robmagazine.com
[COVER STORY] [FRONTLINES]
[UNDER COVER] [SPECTRUM] [WIRED WORLD]
COVER STORY- THE MONEY CULTURE
People remember Ward as "a nice guywith a good heart."
No one mentions that there were rumours that he was involved in the drug trade
Bikers mixed with suits at the funeral
of stock promoter Ray Ginnetti
At least Ginnetti had a funeral. Nick Masee's family doesn't even know if he's dead. Of all the recent mayhem on Howe Street, it's the disappearance of Masee and his wife, Lisa, that's the stuff of pulp novels. Masee, formerly of the Bank of Montreal, was the private banker to some of the biggest players on the VSE, including millionaire promoter Harry Moll, famous for his Cross Pacific Pearls company which planned-and failed-to grow the world's biggest pearl in a Honolulu shopping centre; legendary promoter Murray Pezim, discoverer of the Hemlo gold mine and former owner of the B.C. Lions football team; and flamboyant real estate and sports tycoon Nelson Skalbania, sentenced, in February, 1997, to a year in jail for theft, specifically, diverting $100,000 in a former business associate's trust fund to his personal use. Masee was privy to plenty of insider secrets and he was known for keeping his mouth shut.
At the time of his disappearance, in August, 1994, Masee, described by friends as "a community-minded guy who didn't have an enemy in the world," was retired from the bank and working as a director of a VSE company called Turbodyne Technologies Inc., which was supposed to be developing a less polluting breed of diesel engine. Turbodyne was formerly controlled by Harry Moll, who had been banned from the VSE for life after the collapse in 1992 of his company, Pineridge Capital Group Inc.
Little is known about Masee's disappearance. On Wednesday, August 10, he and his wife made a reservation for dinner at Trader Vic's, at the Westin Bayshore. Supposedly, they were the guests of an unnamed businessman who was considering putting $10 million into Masee deals. The potential client was sending a limousine for them. There is no record of a limo rental sent to the Masee address and the couple never arrived at the restaurant, where they were well known.
The next morning, Lisa Masee called her husband's office and the hairdressing salon where she worked and told them the couple were taking a few days off. That was the last anyone has ever heard from them. After the weekend passed with no word from the Masees, friends and family became concerned. It was unlike Lisa to stay out of contact and Masee's friend, Walter Davidson, the former speaker of B.C.'s Legislative Assembly, left several messages on the Masee answering machine. Uncharacteristically, none were returned. "When I called his office, and they told me he was point-blank missing...at that point I went over to the RCMP," says Davidson.
When investigators reached the Masee home on the elegant North Shore, they discovered the door unlocked and the top-of-the-line security system unset. Masee's luxury Chrysler LeBaron was in the driveway, and the family cat-to whom both Masees were devoted-was unfed inside the house. Did the Masees go willingly, leaving the door unlocked, a most odd act for a man everyone describes as extremely cautious and security-conscious? If they were kidnapped, no ransom demand was ever made.
Walter Davidson believes they were indeed kidnapped and murdered, possibly by an irate client from Masee's banking days. "Fish food" is his comment. There were rumours about Masee covering a client's Las Vegas gambling losses but Masee's son, Nick Jr., says the debts were discussed with him and were "no problem." Ozzie Kaban, a long-time Howe Street private investigator hired by Nick Masee Jr. to look into the disappearance, is tepidly convinced that Masee orchestrated his own exit and that Masee and Lisa are "sitting in the sunshine somewhere in Belize."
Did Assa Manhas jump from a 20th-floor balcony at the Pan Pacific hotel in San Francisco in the early hours of Oct. 7, 1995? Or was he pushed? Manhas, president of ASM Capital Corp. and a long-time friend and associate of Canaccord chairman Peter Brown, was in San Francisco to be deposed in a lawsuit launched by the Church of Scientology against Time magazine. He was accompanied by a Singapore entrepreneur named Moe Dilon, who, according to published sources, was a business associate in some of Manhas's fiscal misadventures, including the crash of Neti Technologies (software) and Noram Environmental Solutions (alternative fuels). While the San Francisco police were still hunting for the elusive Dilon, to find out what happened just prior to Manhas's fall, highly placed insiders from Howe Street, including Peter Brown, called the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Office with information about Manhas's mental health. It seems he was in a deeply depressed state. There was talk of big losses on lumber futures and a lawsuit with a former business acquaintance.
The medical examiner, faced with a dead Canadian stock promoter, saw no need to burden the California taxpayers with a lengthy investigation. He declared Manhas's death a suicide and released the corpse for the usual full-dress funeral, where colleagues of Manhas remembered him as "a man of integrity and loved by so many people." A devoted family man and "a wonderful guy."
When Vancouver Sun reporter David Baines wrote a column on the death of Assa Manhas, whom he describes as "not some Fuller Brush salesman but a man with a pattern of stock deals which victimized the public," Peter Brown fired back a letter to the Sun, saying he was "disgusted" by Baines's "malicious" writings.
John Woods, editor of Vancouver-based Canada Stockwatch, recalled a slightly different Manhas, a fast-talking huckster who did a lot of people out of a lot of money. "If there was a common thread to [Manhas's deals]," recalls Woods, "it was that they went public at far too high a price and promptly went down." Case in point, Lessonware, a Dallas-based company run by Christie Tyler, convicted in 1985 of drug possession. Manhas was director and chief financial officer and the company planned to market how-to-study videos via television infomercials. Peter Brown's brother, Alan, former headmaster of toney St. George's School in Vancouver, was a director. The stock blossomed, selling to the likes of famed corporate raider T. Boone Pickens, (albeit with an interesting buyback agreement). It climbed from $1.50 to $2.05 before investors became disenchanted, causing the stock to decline and Pickens to exercise his buyback clause forcing the company into bankrupcty in November, 1992. Manhas, however, landed firmly on his feet. He became a director of Telesis Computer Networking, a VSE company controlled by Harry Moll, and later a director of Triad Technologies Ltd. He resigned months before another director allegedly misappropriated more than $1 million (U.S.) of company funds. Triad stock, which peaked at $2.95 (Canadian), now trades at 13 cents.
Despite the determination of suicide, there are still questions about Manhas's death. Regardless of the rumblings about futures losses, Manhas, at the time of his death, seemed quite solvent. Why choose such a public method of death? Diving from the 20th floor into a tree in the hotel atrium seems a tad theatrical. Then there's the missing Moe Dilon, who never did have to say what business he was doing with Manhas in San Francisco.
Did stock promoter Assa Manhas jump to his
death in a San Francisco hotel in 1995?
NEXT ->
|
