todays humor: "I NEVER SCREWED ANY BODY" so states Lew Schiller The FINX GROUP MESSAGE BOARD CEO a/k/a DISCLOSURE $$$$.
"Schiller is quite a guy -- he's a survivor. He's dedicated to make the company work," says Brennan, a Schiller friend for 20 years.
THE FINX GROUP (BB: FXGP)
Quote | Msg Board | LiveCharts | Chart | News | Company Info | I-Watch | SEC | Insider | Analyst Recs | Top Holders | Options
« Message list Add to favorite boards
Msg. #
« Previous | Next »
Reply to msg. Post new msg. Email this msg.
By: DISCLOSURE $$$$
04 Oct 2002, 02:08 PM EDT Msg. 9598 of 9605
(This msg. is a reply to 9593 by lews-stool.)
I NEVER SCREWED ANY BODY INCLUDING MARK. IF YOU BEIEVE I HAVE THEN LIST WHAT THE H--L YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. IF YOU LIST THE OLD ARTICLES, THEN I WILL UPDATE THAT SITUATION AND IN MY FUTURE BOOK I WILL NAME NAMES.
I NEVER MET MARK ALTHOUGH I KNOW WHO HE IS. I AM NOT SURE I EVER SPOKE TO HIM AND IF I DID, I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE TOPIC OF DSCUSSION COULD POSIBBLY HAVE BEEN. MARK IS KNOWN TO SOME BODY I KNOW AND WHAT MARKS PROBLEM COULD BE WITH ME I DO NOT HAVE THE VAGUEST IDEA.
AS FAR AS YOUR INNUENDOES YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH THEM! IF YOU DON'T, I WILL TELL YOU, SHOVE IT.
LEW
------------------------------------
'I NEVER SCREWED ANYBODY'
Copyright 1995 McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Business Week View Related Topics March 27, 1995
SECTION: FINANCE; PENNY STOCKS; Number 3417; Pg. 170
LENGTH: 1284 words
HEADLINE: 'I NEVER SCREWED ANYBODY'BYLINE: By Gary Weiss in New York
HIGHLIGHT:Shareholders of Lew Schiller's Consolidated Tech might disagreeBODY:Lewis A. Schiller, chief executive officer of Consolidated Technology Group Ltd., takes a drag on a thin cigar and leans back in his chair. He is abearlike, affable man, 63 years old. He is in the conference room atBusiness Week, March 27, 1995 Consolidated's corporate headquarters, on the ninth floor of an old brick officebuilding in lower Manhattan. The atmosphere is mellow. Schiller is recountingone of Consolidated's latest exploits: the acquisition of a string of diagnosticfacilities in Florida. Consolidated has been on a takeover binge in recentmonths, buying an array of impressive-sounding high-tech companies. Schiller is enthused, excited.But suddenly, Schiller becomes less affable. A sensitive subject has beenbrought up: the shareholders. There are 20,000 of them, and most lost at least97 cents out of every dollar they put into Consolidated stock in the 1970s and1980s -- back in the days when Consolidated was called Sequential Information Systems Inc. Sequential was probably the most widely peddled stock to be churnedfrom the penny-stock mills of that era. Schiller, however, is tired of hearingabout the penny-stock era. "I'm an honest man," he says. "I never screwedanybody."The future is bright for Consolidated, he insists. And there's no questionthat Consolidated is doing quite nicely, at least compared with the bad olddays. The company is no longer starved for cash. It is expected to report pretaxearnings of $ 3 million, or 40 cents a share, on sales of $ 100 million for1994. Its shares, not traded for years, were listed under the new name on theNASDAQ stock market in September, 1993. But for the sad army of shareholders,Business Week, March 27, 1995 any rejoicing is premature. At Consolidated, the old penny-stock days are alive,if not well. CONVOLUTED TALE. To begin with, the acquisition binge was largelyfinanced the old-fashioned way -- by issuing stock, this time to foreigninvestors. And Consolidated has also been pushed on U.S. investors by the newgeneration of penny-stock peddlers -- Hibbard Brown & Co., the penny-stock firm that went out of business last August. As a key Consolidated market-maker,Hibbard Brown's demise last August was one of the reasons for the collapse ofConsolidated stock, from $ 6 to $ 1 a share, over the past year (chart). Bycontrast, the hapless stock buyers in the Eighties paid the post-splitequivalent of $ 40 a share or more. But that's not to say that nobody has beenable to turn a profit on Consolidated shares. One man has done that: Robert E.Brennan, the legendary penny-stock merchant.Indeed, the recent twists in the Sequential-Consolidated story are thelatest chapter in a fascinating -- if convoluted -- tale. Sequential began life in the early 1960s as an electronics firm, but its primary claim to fameinvolves another invention: the telephone. Sequential shares were aggressivelypushed by cold-calling salesmen at Brennan's First Jersey Securities and thenow-defunct Rooney Pace Inc. Rooney Pace was later found guilty of manipulating Sequential shares and misleading customers. HIGH-TECH ACQUISITIONS. When thepenny-stock schemes collapsed, so did Sequential stock. By the late 1980s, theshares could not even fetch a penny. The late Eighties and early Nineties wereBusiness Week, March 27, 1995 a dizzying nightmare of a nearly insolvent company, lawsuits, and blunders --above all the ill-fated sale of its operating company, Sequential ElectronicsSystems, to a Long Island firm called General Technologies Group Ltd. ADickensian succession of lawsuits followed. When the smoke cleared, the SEC had acted decisively -- against the people Schiller had sued.Schiller insists that he didn't blow the whistle on his former cohorts. But he cooperated, and actively, he says. In the end, General Technologies GroupLtd. Chairman Eli Reiter pleaded guilty to fraud charges, as did an auditor atthe company's accounting firm, Frederick Todman & Co. Schiller says he iscooperating with the SEC in civil proceedings against another former Todmanexecutive.All the litigating and cooperating haven't deterred Schiller from expanding Consolidated. The company has purchased magnetic resonance imaging centers and asmattering of other development-stage companies -- an employee outsourcingcompany here, a telecommunications outfit there. The aggressive acquisitioncampaign was noted favorably by Emerging & Special Situations, a Standard &Poor's publication, in its Dec. 19 issue. (S&P is owned by McGraw-Hill Inc.,publisher of BUSINESS WEEK.) The editor, Robert S. Natale, says he was aware of Consolidated's penny-stock pedigree when he listed the firm -- which, he notes, was not a formal recommendation.Business Week, March 27, 1995 Another penny-stock watcher has also had his eye on Consolidated -- BobBrennan. According to SEC records, last May 13, Brennan's company, InternationalThoroughbred Breeders, bought 750,000 Consolidated shares at $ 6.00 a share --62 cents cheaper than the closing price on that day. ITB then sold 131,000shares on May 18 at $ 6.46, 170,000 shares on May 19 at $ 6.46, and 100,000shares the following day at $ 6.47. Brennan is hazy about how much more he wasable to unload before the price collapsed. Overall, he says, he "probablysustained a modest loss." Brennan has an intriguing explanation for the swiftdumping of the stock. In an interview, he maintained that the purchase, 6.48% ofConsolidated's shares outstanding, violated ITB's policy of not buying more than5% of a company's shares. The error, he says, was discovered "by the guy whoprocesses our trades." ITB then sold the shares -- far more than was needed toput ITB below 5%. Why so much? He doesn't recall.An SEC filing says the shares were purchased in the over-the-counter market.Yet the huge trade was not made public at the time. NASDAQ records show only15,000 shares traded on May 13. Was Brennan's huge purchase reported to NASDAQ? Brennan isn't sure -- and neither is NASDAQ. James Spellman, a NASDAQ spokesman,says the trade may have been reported out of sequence, and such trades are notalways publicly disclosed.Business Week, March 27, 1995 Brennan narrowly escaped a calamity. In the summer of '94, Consolidatedshares began their sickening decline from $ 6 to about $ 1.19. The pre-splitequivalent: 2 cents. Schiller has no explanation for the decline. But the lossof Hibbard Brown clearly hurt Consolidated, because Hibbard was aggressivelypushing Consolidated shares. How aggressively? Well, in April, four monthsbefore Hibbard bit the dust, the state of Wisconsin suspended Hibbard Brown'sbroker-dealer license, alleging that the firm used misleading, hard-sell tacticsin selling Consolidated shares and two other stocks to Wisconsin residents.State officials said Hibbard Brown was running an old-fashioned boiler-roomoperation -- just the way Sequential had been sold in the Eighties. OVERSEASCASH. Schiller denies knowledge of such chicanery. In any event, in his ownstock sales he is steering clear of U.S. regulators. The company's biggestinjection of cash in recent years came from overseas, mainly Canadian investors,who bought $ 14 million in Consolidated shares sometime over the past year. As aRegulation S offering, its terms did not have to be disclosed in this countryand are of no concern to U.S. regulators.So Consolidated's army of shareholders has been reinforced. Will the newrecruits fare better than the old? "Schiller is quite a guy -- he's a survivor. He's dedicated to make the company work," says Brennan, a Schiller friend for 20years. Schiller, like Brennan, is a master survivor -- and so is Consolidated.But will the shareholders ever be made whole? An old expression may put itBusiness Week, March 27, 1995
=============================================
FEDS' DOUBLE-TAKE
By CHRISTOPHER BYRON
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Email Archives
Print Reprint
December 20, 2004 -- IT is entirely possible that there is an inno cent explanation for ev erything Bernard Kerik has said and done in recent days, and for the information about his past life that has surfaced as a result.
But Kerik has not yet provided it and more information dribbles out daily to fan the flames that are devouring his reputation. In a minute we'll turn to the newest revelation — that Kerik may not have fully informed federal investigators about the nature and duration of his involvement with a Long Island penny stock company called Dataworld Solutions Inc.
But first some perspective on what this entire matter is really all about: the ex-commissioner's solidifying public image as a man tied far too closely to the world of oraganized crime. Kerik's choice of a lawyer to represent him before the public has certainly not helped. The attorney in question, Joseph Tacopina, is by all accounts a skilled and able lawyer, and he has several high profile-acquittals to point to in that regard, including one of the defendants in the Abner Louima case. But when it comes to public relations advocacy, Tacopina is proving to be a real liability for Kerik.
That is because Tacopina's own past includes membership on the criminal defense team that defended Gambino crime family boss John Gotti. Most recently, he has been lead lawyer at the trial of a bag man for John Gotti's brother, Peter. As a result, every time Tacopina steps up to defend Kerik, he cannot help but remind one of what this is really all about.
Kerik needs to begin effectively addressing the accumulating facts against him, and a good place to start would be to sort out when and why he became an adviser to Dataworld Solutions Inc. in the first place — and if what he appears to have told federal investigators is correct, why he decided to leave soon after arriving.
Sources in this matter said it appears that Kerik told government interviewers in November that he had begun severing his ties to Dataworld in April of 2004, some six months after he accepted the position.
Kerik claimed to have done so after learning of the company's plans to do business with a Queens-based contractor called Georal International Ltd., whose owner was soon thereafter indicted for defrauding the City of New York on various service contracts.
YET Kerik is quoted in an April 2004 Data world press release, and in a follow-up one as well, as being highly enthusiastic about the deal with Georal, whose owner, Alan Risi, he had known for years.
Moreover, whatever he may have subsequently claimed to be his intentions at the time, the ex-Commissioner did not actually sever his ties to Dataworld until news of Risi's indictment on fraud charges became public in June.
Even the date of his departure is in doubt. In an interview last week, Dataworld's chief operating officer Philip Rauch told me Kerik, having contributed virtually nothing to the company during his time on its board of advisers, resigned abruptly in late October, just prior to his selection by George Bush to succeed Gov. Tom Ridge as homeland security czar. Two days later, the company issued a corrective press release praising Kerik's contributions to Dataworld and asserting he had resigned in late August.
As Kerik's world comes increasingly into focus, it appears to involve individuals and companies haunted by their own poor choices of business partners and personal relationships.
For its part, Dataworld is tussling with a twice-bankrupted Florida-based company called Finx Group Inc. over licensing rights to a type of entry system that can monitor and control access to public buildings. In June of 2001, four of these so-called "secure doors" were ordered by the New York Police Department to be installed at Police headquarters where Kerik was serving as the city's Police Commissioner.
But the doors were not needed and were never installed, and instead of being returned to Georal were shipped to Rikers Island where three of them have been in storage for the last three years. Both the NYPD Internal Affairs division and the city's Department of Investigation are probing the circumstances surrounding the handling of this contract.
Securities and Exchange Commission filings show that in the summer of 2003 a federal ex-con with Organized Crime ties named Lawrence Ray held 36 million shares in Finx along with a promise from the company to give him a warrant to purchase 200 million more shares.
In a recent interview, the current chairman of Finx, Lewis Schiller, initially insisted to me that Ray had nothing to do with his company, appeared in no SEC filings, and wasn't a shareholder. But when the actual filing was cited to him he backtracked and claimed that although he was now preparing a business venture with Ray, he had been only marginally associated with him in the past. He called Ray a "great American" who had put his life at risk for the U.S., but refused to say how.
RAY, who lives in a $1 million home in War ren, N.J., pleaded guilty to conspiracy in a federal Organized Crime stock fraud case involving the brother-in-law of Mafia turncoat Sammy ("The Bull") Gravano as well as members of the Colombo and Bonanno crime families.
Ray is also the source of many of the most lurid revelations regarding Kerik's links to the criminal underworld.
Until his indictment in March of 2000, Ray was a close confidante and financial supporter of Kerik's, serving as best man at Kerik's wedding in 1998, as well as making him gifts of more than $7,000 in cash and valuables.
Last week Ray was vague with me concerning how and when he first met Kerik or who had introduced them to each other. But Ray did say that when someone he grew up with and who turned out to be "real bad" entangled him in what developed eventually into a securities fraud case involving a mob-infested company called U.S. Bridge of New York, Kerik introduced him to the FBI.
Whether or not he wound up helping the government (and he is vague on that point, too), he was nonetheless eventually indicted anyway. The U.S. Attorney in the case declined to discuss the matter.
In any event, published reports say that in late 1998 Ray introduced Kerik to a friend of Ray's named Frank DiTommaso, the co-owner, along with his brother Peter DiTommaso of a Clifton, New Jersey construction company called Interstate Industrial Corporation.
Interstate had recently purchased a Staten Island garbage dump from Gambino crime family underboss Sammy Gravano's brother-in-law, Edward Garafola, and was having trouble getting it licensed by the City of New York because of Interstate's long-rumored ties to Organized Crime. According to a statement given by Frank DiTommaso to the New York City Dept. of Investigations, Ray told him he could help and thereafter introduced him to Kerik.
Kerik appears to have helped by encouraging DiTommaso to hire Ray to lobby city regulators for a license, which DiTommaso did, giving Ray a position at $100,000 per year as director of security for an Interstate affiliate called Interstate Materials Corp. that actually ran the dump.
In mid-November, a DeCavalcante crime family turncoat, Anthony Rotondo, testified as a government witness at the racketeering trial of acting Gambino crime boss Peter Gotti that Rotondo had collected protection money from the owners of Interstate — Frank and Peter DiTommaso — to assure labor peace while employing non-union workers.
Ray claims that when he was indicted in the U.S. Bridge case, Kerik immediately cut him off and stopped returning his phone calls. This turned Ray into Kerik's sworn enemy, and he has lately emerged as a principal source of much of the bad publicity now swirling about the ex-Commissioner.
*Please send e-mail to: cbyron@nypost.com |
