Both of the oil companies that John F. Terwilliger ran before he became founder, chairman and chief executive of Houston American Energy Corp. (Nasdaq: HUSA) wound up in bankruptcy. An oilfield services company headed by one of Houston American's directors, John P. Boylan, also went under, in part because...
Mesa Energy Inc. was already a publicly traded company when it did a reverse merger with a second one, a shell that began life as Mesquite Mining Inc. The unusual deal last August moved Dallas-based Mesa from the Pink Sheets to the Over the Counter Market and brought it the financing...
The connections between Vicis Capital LLC and Midtown Partners & Co. -- two firms featured in an earlier Sharesleuth investigation -- go well beyond the list of small public companies they provided with more than $150 million in financing. Sharesleuth has learned that key executives at both the New York hedge fund and...
Using its stock as currency, Lenco Mobile Inc. (Pink Sheets: LNCM.PK) has spent the past few years snapping up cell phone and Internet marketing companies. Lenco's share price has risen with the acquisitions, hitting a new high of $6.05 on Friday. The company now has a market capitalization of...
Federal authorities are investigating the activities of two executives at Vicis Capital LLC, a New York hedge fund operator that began last year with nearly $5 billion under management. Vicis is the biggest investor in a pair of small public companies that have been implicated in an insurance fraud scheme. The...
Energy Exploration International Inc. has raised more than $12 million from foreign investors, through sales agents who say -- or imply-- that they're working from the oil and gas company's Dallas headquarters. But when Sharesleuth paid a surprise visit to EEI, a manager struggled to explain why the offices were...
(Editor's note: In the course of our investigations, we come across people whose names pop up frequently in connection with questionable companies, or who always seem to have other issues surrounding them. We think that covering in detail the backgrounds of these people will help make investors smarter. We created...
Huiwen Liu is part owner of a natural food store in the Vancouver suburbs. The business has only a few employees and is sandwiched between a sex shop and a clinic for drug addicts.According to Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Liu also is sole shareholder of an offshore investment company...
Xethanol Corp. is trying to unload a former pharmaceutical plant in Georgia that had been the centerpiece of its plan to turn wood chips, paper pulp and other organic waste into ethanol. The Augusta Chronicle reported last week that Xethanol (AMEX: XNL) told workers who have been tending the property that it was for sale....
Orthopedic Development Corp.’s president said in an affidavit in a federal court case in North Carolina that he had never engaged in business in that state, had not gone there to recruit a sales executive or “otherwise traveled there.’’ But Sharesleuth.com, which posted an investigative report on ODC on June 8, has copies...
