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To: realmoney who wrote (597)	4/19/1999 1:56:00 PM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 10354

SEC Charges Utah's Chariot Was Fake Show Wednesday, August 12, 1998 BY STEVEN OVERBECK THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE It is enough to make even honest, red-blooded American Gladiators such as Ice, Nitro, Thunder and Lace cringe. A small Salt Lake City company, Chariot Entertainment, that once boasted it had the rights to put on live performances of The American Gladiators in Las Vegas, has come under fire from U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The American Gladiators was a popular television program, which until a few years ago was produced by Samuel Goldwyn Co. It featured well-muscled, beach-tanned ''gladiators'' pummeling a series of often hapless opponents that included accountants, package delivery drivers and government employees. In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, the SEC says in 1994 that privately held Diamond Entertainment Inc., whose only asset was the right to stage live performances of the show in a tent next to the Imperial Palace casino, was merged with Utah's Eagle Automotive Inc. Eagle had been listed on the Nasdaq system at the time of the merger. Its name was later changed to Chariot Entertainment. Shortly before the merger, however, Eagle divested itself of all its assets, leaving it as flabby financially as the gladiators were fit. The SEC says to maintain Chariot's Nasdaq listing and to raise money for its proposed shows, a scheme was cooked up by Michael Carnicle, a Salt Lake promoter who essentially controlled the operations of the company, and Robert Cord Beatty, Chariot's president. Along with three other defendants -- Hillel Sher and Amotz and Nili Frenkel -- they artifically inflated the company's assets by acquiring $5 million in certificates of deposit ostensibly issued by a Russian bank. The certificates, the SEC says, were actually created by Sher at a Kinko's copy shop in Hollywood, Florida. To finance the acquisition of the bogus certificates, the defendants arranged to have Chariot issue stock to a California corporation one of the defendants controlled. The stock was then sold to pay for the certificates. The SEC says the American Gladiator shows were never put on by Chariot in Las Vegas. It says almost from the time Chariot entered into a lease with the hotel, the Utah-based company began to violate the terms of the agreement by failing to secure a performance bond and meet other requirements. In its complaint, the SEC asks that the defendants be ordered to disgore their allegedly ill-gotten gains. And it wants them barred from selling unregistered securities in the future. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © Copyright 1998, The Salt Lake Tribune