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| Shit! There Goes the Rest of Our Money! |
Any celebrations may be a bit premature, however.
The original SEC complaint, filed December 16th, sought fifteen actions from the court. The temporary asset freeze was but one of those fifteen, and although that freeze was lifted by the Judge yesterday, the other fourteen are still pending, with answers to that complaint due from the defendant on Thursday, February 10, 2011.
So while the company may claim to be 'back in business,' the fact remains there are fourteen other actions still pending against the company, Gillispie, Ransom, and their LLCs, and it will be six more days before we see what they say in their replies.
Among the remaining fourteen requests for relief: The SEC asks the court to enter orders: "...barring Gillispie from serving as an officer or director of any public company..."(III), "...barring Gillispie and Ransom from participating in an offering of penny stock..."(VI), "...requiring Defendants and Relief Defendants to disgorge their ill-gotten gains..."(IX), and "... requiring Defendants to pay civil penalties..."(X).
It's important to remember that this case is in a very early stage and that none of those very serious requests for injunctive relief have yet been addressed by the court, let alone answered by the defendants.
And what of this "back in business?" "Business," to the average person, implies some sort of transactional commerce, where a company generates some revenue which it eventually turns into profits to be distributed to shareholders via dividends. AEHI, on the other hand, in its own filings no less, clearly states, "AEHI has never had any revenues." Never. Any. Revenue.
They are not "back in business," because they never generated any revenue before. All the salaries, all the trips, all the expenses of the company were coming directly out of the pockets of investors and into the pockets of the recipients of the company's largesse. All the SEC did with the freeze was temporarily halt the massive hemhorraging of investor's cash. They are now more correctly "back to spending investor's money" rather than "business." It will be interesting to see if a company with zero revenue will continue paying its CEO $40,000 per month with investors' money. At least now the investors can take heart that a second set of very large eyes will be examining these expenditures from now until the next hearings on this matter.
Here are copies of the pages of the original complaint:
You're still here? Coming soon to a courtroom near you: Don Gillispie brought up on fraud charges and other offenses .....
ReplyDeleteThat should say Jennifer Ransom brought up on fraud charges.....
ReplyDeleteIdaho Samizdat has a report. You should have been paying attention to this guy since 2007!
ReplyDeletehttp://djysrv.blogspot.com/2011/02/idaho-judge-keeps-lid-on-aehi-spending.html
Thanks for the heads up! I put a quick link at the top.
ReplyDeleteDude, I have to admit, I was shocked to hear that AEHI's assets were unfrozen. You had to be shocked, too…? Can you opine as to why the court would make such a decision? Is the SEC's case weak? IF, and I do mean IF, the SEC's case is proven in court, and notwithstanding the court's ruling that AEHI can use company assets for business and must also play by the securities rules...and if AEHI is subsequently found guilty as charged, what makes anyone think they will, in fact, not continue to misuse company funds for personal gain during the interim? None of this makes good sense at all. It would seem that the SEC could make a case by demonstrating the facts that support their charges. Gillispie and Ransom either did or did not sell company stock, etc. Frankly, at this stage, I am not sure there is a case. Very strange, indeed. Thank You.
ReplyDeleteI do not have, nor have I ever had, an ownership interest in AEHI. Thank
It appears as though AEHI's attorney was successful in his argument that continuing the temporary freeze through the pendency of the litigation would kill the company, such as it is. Thus, it appears the Judge chose to defer what would effectively be a decision on the fate of the company to a full hearing on the merits (the other 14 requests for relief) rather than the haste of the emergency relief in the Temporary restraining order. Since the remainder of the argument between attorneys took place in chambers, it's hard to gauge fully what reasoning the Judge used to arrive at his decision. That order should be published on PACER soon and may illuminate the reasoning more fully. Rest assured that order will be posted here as soon as it is available. We must also not forget the SEC filed a sealed motion, granted on January 28th, the contents of which are stll unknown. And thanks for the excellent, well thought out, and entirely appropriate question.
ReplyDeleteGiven that the stock has shot up to around 35-40 cents / share. There seems to still people out there who seems to believe that the SEC is under the control of one or two people. This, of course has been promoted by Gillispie himself to try to move the focus of the real problem away from himself and Ms. Ransom.
ReplyDeleteIt will be very interesting to see if the SEC re-doubles their efforts in this case. It seems clear that Gillispie and AEHI have clearly lied to investors, which is usually a really bad thing for a public company to do.
It will be interesting to see what is done on the criminal side since there also appears to be some criminal activity based on some of the documents, and Gillispie's own deposition.