Viratech Corp. (VIRA): Holy $hit!!! Article in Forbes about Ke...

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themuppitman

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Friday, 06/29/2007 8:23:33 PM

Friday, June 29, 2007 8:23:33 PM

Holy $hit!!! Article in Forbes about Ken Eade Scam artist!!!! And YES, this is the SAME Kenneth Eade who is chairman of Imperia Entertainment, Inc. It also mentions his wife Agata Gotova

Here is the juicy stuff. Full article follows:

Just as in Hollywood, not everything meets the eye when it comes to this company. AmeriDream's little office in Bermuda Dunes has been, or still is, the address for 14 other public and private companies, going by such names as Specialized Leasing, Herbalist and Cyber Vitamin. Behind the scenes is a small group of stock promoters and one very prolific Santa Barbara attorney, Kenneth Eade, who have put together companies that typically float in the nether regions of the over-the-counter Bulletin Board system. In 1998 one of the promoters, Russell (Skip) Nordstrom, of something called National Investors Council, was slapped by the Securities & Exchange Commission with a cease-and-desist order for failing to disclose that he was receiving payments from companies to issue glowing research reports. Nordstrom consented to the order without admitting or denying guilt. He was recently the head of investor relations of AmeriDream.

Elliott came into this bunch when Eade--whose Russian wife dabbles in Hollywood and will be acting, if you can call it that, in Conway's latest Dorf flick--brought him into an outfit called McSmoothies, which was supposed to develop a chain of stores selling fruit shakes. But without whipping up a single smoothie, the shell company morphed into AmeriDream by June. "We said this is clean, it doesn't have a skeleton in the closet," says Elliott. But Elliott didn't dream up AmeriDream overnight. The company is a reincarnation of a company he created in 1996, Sierra Entertainment.

Please note:

http://www.pinksheets.com/quote/company_profile.jsp?symbol=IPEI

Company Notes:
Formerly=McSmoothies, Inc. until 6-02
Note=12-1-04 company is in the development stage focusing on film &
television production
Formerly=Ameri-Dream Entertainment, Inc. until 11-03
Formerly=Soleil Film Television, Inc. until 7-04
Formerly=Soleil Film, Inc. until 8-05
NOW IMPERIA ENTERTAINMENT

The guy who wrote this article’s email is slubove@forbes.com

Here is the full article! You can view it on forbes.com for $2 but I have posted it in length for your viewing pleasure..

Forbes.com

Ameri-Dreaming

By Seth Lubove | Nov 25, 2002 | 1630 words, 0 images

Hollywood and risky investments have always gone hand in hand, but
here's one company that gives new meaning to the connection.

You'll find the headquarters of AmeriDream Entertainment in the dusty
desert town of Bermuda Dunes, Calif., east of Palm Springs. Nearby is
an engineering firm whose pipe inventory lies haphazardly around the
parking lot. Freight trains rumble across the street. A roadrunner
perches on the hood of a truck.

Inside, the company's ambitions far exceed its humble surroundings.
AmeriDream, which went public in June, has plans to not only produce a
series of movies featuring Carol Burnett's old sidekick, Tim Conway,
but also create television shows and build a $200 million, 12-acre
studio complex in the desert. The grandiose project is supposed to
include underground sound stages, a five-star hotel, a theme park,
golf course, trade school and its own magnetic monorail system. Oh,
and the little firm--which has yet to report any sales and is valued
at just $26.5 million--also has plans to rescue Social Security and
health care and, while they're at it, pay for your kid's college
tuition.

"We're now at the stage of being a minimajor," brags the company's
bearded chief executive officer, Lang Elliott , 53, a producer and
director who claims to have been the "founder" of TriStar Pictures
before selling it to the troika of Columbia Pictures, HBO and CBS.
That may come as news to Victor Kaufman, vice chairman of Barry
Diller's USA Interactive and TriStar's first chief executive and
"founding chairman."

Hollywood is full of dreamers and schemers. Some of them even succeed.
But, for sheer audacity, few can match Elliott and the cast of
characters he's assembled at AmeriDream. It turns out that the
company's other business is peddling tax lien certificates, a
speculative investment with a reputation for rapidly separating the
gullible from their money. To help run the company, Elliott has
recruited such notables as Reb Brown as chief operating officer--a
B-list actor whose star turns include a forgettable role as Captain
America in a TV movie. Tim Conway, who will be making movies for
AmeriDream featuring his stub-legged "Dorf" character, is a
"consultant."

Just as in Hollywood, not everything meets the eye when it comes to
this company. AmeriDream's little office in Bermuda Dunes has been, or
still is, the address for 14 other public and private companies, going
by such names as Specialized Leasing, Herbalist and Cyber Vitamin.
Behind the scenes is a small group of stock promoters and one very
prolific Santa Barbara attorney, Kenneth Eade, who have put together
companies that typically float in the nether regions of the
over-the-counter Bulletin Board system. In 1998 one of the promoters,
Russell (Skip) Nordstrom, of something called National Investors
Council, was slapped by the Securities & Exchange Commission with a
cease-and-desist order for failing to disclose that he was receiving
payments from companies to issue glowing research reports. Nordstrom
consented to the order without admitting or denying guilt. He was
recently the head of investor relations of AmeriDream.

Elliott came into this bunch when Eade--whose Russian wife dabbles in
Hollywood and will be acting, if you can call it that, in Conway's
latest Dorf flick--brought him into an outfit called McSmoothies,
which was supposed to develop a chain of stores selling fruit shakes.
But without whipping up a single smoothie, the shell company morphed
into AmeriDream by June. "We said this is clean, it doesn't have a
skeleton in the closet," says Elliott. But Elliott didn't dream up
AmeriDream overnight. The company is a reincarnation of a company he
created in 1996, Sierra Entertainment.

Like AmeriDream, Sierra was going to be a movie studio that would
build a "$150 million ultramodern technological" studio complex in Las
Vegas, "not unlike Universal Studios in Hollywood," blares its old Web
site. The company never built anything beyond the Web site and a press
release, but the architectural drawings didn't go to waste. When
Elliott announced his latest studio project, he simply lifted Sierra's
renderings of a tent-like complex ("It takes you back to the Barnum &
Bailey Circus," he smiles) and pasted them into the plans for the new
desert studio.

Also like AmeriDream, Sierra had another business that Elliott was
even more excited about: tax liens. Elliott claims he "stumbled" on
the idea of investing in tax liens in 1996 after attending seminars
organized by Ned Barrie Majors, a Myrtle Beach, S.C. lawyer and
promoter of the lien-buying concept. Smitten with the idea, Elliott
brought Majors aboard as a director of Sierra. After Sierra was folded
into AmeriDream, Elliott recruited Majors to help run the tax lien
business.

What exactly are these things? When a homeowner falls behind on his
property taxes, the municipal tax collector puts a lien on the
property. Many towns and counties, looking for quick cash, auction off
these liens in the form of certificates that entitle the holder to
future payments of the delinquent taxes, plus penalties and interest,
which can run up to 18% annually. If the property owner never pays,
the owner of the tax lien has the senior claim on the property, even
ahead of the first mortgage holder. If the lien holder undertakes some
legal expense, he can take over the property and evict the former
owner.

What the promoters don't say is that the tax lien market is illiquid,
unregulated and infested with scams. In July the feds packed off one
Ernest Frank Cossey, the former chief executive of TLC America, to
serve a 57-month jail sentence for overseeing a Ponzi scheme that
raised $146 million from 1,850 mostly elderly investors, ostensibly
for the purchase of tax liens. Instead the San Diego U.S. Attorney's
office says, the money was squandered on Thoroughbreds, racing dogs
and the refurbishment of the football stadium at Cossey's son's high
school.

"One of the largest investment frauds in the history of this
district," the U.S. Attorney said, which is quite an accomplishment,
considering the region's nickname (Scam Diego). SBM Certificate Co.,
one of the few public companies that invests in this stuff, posted
interest income of just 6% last year on $2.6 million of tax lien
certificates.

But Elliott doesn't mention any of these risks in his sales banter.
Instead he breezily claims that tax liens allow an investor to, say,
acquire a $100,000 property for just $1,000, or 1% of the assessed
value, if the property reverts to the tax lien holder. Put $50 million
into tax liens, he says, and you can expect a return of $1.1 billion,
or "$742 million on the low side."

He goes on: "With $2,000 invested over 18 years in tax liens, your
child could go to any college he wants to, buy a condo and get a
Porsche."

Elliott takes a 15% cut of the principal amount invested, which would
be a minimum of $3,600. That covers his cost of acquiring the tax
liens and inspecting the underlying properties. If the property goes
into foreclosure, Elliott demands 50% of the proceeds when the
property is sold. "Any way you look at it, it's tremendously
profitable," he beams.

For him it is. Potential investors in Elliott's tax liens may want to
talk with William Ford, a retired state worker living in Ontario,
Calif. Ford figures he lost as much as $9,000 investing in one of Ned
Majors' prior companies, Tax Lien Acquisitions of Roswell, Ga. Majors'
promotional material at the time promised "8% to 40% Government
Guaranteed Interest with almost No Down SideRisk of Principal," and
"the perfect tax loophole solution." But the company tumbled into
receivership in 1999, leaving Ford's and more than 1,000 other
investors' tax lien investments in disarray. Meanwhile, Majors is
tangled up in a lawsuit with his former partner in the firm.

"Somehow they spent $2,000 of my money on a lien, and when I
eventually got some documents from the county, it showed an assessed
value of $250," seethes Ford. "It was probably dirt sitting next to
the edge of a cliff." The receiver has so far returned $2 million to
investors, but much of the underlying real estate Majors bought has
turned out to be "of little value."

Elliott says he'll avoid such problems by training a nationwide staff
of on-site inspectors to check out the properties before buying the
liens. But that's just housekeeping. The real challenge, he contends,
is helping investors manage all the money they'll be piling up.

In fact, he's so convinced that tax liens are the path to riches that
he claims he's lobbied the Bush Administration and Congress to
consider allowing investors to plow their Social Security funds into
tax liens. "Say you put in $20,000 over the life span of work," he
says. "In just ten years that $20,000 will multiply into such huge
profits you won't even need insurance."

"Caveat emptor," sighs investor Ford.

By the Numbers

Dream On

AmeriDream has plenty of plans to spend money, but not much money of
its own in the bank.

$5 million
Budget for AmeriDream's first movie, Dorf USMC, starring Tim Conway in
his familiar role as a stub-legged doofus.

$200 million
Planned cost of AmeriDream's studio complex on 12 acres in the
California desert, including hotels, shops and restaurants.

$2 million
Total assets of AmeriDream, including existing film library.
Sources: AmeriDream Entertainment; financial filings.

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