Aug
7
AMBER Ready: The Moonlighting Cop, The Wanna Be Mogul and The Killer App That Wasn’t
Filed Under Uncategorized | 35 Comments
Editors Note: A link was added to the section referencing Fairview Police Chief John Pinzone.
Editors Note II: Former AMBER Ready CEO Kai Patterson has had his indictment dropped on all charges. The wording has been changed to that effect.
A small company in Morris County, New Jersey is evidence the first of how very bad things happen to good ideas when Wall Street gets involved.
Like most Wall Street initiated disasters AMBER Ready (AMBER stands for Americas Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) began with some noble intentions. The backstory: In 1998, a veteran computer engineer named Kai Patterson witnessed firsthand the horror his secretary went through when her son was abducted by her estranged husband. Specifically, he was struck by law enforcement’s waste of time in trying to get recent pictures and accurate descriptions of the missing, a problem that virtually guaranteed a lower chance of safely recovering them. (The secretary’s son was found unharmed a year later.)
Fast forward to late 2008. Patterson has given up more lucrative corporate work and is now working full-time on the issue, having raised some capital from John Thomas Financial, a scrappy young investment-bank. Convinced that his old model of having a small army of marketers canvass malls, school fairs and PTA conventions for customers to sign up via personal computer is inefficient, he hired a mobile-phone applications developer called Blinglets. Unlike previous versions, this would enable any customer with a cell phone to download their children’s pictures and key identification data to a form AMBER Ready provided. In event of an emergency, within a few minutes police throughout the region could have everything they need to coordinate recovery operations.
And, like a lot of entrepreneurs at companies that are in constant capital raising mode, Patterson got crosswise with his board. There were fights over strategy and direction, over expenses, whether there was enough money to do what John Thomas Financial wanted or if the IPO process was moving fast enough. Eventually, enough was enough and he was fired in September 2009. As the dismissal occured in mid-September, Patterson withdrew money from a company bank account that he claimed was due him in back salary. The company disagreed and went to the authorities claiming that he stole the money, using forged documents that he later sought to destroy to cover his tracks. The authorities believed them. The indictment is here.
Obviously, their gambit didn’t work. Patterson’s entire indictment was dropped as of September 23, 2011.
Here’s where it all gets even more interesting.
After Patterson left Blinglets–the mobile-phone applications developer who did the heavy lifting–was also fired. They sued and filed a stem-winder of a suit. The senior vice-president who took over the CEO reigns, Frank Del Vecchio, tried to get another software company to develop a mobile-phone application but it seems to have failed spectacularly.
Here’s the rub though: They raised about $13-million in capital based on assurances that a mobile phone application was in the works and that when it launched commercially, there would be a market for it. According to a host of affidavits from former employees, the company was nowhere near the mark on either score. See here, here and here. [AMBER Ready’s lawyer did not take kindly to one affidavit provider, Retired New York Police Department Sergeant Robert Schecter, discussing his concerns with his colleagues and let him know it in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t stop, a lawsuit might be filed. As seen below, he didn’t appreciate a reporter refusing to divulge sources either and expressed a willingness to sue over it.]
Which is not to say that some people weren’t doing just fine in this increasingly odd affair. Indeed, if it weren’t for the cast of characters, this would be just another “promising product/awful execution” story.
Consider Frank Del Vecchio, the new chief executive of AMBER Ready.
It would seem logical to conclude that the CEO slot at a company desperate to simultaneously implement a new technology and take a stab at public-offering riches is no ordinary task. Frankly, it’s a hot seat but if the company is able to turn around his 250,000-share stake might prove quite valuable.
But for Del Vecchio, he has a lot less to worry about than most bootstrapping CEOs since he is also the Deputy Police Chief of Fairview, New Jersey. In fact, he has the best of both worlds: A solid income, pension and benefits from his civil-service job and another handsome income (as well as massive upside) from AMBER Ready. Most police who moonlight do some form of security work or security consulting; there appears to be no available records of a moonlighting police officer taking a company public.
Make no mistake: Running the conflict-of-interest gauntlet is probably worth it for Del Vecchio at an initial base salary of $250,000 plus $5400 a month in loan forgiveness (AMBER Ready was paying off his portion of a business loan to a series of shuttered wireless stores he had owned) and a $2,000 a month expense account. (The salary was reduced in early 2010 to $75,000 and his expense account now only covers fuel.) Working two jobs has clearly had its benefits for Del Vecchio though. According to Zillow.com, his 3500 square-foot home in the tony suburb of Ridgewood, N.J. is worth about $1-million.
Still, common sense would have it that being the second in command of a police force is often a lot of work and stress, nearly as much as trying to turn a struggling young company around. How can one person do both jobs? His former administrative assistant, Christine Cella, provided a notarized affidavit that said he essentially blends them. She said that Del Vecchio worked extensively on AMBER Ready tasks at the Fairview police department and only infrequently came in to their Rockaway, N.J. headquarters.
The laws on moonlighting in most states are fairly vague and many police departments have their own broad regulations which they enforce with varying degrees of rigor. Del Vecchio’s case, however, is not that of an officer working at night directing traffic at a big party or providing security advice for a private homeowner. His job was directly centered on using his relationships at other police and sheriff departments–units that he presumably deals with regularly in his job with the Fairview PD, or when he was Public Safety director of Bergen County from 2003-2005– to get them to approve or endorse AMBER Ready.
In a deposition he gave in late June as part of the Blinglets lawsuit, he was asked point blank about whether the Fairview police department had a policy permitting officers to have two full-time jobs. He repeatedly declined to answer, stating “I don’t think it is relevant.” In the same line of questioning, he didn’t have a sense of how many hours he regularly worked at AMBER Ready, only that it “seems as full time as anything else” and that he probably didn’t work more than 50 hours per week.
Two calls to Fairview Police chief John Pinzone were not returned. Chief Pinzone is not without his own head-scratching moment–In a letter testifying to the character and decency of one Giovanni DeMaio prior to his sentencing to 51-months imprisonment for a number of weapons violations. Pinzone infurirated prosecutors when he neglected to disclose both that he was the Fairview N.J. Police Chief and that he was dating DeMaio’s then 33-year old daughter.
As a CEO, if the deposition is any guide, Del Vecchio has a hard time recalling things. He frequently answered “I don’t recall” to rather mundane questions, like whether the CEO of John Thomas Financial was introduced to his boss at Fairview, the basis of big consulting contracts the company gave out, the amount of money the company had spent since he joined in February 2008, or even how many board of directors meetings there had been.
(He was less cooperative, however, when asked for his cell-phone records and what the Fairview PD paid him. However, according to this article, it is safe to say that he is earning well in excess of $100,000, given both his rank and that it’s the departmental average.)
In fairness to Del Vecchio, he did acknowledge that AMBER Ready didn’t have the mobile phone system that they marketed to investors. Also, he did recall that the company under his watch was issuing share certificates with another CEO’s name on them.
Perhaps most importantly, he cleared up a matter of some confusion: AMBER Ready did not have the 4000 enrollments they referenced in the S-1, but had only 600. Despite having numerous accountants and lawyers vet the document, it was only a “typo for the years.”
[Multiple phone-calls and E-mails to Del Vecchio were referred to his attorney Marc Leibman who would not comment unless I gave up the name of a source who provided me with a document. After I refused to do so, Leibman informed me that he and his client were considering preparing a defamation suit in response to this story. When I told him I hadn’t written anything yet or even asked him any questions, he ended the call.]
Enter Anastasos P. Belesis.
Better known as Tom, Belesis cuts a striking figure: Perfectly dressed, handsome and bald, he is happy to lead the charge to buff Wall Street’s public image. An unabashed Republican, Belesis’ central-casting appearance and demenor apparently caught the eye of Oliver Stone during the location scouting for his new movie and he became a technical advisor and even scored a part for himself.
Not shy in trying to score a deal, Belesis has profitably waded into the battle over Interoil, one of the longest-simmering feuds between short-sellers and investors in the market.
He is, however, less vocal about his background in a series of heavily sanctioned and shuttered small-brokerages, several of which can only be characterized as bucket-shops (Click on the firm names for their FINRA disciplinary records: Joseph Gunnar, J.W. Bach, Harrison Securities, Ladenburg Capital Management. Tragically, First Asset Management Inc., where Belesis worked from June of 1996 to July of 1998 is closed and has no online records available. That’s ashame, because the firm was much better known as Lew Lieberbaum, one of the most heavily sanctioned penny-stock brokers of the time.) Reading the Ladenburg disciplinary record, for instance, is to be transported back into the mid-1990s, when men were men and customers were marks.
And if Belesis is quiet about the type of firm he cut his trading teeth on, he is positively monk-like about his performance at these shops. That makes some sense though as the fellow has had his fair share of customer arbitration disputes. His FINRA BrokerCheck report is here.
(John Thomas Financial as a firm has a good disciplinary record, with only one violation centering around failing to disclose a broker’s several years old regulatory infraction– The FINRA report is here. Another JTF employee, John Belesis, has a clean regulatory slate but has a pair of disclosable criminal complaints, including one for selling pot two years ago.)
Getting caught up in several big-ticket customer disputes over a decade does not invalidate a financial career, nor should it imply that one’s ethics are substandard. It does however lead to a conclusion that Belesis can get pretty comfortable being very aggressive in high-risk situations.
Which makes a lot of sense when it comes to understanding what happened to AMBER Ready.
Since 2008, various units of John Thomas Financial (whose privately held shares are owned either directly by Belesis or by a company controlled by him) have provided a series of bridge-loan financings. Its broker-dealer unit helped the company raise both equity capital and convertible debt.
All standard enough, but a close look at one private placement memorandum for an equity-capital funding offers a remarkable view into the black and white world of development-stage company private-equity. If you are the investor/lendor, its pretty hard to lose; if you are the portfolio company, you had better hope you have the next Viagra in the pipeline.
One explanation of what Belesis and his colleagues were up to might be that they were activist investors striving mightily to prep AMBER Ready for an initial public offering. A more direct reading of their actions was that they were in the business of fee harvesting and equity-stake expansion.
Doing the math, Belesis’ various John Thomas Financial units booked nearly $2.24-million in fees for arranging loans–which carried interest rates of 18% and 20%–and private placements (click here for an excel spreadsheet of their fees.) They also took in $15,000 a month in consulting fees for providing Amber Ready business advice. If the anticipated IPO had ever materialized, the various John Thomas Financial subsidiaries would have been well-positioned for a windfall, having amassed at least 2.9-million shares and 3-million warrants (the firm and its units would later come to own almost 39% of the company, or 26.9-million pre-IPO shares.)
Like many a company on the receiving end of a bridge loan, AMBER Ready was getting a lesson in Wall Street’s golden rule: He who has the gold, rules.
As the broker-dealer was able to sell debt or bring private placement funding in, the bridge loans–the capital that John Thomas Bridge & Opportunity Fund had at risk–were paid off. Thus is the beauty of being a vertically integrated financial firm.
It gets even more interesting: Deep in the various private placement memoranda were provisions for so-called penalty shares, which as the name implies, would be taken from Kai Patterson’s 75% stake in the company as a penalty for failing to meet the S-1 registration deadlines. According to the S-1, they have issued more than 6.3-million shares to holders this way.
The real story of Belesis’ influence is only alluded to in the documents though. After an equity-capital raise in the summer of 2009, Belesis was instrumental in pushing AMBER Ready to stage a promotional concert at ABC Studios in New York’s Times Square. The cost? Only $2-million. [The ads featured on the video above, where the John Thomas Financial logo is displayed as prominently as the AMBER Ready logo, cost $600,000. The legal headaches from this blowout remain however, with this lawsuit alleging that more than $475,000 was spent on public relations alone for this episode--with $354,000 allegedly still unpaid.)
Though the company’s S-1 notes wanly that the Times Square event “Did not meet expectations,” there were no shortage of other drains upon the newly-raised investor cash. Belesis, for example, seems to have had an affinity for political insiders and lobbyists, especially those on the Republican side of the aisle.
P.C. Koch, a telecom and energy lobbyist whose brother Robert married former President Bush’s sister Dorothy--and who hails from something like the first family of D.C. lobbyists--was slated to be paid $580,000 in 2008-2009 (a copy of his consulting contract is here.) It is hard to argue that the company got its money worth: Comparing the revenues from the private placement memorandum to that of the S-1 shows that in the time Koch was there, AMBER Ready went from zero revenues to $10,600. It's harder still to figure out what he did or was supposed to do. The listed phone number for Koch’s D.C. lobbying firm is no longer operational and further attempts to contact him were unsuccessful.
Koch's hiring was a source of bitter internal struggle as this E-mail exchangebetween former CEO Kai Patterson and Belesis shows. The "Hyde Park Group" referenced in this E-mail thread is Hyde Park Communications, a politically influential public relations and lobbying firm in Washington D.C whose Michael Waxman--the son of influential Congressman Henry Waxman--pitched their services for $2.5-million.
Ultimately, Koch's primary initiative for AMBER Ready was to get the company to take an $80,000 suite at the Verizon Center for a concert during the Obama Inauguration festivities. It does not appear any business emerged from this effort.
As noted, Belesis appears to be an activist investor and, per this E-mail, not one who was afraid of trying to shape the AMBER Ready to his liking. Interestingly, the lawyers he is demanding things of--from Sichenzia Ross Friedman Ference LLP-- were AMBER Ready's lawyers, not John Thomas Financial's.
Fred Brown was another addition to AMBER Ready’s growing roster of consultants added in the Spring of 2009. The President of the National Black Republican Council, and an erstwhile delegate for the Rudy Giuiliani Presidential run in 2008, he was paid $125,000 for various consulting services. According to former AMBER Ready executives, he did help land a potential contract with the New York Housing Authority, but this faded away once the mobile-phone application did not work out. Brown is better known in New York as having gotten caught up in a New York City voter-registration flap. A voice message left for Brown was not returned.
Belesis also suggested his uncle Milton Makris and his business partner Robert Christie be brought into the company and they have since been elected to the company’s board. The S-1 does not disclose the relationship between Belesis and Makris.
[FI.com reached out to Belesis for a comment last week and although John Thomas Financial’s independent general counsel Robert Bursky seemed initially open to the idea, he eventually declined to comment or to make Belesis available for an interview. The E-mails are here.]
In a story that’s alternately pathetic and baffling, the most confusing item of all is how over $13-million was raised, but according to CEO Del Vecchio’s testimony, only $7-million was put in AMBER Ready’s coffers.
As for AMBER Ready, it has merged with a direct marketing outfit called CK41 that specializes in informercials and is now known as Galaxy Media & Marketing Corp. If it ever makes it public (and incredibly, they are trying) it is sure to be quickly lost in the twilight zone of the OTC Bulletin Board.
Someone eventually is going to want an accounting of where their cash went. They will want to know why nothing got done with a cell-phone app, why there were concerts, a 32-city tour, big bucks consultants and political hacks but no product ever emerged. If they sue and get discovery, quite a tale may be told about what happens to little companies that go to the far-off corners of Wall Street to raise money.
AMBER Ready did have a working mobile phone application when it was funded by John Thomas Financial. When Mr. Del Vecchio became the CEO, he hired a company called Shining Star Web Strategies to replace the working application. The mobile phone application developed by Shining Star Web Strategies did not work. Rather than Mr. Del Vecchio acquiring another company to redevelop a working mobile phone application, he falsely marketed the mobile phone application to police departments, parents, the Boy Scouts of America and PTAs. According to the recent letter sent out to shareholders, Mr. Del Vecchio sold AMBER Ready to the Bergen County Sheriff’s Office, whom agreed to resel the application to parents. After learning the mobile phone application did not work, the Sheriff’s Office removed AMBER Ready from their website and no longer offers the program to parents. AMBER Ready has removed the video from his website that showed Mr. Del Vecchio in a commercial marketing the company’s mobile phone application in an attempt to hide Mr. Del Vecchio’s fraud. A copy of the video can be viewed on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2KT8VbVKdQ. The video, when compared to the Mr. Del Vecchio’s deposition and the affidavits of other former employees, shows Mr. Del Vecchio falsely marketed the application to commit fraud.
Sincerely,
A Former AMBER Ready Employee
Interesting as always, but what happened to Patterson and Del Vecchio? What % of shares did Patterson have when AMBER Ready sold to CK41 since his 75% stake were “penalty shares”? There still seems to be a whole lot of questions….
Patterson’s 15 million shares were founder shares and were placed into escrow aganst the company acquiring 500,000 enrollments within 18 months. Patterson’s shares were not penalty shares at all. The penalty shares were structured to cheat the former CEO and shareholders. When he presented John Thomas Financial and AMBER Ready with a deal to have approximately 3 million enrollments purchased per year, he was terminated to prevent him from executing the sale. He hired an indepented attorney to confirm the deal was real http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B5hrlwmUpwJuMzliNTFjZTMtNjA3OS00MDg3LWI3NTEtN2JhZDViYTczYzA0&hl=en.
The former CEO also agreed to redevelop another working mobile phone application to enable the Company to have a real working mobile phone application again. AMBER Ready and John Thomas Financial refused to accept the badly needed offer. Mr. Del Vecchio believed that he could continue to fool everyone and continue to falsely sell the program until the stock was approved to trade.
Seven months after his termination, a settlement between the forer CEO and AMBER Ready was executed and he was issued 6 million shares. His settlement stock certificates were issued with his forged signature as Present and Secretary on the certificates in an attempt to prevent him from complaining about the unauthorized use of his signature. More than 641 penalty share stock certificates were issued with his signature for period of seven (7) months after his termination.
AMBER Ready recently announce they did a 12 to 1 reverse splint that now makes is shares equal to 500,000 shares. Since the stock certificates are more than likely not valid because of the forged signatures.
Deputy Police Chief, Del Vecchio’s deposition has confirmed that he committed numerous securities violations and consumer fraud. He is no longer the CEO of AMBER Ready but remains on Member of the Board for now, said a representative of Galaxy Media and Marketing Corp.
It appears Obama and Clinton pals from the Podesta Group have ties to Amber Ready.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/entertainment/1689075/amber_ready_inc_names_the_podesta_group_as_public_relations/index.html
This looks like NJ’s ” Pay to Play ” form of government has gone national and the stink is radiating from my computer screen. This is more than a business story. The New York Tims should look into this
AMBER Ready hired the Podesta Group because of the political issues surrounding the AMBER Alert the AMBER Ready Program fixed. After the founder of the Company was terminated and Mr. Del Vecchio’s new company could not produce a replacement mobile phone application that worked like the original, Mr. Del Vecchio attempted to use the Podesta Group to continue promoting the product.
John Thomas Financial forced AMBER Ready into hiring a PR Firm that had political connections to help the Company get politicians to recognize the problems of the AMBER Alert Program and to support the AMBER Ready Program. Mr. Del Vecchio did not disclose his replacement application did not work. His objective was to promote the application long enough to allow the stock to be approved to trade. To encourage the Securities and Exchange Commission to appove the trading of AMBER Ready’s stock, Mr. Del Vecchio knowingly filed a registration statement containing false and misleading statements, while moonlighting. Any Deputy Police that knowingly files documents with a government agency containing false statements while moonlighting should be fired.
Political issues often mean money issues . Government contract issues. Grant issues. They often result in campaign donations. It is reasonable to wonder if the campaign donation money is government grant money or government contract money. It often looks like the public is financing our elections but they don’t know it. I will say it again…i know nothing about this bunch but the stink is radiating from my computer screen.
I don’t get it. Why would a small NJ company with a NY banker and a NY lawyer have a accountant from Texas ?
The accounting firm was referred by AMBER Ready’s lawyers, and AMBER Ready’s Lawyers were referred by John Thomas Financial. The funding agreement entitled John Thomas Financial and John Thomas Bridge and Opportunity Fund to receive additional Penalty Shares every month AMBER Ready did not file a Registration Statement, Form S-1.
The accounting firm delayed providing the audited financial statement by requesting documents they previously received and losing bank statements. The delays cost AMBER Ready five (5) months of Penalty Shares that gave the investment bank more than 80% ownership of the AMBER Ready. These are the tricks that John Thomas Financial and AMBER Ready’s lawyers (Sichenzia Ross Friedman Ference LLP) played with investors money. It was all a “Self Dealing” conspiracy. Anyone that does not play along, gets cutout.
For more articles, see below:
http://bit.ly/9mxE65
http://bit.ly/9nm1lH
http://bit.ly/ceBCen
http://bit.ly/bTnj7C
http://bit.ly/d7iplY
http://bit.ly/aBeJFb
http://bit.ly/aUqmx9
http://bit.ly/dhlmkD
http://bit.ly/ahpNXL
http://bit.ly/blxQle
http://bit.ly/aIdAwv
http://bit.ly/anYT7S
I’d like to know what happened to the shares certain former employees were promised in their original contracts after their one year anniversary as dedicated employees, not knowing about all the fraud going on behind the scenes? All this talk about these big executives and wall street reps getting these shares for doing nothing. What about the former employees caught up in the mix?
Signed, a former employee
ooops, wrong Email. It’s Madisont33@gmail.com
I read all the links provided by the Amber former employee. Its beyond words and i hope you get justice. Where the hell is the press ? This was intended to help kids , save kids.
Have the bankers and lawyers work together in the past ?
Why was Mr. Del Vecchio asked if Mr. Belesis and Chief Pinzoni had meet ? Why couldn’t Mr. Del Veechio recall that ? The more i think about this article the more questions i have.
[...] Read more here. [...]
Is there a link to the Mr. Patterson indictment ? Thanks
All of the charges are being dismissied.
Mr. Del Vecchio provided false information and used his police power to present information that was untrue.
Mr. Patterson is now working with the US Attorney’s Office, FBI and the Securities Exchange Commission to provide information that will probably lead to a RICO charge against Mr. Del Vecchio and Mr. Belesis.
The charges are being dropped against him.
Mr. Del Vecchio provided false documents to file a complaint. He also used his police connections.
Now the US Attorney’s Office is investigating Mr. Delvecchio.
All of the charges are being dismissed.
Mr. Del Vecchio provided false information to file a complaint and used his police connections to push the complaint through.
AMBER Ready’s audited financials prove the former CEO and founder did not overpay himself. In fact, according to the financial statement, he was owed money by the company. The audited financials show Mr. Patterson’s salary to be much less than he was due to be paid on September 15, 2009. Since his salary was $250,000 for the year and he was owed funds from the prior year, everything he paid himself he was owed by the Company. He should have been paid $180,000 as a base salary for 2008 and $177,083 as of his last day of work in 2009. The audit will prove that he was owed what he paid himself.
Page 28 of Amendment: http://bit.ly/cKdna9
This is a very troubling story. Please keep the board informed .
This is a important story. Where is the press ?
There is MUCH more to this story than is being told. Mr. Patterson started a company called Youth Alert (same concept regarding abducted and missing children) back in 2000 and raised money from other investors, myself included … then never disclosed information to (us) the investors. Then after raising well over $1mil, Youth Alert disappeared and reemerged as Amber Alert Safety Centers! He never included the prior investors, and avoided us for years. Kai is NOT the victim here at all! he orchestrated this whole thing, and has ripped off so many people over the years … he needs to go to jail!
Mr. R , did anyone sue Mr. Patterson ? I hope we get the whole story , the whole true story and nothing but the whole true story. Perhaps the whole bunch are creepy. Lets have the whole truth.
Isn’t there a FINRA office in NYC? Are they aware of the role John Thomas Financial played? Where are they?
Asleep?
He was sued a number of times, and chased via Attorneys as well. He made more promises, and never came thru. The original investors from my group put well over $300k into “Youth Alert” .. then we were eventually handed worthless Stock Options for Amber Alert Safety Centers in 2008 after we threatened Kai again. We were never made aware of the reverse splits, etc., or made aware of ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE COMPANY AS INVESTORS … and basically our investment is worth $0. JTF needs to be pulled in to this for their part in the ripoff as well. Lot’s of angry people out there now …
Mr. R , did Amber Ready’s securities lawyer know about Mr. Patterson’s “Youth Alert” failed effort ? The story belongs front and center while a investigation takes place
I am not sure. Who is the Lawyer? There have been SO many lawyers involved from the onset, I lost track. I would love to speak with an Attorney who would actually use this information to help go after Patterson and buddies, and also retrieve the monies put into the original investment. I have tons of documentation signed by Kai that dates back to 2000.
Another intersting tidbit about Kai … http://archives.starbulletin.com/1998/06/11/news/story2.html
I can’t get the link to open
http://archives.starbulletin.com/1998/06/11/news/story2.html
That’s odd .. I just clicked on it and it opened right up …
I got the link to work , thank you. It is a very bizarre story and i hope Mr. Boyd and others keep on top of it. It needs to be told and it needs a complete investigation.
You ain’t seen nothing yet…take a look at Sahara Media…seems to be another clusterfuck. Does anyone read the SEC filings? A “database” was purchased from the CEO’s mother/father and then listed as a revenue generating asset. Who the hell falls for that crap? Feel bad for the folks who invested in this turd…rumour has it that these greedy scumbags are looking for more…
Ya want more? Try getting paid from them…you get bounced around the system for a pittance of an invoice. Are they insolvent or what?
Our Office represents the interests of Mr. Patterson and the information posted by your bloggers concerning Youth Alert is inaccurate.
Youth Alert was a company founded by Mr. Patterson and the investors of that company were all given stock in AMBER Ready. The investment bank that raised the funds for Youth Alert was called Network Estates, Inc. and defrauded the investors by personally keeping the funds they raised for Youth Alert. Mr. Patterson was initially unaware of all of the funds that were invested into Youth Alert. The principles of Network Estates were prosecuted and went to jail for investor fraud for defrauding several companies like Youth Alert. Once Mr. Patterson learned of this issue, he issued stock to these investors. Anyone that has invested in Youth Alert, should contact Galaxy Media, which is the predecessor company of both AMBER Ready and Youth Alert to have their stock issued to them. If you are an investor of Youth Alert, AMBER Alert Safety or AMBER Ready and do not have the necessary documents to receive your stock certificate, you can send an e-mail to kaidpatterson@gmail.com and Mr. Patterson will provide you with the necessary documents.
Sincerely
Patterson’s Lawyer
I want to get the record straight. “Mr. R” is a gentlemen by the name of Lou M. Roberts that invested in Youth Alert. When Youth Alert became AMBER Alert Safety Centers in 2004, I personally contact Mr. Roberts to inform him of the new acquisition. At that time, he refused to take the stock in the new company. Mr. Roberts requested the new investors pay his investors directly, which they refused to do. Mr. Roberts stated that he was given power of attorney for the Youth Alert investors, but failed to provide the necessary documents to confirm any power of attorney to the company at that time. I personally agreed to repay Mr. Roberts and the investors of Youth Alert from the compensation that I was due to receive from my employment agreement once the company generated the necessary sales to enable me to do so. From the day I founded Youth Alert, I continued building the company and never abandoned the cause of child safety to protect each investor’s investment.
In 2008, when AMBER Alert Safety stated making headlines for the company’s accomplishments, Mr. Roberts contacted me to inform me the Youth Alert investors wanted stock in AMBER Alert Safety and they no longer wanted to be repaid their investment. Mr. Roberts came to the company’s office with his wife and I provided him with the necessary documents to issue him stock in AMBER Alert Safety. Four months later, I received a distressed call from Mr. Roberts, whereby he stated that he was going through a divorce, was out of work and needed a job. He informed me that his house had been foreclosed, his restaurant in South Jersey had been closed and he had filed for Bankruptcy as a result of the restaurant lost earnings. As a friend to Mr. Roberts and for the consideration of his investment into the company, I hired him in November of 2008 to lead my technical staff and call center, since he ran other technology companies. I gave Mr. Roberts an advance to help him get on his feet, which can be confirmed by his payroll records.
When Mr. Roberts was hired, several employees came to me to inform me that Mr. Roberts began questioning them about the company’s investors and spent several hours complaining to them about how he invested in the company. Yes; the same individual that I helped in his time of need. Richard Foster, who was an employee that reported to Mr. Roberts also informed me that he was being distracted by Mr. Roberts’ questions and the company’s moral was very low because of the negative rumors Mr. Roberts was spreading around the company. Yes; the same individual that was given stock in AMBER Alert Safety and a six figure salary with compensations, was running around the entire company spreading viscous rumors about me. Mr. Roberts told everyone in the company, the technology would never work while it was being developed, which was later proven to be false. Mr. Roberts earned more money as an employee for attempting to destroy the company, then he invested in Youth Alert.
Mr. Roberts was terminated in January of 2009, when an employee that worked for the company for only 2 days called me and resigned because he was told by Mr. Roberts that Mr. Roberts intended to have me removed as the CEO. By then, I had enough of Mr. Roberts and fired him. After he was terminated, he contacted each of the company’s partners and attempted to have them terminate their agreements with the company. I had several employees of the company provide statements and forwarded them to every company contacted by Mr. Roberts. After terminating Mr. Roberts, I had to meet with all of the employees of the company to provide them with the complete history of AMBER Ready and I also had to explain to them that I was defrauded by Bishop Estates in 1997, which I will also share with you.
In 1997, I was funded by a group called the Bishop Estates when I produced the first entertainment casting system and structured a deal with 20th Century Fox and Fox Television. The contract was going to enable every company that was a partner in the deal to generate millions from the technology that I created. The application was called “Star Book”, and was the first virtual casting network ever with full motion video. The Bishop Estates trustees were cheating the estates by structuring deals using the funds of the estate, and paying themselves the returns without ever disclosing their actions to anyone. To conceal their actions, they required every company they funded to issue stock into another company the setup as joint venture between Bishop Estate and the company the funded. Unknown to any of the companies they funded and the Bishop Estate attorneys, they paid themselves directly from their new company. They attempted to steal the technology I created by requiring that I give them copies of the source code of the application. Since I had never been required to give copies of the source code in prior deals, I became suspicious and sent them a fake copy of the source code. The day after they received the fake code, they contacted me to inform me they no longer were going to fund the company unless I resigned as CEO. They also formed a company with the same name as my company called KDP Technologies, LLC. They attempted to transfer all of the assets of my company into their company, but was unsuccessful because I was able to file a restraining order against them. They contacted my auto leasing company and terminated the lease that was in my company’s name by using documentation from the fake company they created. One day I was walking out of my office, and my car was being repossessed because the lease was terminated using the records of the factious company they created. I spent 2 years fighting with the Bishop Estates until they were removed as trusties for cheating several companies, which is all documented in the news articles associated with the hyperlink of the story Mr. Roberts sent to you and every employee of AMBER Ready. If you read the article carefully, I was never accused of doing anything wrong. I also helped the investigation conducted by authorities to prevent them from defrauding anyone else.
As an entrepreneur inventor, I don’t understand why big companies feels they can get away with attempting to seal my technology and cheat investors. The Bishop Estates attempted to defraud me, their trustees were removed and they ended up with nothing. AMBER Ready attempted falsified documents to have me terminated as CEO, they no longer have a working mobile phone application and they appear to be headed in the same direction as the Bishop Estates trustees. Mr. Roberts and his investors invested in Youth Alert, because he knew I spent years developing something that I believed the world needed to protect children. It is unfortunate that people have attempted to take what I created for the good of people and use it for their own personal gain, while defrauding others. If anyone wishes to get copies of any of the documents to confirm these events, please feel free to contact me a kaidpatterson@gmail.com.
Sincerely,
Kai D. Patterson
Dear Mr. Louis M. Roberts;
You should tell the readers about your company, “Hire on Site” and how Mr. Patterson helped you develop the business plan and projections, which you could not implement. Unlike you that lost the URL and the company, which is now owned and run by your friend David Hoke to prevent it from being liquidated in your bankruptcy (See: http://whois.domaintools.com/hireonsite.com), Mr. Patterson did not quit and worked night and day to protect everyone’s investment. All of the investors in Hire on Site, lost their money in your company. Your wife’s family invested in Hire on Site in addition to your restaurant and lost their money, which is why she divorced you. She also lost the house that her parents gave both of you as a wedding gift when it was foreclosed on in 2008. Perhaps, you would like for our office to post your divorce judgment and your foreclosures on this site for readers to see. They can contact the Monmouth County Office of Public Records to access the records themselves. You are angry at Mr. Patterson because you don’t have what it takes to “see it through” to build a company into a success. Unlike you Mr. Roberts, Mr. Patterson never quit on the investors, instead he had the company taken from him by documents that were falsified. Unlike you, he can write his own software, develop a working business model, business plan, and has succeeded to do so in his new company that has working technology. If you were successful in developing Hire on Site, you would not have needed AMBER Ready to hire you and give you an advance. You could have used Hire on Site to find a job in another company for you to attempt to destroy. Furthermore, if you had not tried to destroy AMBER Ready while Mr. Patterson was the CEO, when he advanced the company to its highest level, Mr. Patterson would have offered you stock in his new company as he did with the other investors.
You are bitter because you were unable to implement your attempt to become the CEO of AMBER Ready, but I’m sure you were thrilled with Mr. Patterson’s replacement. Unfortunately for you and the investors, the Rockaway Office shut its doors and the 24-Hour Call Center no longer provides services for the parents that purchased AMBER Ready. If Mr. Patterson were the CEO, that never would have happened, so he is not the person you should blame. He spent 10 years building the company and it shut down its headquarters and operations after 10 months of the company appointed a new CEO. Since you were paid more than you invested for doing nothing other than trying to gain control of the company, I don’t think that you have any legal position. Stop making yourself seem as though you are a victim, when you are afraid to divulge who you really are “Mr. R”; a loser.
Sincerely,
Attorney for Mr. Patterson
[...] right next to Mike Norman of John Thomas Financial. About which you might want to learn more here or here. Posted in Loose weight | Tags: [...]