Jerry Grisaffi...he'd once operated an automobile dealership, but didn't like the hours, a very telling trait. So he switched to food. One of his first ventures in that arena was a business called Bounty of the Sea, which he founded in 1988. Its premiere product was a hotdog made of tuna. Grisaffi thought "We have the makings of a great new industry. I can see this being a $300 million company within five years." That did not happen, though Jerry assured a reporter that the U.S. Navy had agreed to become a customer. It was then that Grisaffi became involved in several companies subjected to Pump & Dump campaigns. As usual, millions of dollars have been lost by investors in those schemes.
Grisaffi's first foray into the public markets was that as CEO of a public company called The Tracking Corp. (TRKG); he resigned in August 2008. It was incorporated in Nevada in 2003 as Micro Trak GPS, Inc., and its corporate charter is now revoked.
Another company with a vague connection to Grisaffi was Texas Hill Country Barbecue, Inc. (THCB). When it went public in mid-2010 through a reverse merger transaction with Bioquest Technologies (BQTG), some friends of Grisaffi were involved. William Jason Ford, who'd been vice president of development at PRMX, was CEO, president, and a director of THCB. Mark Ussery was a director. Public relations were to be handled by The Eversull Group, an investor relations firm well versed in representing promoted penny stock schemes. The company defined itself as a meat packer, its primary business being the smoke processing of raw meat products for sale in the market.
By March 2011, Ford claimed he had problems of an unusual kind. In an extraordinary OTCMarkets filing, he explained to his shareholders that "certain persons formerly associated with the company have engaged in fraudulent activities and well as criminal conduct with respect to their claim of ownership in the company." He further accused one of them of impersonating him, manipulating the company's stock price, and illegally accessing THCB's DTC and OTCMarkets accounts. He stated flatly that their object had been to pump and dump his company. He declined to name the individuals in question, but said that as a group they had "a track record of failed public company stocks, including Precious Metals Exchange Corp. (PRMX), OPSY [Optical Systems, Inc.; now Benchmark Energy Corporation, BMRK], DTIM [DTI Medical Corp; registration revoked], and Tracking Corp."... He also named OPSY, which was headed by BJ Grisaffi.
