across the country to invest in bogus ventures.
Wood was watering shrubbery about 8:45 a.m. Friday when two men in a blue compact car drove to his upscale house near Mountain Vista Street and Russell Road, Las Vegas police said. The passenger shot Wood several times before he paused, stepped one foot from the stopped car and fired a "kill shot" at the victim on his knees, a witness told police.
A police investigator described the incident as a "coup de grace" killing carried out by a gray-haired man in his 50s.
Lt. Wayne Petersen said detectives have no suspects in the slaying and have not established a link between it and the lost investments. Detectives are focused on Wood's business dealings, poring over hundreds of pages of financial documents and bankruptcy case files.
"This was not a random act," Petersen said. "He was obviously targeted for a specific reason. Money can be a big motivator."
Calls to Wood's attorney seeking comment on the case were not returned Tuesday.
According to federal court documents, Wood's investors forced him into involuntary bankruptcy proceedings in October 1999.
The documents say Wood in the mid-1990s told investors they would receive large returns when an initial public offering was launched for his companies Aero Financial Inc., an investment firm, and Aero Truss Inc., a wooden truss manufacturer.
But Wood's victims say he instead used funds paid by later investors to disburse artificially high returns to his original investors, which lured more investors into the scheme.
Wood then began evading his investors and making up elaborate stories about the fake ventures while secretly storing the money in offshore bank accounts, according to attorneys representing some of Wood's creditors.
Several Southern Nevadans were among those who lost anywhere from a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"He became like a ghost once I tried to get a hold of him and get some of my money back," said Long Grove, Calif., resident Michael Smith, who gave Wood $250,000 in 1997.
Smith said his financial ruin contributed to his wife leaving him and the impending loss of his house. He said one California woman lost her life savings, and another lost her home.
"It looks like someone actually did what a lot of us would've liked to," he said of Wood's slaying. "He built a house of cards that fell on him."
Philip Ribando of Matthews, N.C., loaned Wood $50,000 in March 1998, according to the court documents.
"I have made many attempts to collect on this loan with little success," Ribando wrote in a February 2000 letter to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court clerk in Las Vegas. "I just get empty promises and excuses from Rich Wood."
The court records show Wood also owed thousands of dollars to Barley's and Jokers Wild casinos, and was in arrears $50,000 to the Nevada Department of Taxation and $80,000 to the Internal Revenue Service.
A mortgage company recently initiated foreclosure proceedings on the house where Wood was shot because he stopped making payments on the $500,000 he owed the company.
Smith, a 46-year-old former foreign currency trader, says he met Wood in May 1997 in Northbrook, Ill., when he took a weekend finance class on small business funding. Wood was the instructor.
"He was a very good speaker," Smith said. "He knew the topic very well and had a lot of confidence."
During the course, Wood alluded to how much success his businesses were having and told any students interested in investing to see him after class, Smith said.
The court documents say Wood used inaccurate financial statements and a "well-rehearsed," "polished" presentation to convince students in more than a dozen states that his businesses were on the brink of a breakthrough that would make millions of dollars for investors.
Smith said Wood told him he would receive "astronomical" returns on his investment.
The returns never materialized and investors began doubting Wood.
The IRS and the Nevada attorney general's office briefly probed the allegations against Wood, but Smith said both agencies told investors they lacked the resources to investigate their claims.
The FBI took over the case, and the Justice Department appointed a federal trustee to litigate it. An Arthur Anderson audit was commissioned, the documents say, but a copy of the audit was unavailable.
The case remains open, but Smith said most of the investors have given up trying to recover their money.
"He (Wood) lived constantly trying to avoid contact with people he ripped off," Smith said.
"He weaved a very large, complicated web and set it up so no one could figure out exactly where all the loose ends led to."
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