iTalk Inc. (fka TALK)

[beer$$money]

Tarpon Bay Partners & Stephen Hicks, Chairman and CEO of Southridge. The real seasoned criminals here and still in business!

malc Quote

"Tell us all about it.

Tarpon Bay filed a 400K lawsuit against TALK on June 6th 2016."



Southridge Enters Into A Debt Purchase Agreement With iTalk, Inc.
March 3, 2016
RIDGEFIELD CT, - Stephen Hicks, Chairman and CEO of Southridge, has announced that Tarpon Bay Partners LLC ("Tarpon"), an institutional investor, has entered into a debt purchase agreement with iTALK, Inc. (OTCBB:TALK), a global provider of advanced communications & mobile broadband services.

Southridge is dedicated to helping clients achieve their intended goals.

About Southridge

Southridge is a diversified financial holding company specializing in direct investment and advisory services to small and middle market companies. Since 1996 the structured finance team has made direct investment of over $1.8 billion into growth companies globally. Our expertise lies in our ability to customize a financing plan for the prospective client and then execute on that plan without fail. For more information, visit: http://www.southridge.com

http://www.southridge.com/single-post/2016/03/03/Southridge-Enters-Into-A-Debt-Purchase-Agreement-With-iTalk-Inc

Sinking Fund Forbes

Have financiers torpedoed struggling small companies they were supposedly helping?

Lawsuits raise some ugly accusations.

Rodney Young thought he’d hit the big time. For months he had been casting about for cash to save his young telecom-services outfit, Eagletech Communications . Then in March 2000 he sent a team of executives to New York to meet a group of potential investors at Salomon Smith Barney . Young had a patent, but no sales, and yet here were five Salomon officers and a group of investors offering to buy convertible preferred shares from Eagletech for up to $6 million. “I thought these people wanted to help us,” he says.
He was soon disabused of that notion. Immediately after the meeting at Salomon, Eagletech’s share price began to sink. By November it was down from $14 to 75 cents, erasing $113 million in stock market value. That seemed extreme even for a company that had only $300,000 in cash and was burning $100,000 a month.

Young now claims the wave of selling was led by the very investors at Salomon’s table. In a suit filed in Florida, where Eagletech is based, Young alleges that mighty Salomon, along with a group of conspirators, set him up for a fall with convertible-debenture financing, then shorted the common stock all the way down. Salomon has asked the court to throw out the complaint, claiming it did nothing to harm Eagletech.
Eagletech’s suit is one of five similar actions. They are led by John O’Quinn , a rapacious plaintiff attorney in Houston who has conjured multimillion-dollar verdicts in breast implants and tobacco. Much of the legal legwork is being done by another Houston lawyer, James W. Christian.

Each complaint has been filed on behalf of puny companies against well-heeled financiers who allegedly offered desperately needed capital and then profited by short-selling of shares–all in the thinly regulated world of Bulletin Board stocks. One plaintiff, a legal-research outfit known as Internet Law Library, says it has identified more than 100 companies damaged in convertible-securities schemes, resulting in billions of dollars in lost market value.

Plenty of companies with death spiral financing saw their common shares go into death spirals. Somebody was selling all the way down, and those sellers may have been in cahoots with convert holders.
In O’Quinn’s cases the alleged conspirators range from top-tier investment banks like Salomon to mysterious Caribbean-based straw entities. The suits single out two active players in convertible deals: Mark Valentine , former chairman of Canadian brokerage Thomson Kernaghan; and Steven Hicks , president of Southridge Capital. Proving that they either shorted stocks or worked with others who did won’t be easy.
According to the suits, Hicks arranged convertible financing for desperate companies, then the investors directly or indirectly shorted the borrowers’ stock through Valentine’s brokerage, covering their trail by running sales through U.S. and offshore brokers and marketmakers.
The outside investors may not even exist. Internet Law Library claims in its suit that the “investor” buying its convertibles–Cootes Drive LLC, named after a street where it is based in Grand Cayman–was a shell. The entity’s correspondence is sent care of Citco Trustees , which is part of Citco, a private financial services company that claims to have $88 billion in assets. Citco hasn’t been sued.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2002/0610/046.html


Southridge Partners aka Southridge Capital Management Stephen Hicks
Stephen Hicks Fraud Raided by FBI SEC Investigation New York and Connecticut
Southridge Capital Management, a Ridgefield, Conn., hedge fund firm run by Stephen Hicks that primarily employs an investment strategy known as PIPEs, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.
The SEC has opened an investigation into Southridge, according to two subpoenas the SEC sent in late July to companies that had received financing from the firm's hedge funds.
In the five-page subpoenas, Vyta Corp. and Hyperdynamics Corp. ( HDY - news - people ), two micro-cap companies that have been fighting Southridge for years in court, were asked by the SEC to produce documents reflecting all transfers of cash between them and the Southridge hedge funds over a four-year period. The companies were also told to provide documents relating to securities they issued to Southridge and communications between the companies and Southridge.
Late last week, the Ridgefield Police Department searched Southridge's offices, executing a search warrant on behalf of Morgenthau. The search was first reported by Bloomberg News.
Hicks' main investment strategy has been to make private investments in public equities, known as PIPEs, in which Hicks invested in thinly traded stocks. In these deals, Hicks would get securities that were convertible into discounted common shares of the companies in which he invested.
Hicks and Southridge Capital were the subject of a 2002 Forbes article (see "Sinking Fund") on death spiral preferred financings that also detailed the work of Mark Valentine, former chairman of Canadian brokerage Thomson Kernaghan. Southridge was a key client of the now defunct Thomson Kernaghan. Valentine pleaded guilty in March 2004 to U.S. federal charges of securities fraud, receiving nine months of house arrest and four years of probation. He was also banned from working as a stockbroker.
Hicks founded Southridge Capital in 1996 and also set up an affiliated brokerage, Southridge Group, which provides investment banking and financial advisory services. Southridge claims its funds have provided $1.3 billion in capital to over 250 issuers worldwide.

http://www.ripoffreport.com/r/Southridge-Partners-fka-Southridge-Capital-Management-Stephen-Hicks/New-York-and-Connecticut-Select-StateProvince-10022/Southridge-Partners-fka-Southridge-Capital-Management-Stephen-Hicks-Stephen-Hicks-Fraud-1072719


Stephen Hicks / Southridge Capital Southridge Partners Fraud, Scam, Sued by SEC



http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/07/sec-southridge-capital-business-wall-street-southridge.html

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged that fund manager Stephen Hicks, manager of Southridge Capital and fund manager Yorkville Advisors, its founder and president Mark Angelo, and chief financial officer Edward Schinik engaged in a fraudulent scheme to inflate the value of assets in its portfolio.The firm is denying the allegations and claims that the SEC's is "driven by an agenda.

Southridge Hedgie Hicks Shrugs Off Regulators Investor Fraud Suits!
OCT 26, 2010 @ 04:55 PM

Stephen Hicks and his Ridgefield, CT hedge fund, Southridge Capital, were sued yesterday for multiple securities violations by the SEC and the Connecticut Banking Commissioner in Connecticut state and federal courts. Howard Pitkin, head of the CT Department of Banking, has been after Hicks for investor fraud and abuse in its broker dealer business since 2007. Hicks is fight back- after being ordered to comply with a subpoena from the Banking Commission, Southridge then appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court but Pitken eventually won the right to review the funds internal records. Pitkin had originally filed a cease and desist order against the broker dealer side of the hedge funds business. Now he wants to shut the whole Southridge opperation down.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/teribuhl/2010/10/26/southridge-hedgie-hicks-shrgs-off-regulators-investor-fraud-suits/#71b136b01a7b
https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2010/comp21709.pdf

LITIGATION RELEASE NO. 21709 / October 25, 2010
SEC v. Southridge Capital Management LLC, Southridge Advisors LLC, and Stephen M. Hicks, Civ. Action No. 3:10-cv-1685
SEC CHARGES CONNECTICUT-BASED HEDGE FUND MANAGER WITH FRAUD IN VALUING PORTFOLIO ASSETS, MAKING MISREPRESENTATIONS TO INVESTORS, AND MISUSE OF INVESTOR ASSETS

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced today that it charged hedge fund manager Stephen M. Hicks and his investment advisory businesses with defrauding investors in funds managed by Southridge Capital Management LLC and Southridge Advisors LLC by overvaluing the largest position held by the funds. The SEC alleges that the hedge fund manager also made material misrepresentations to investors and misused investor money to pay legal and administrative expenses of other funds managed by Hicks and Southridge.

The SEC alleges that Hicks, of Ridgefield Connecticut, overvalued the largest position held by the funds by fraudulently misstating the acquisition price of the assets. According to the SEC's complaint, Hicks arranged a transaction in which a telecommunications company acquired by the Southridge funds when the company defaulted on a $769,000 note, was sold to Fonix Corporation in exchange for securities with a stated valued of $33 million in early 2004. The complaint further alleges that neither the asset sold nor the securities obtained in the transaction were accurately valued by Southridge and Hicks. Thereafter, the SEC alleges, the Fonix position was wrongfully valued at its acquisition cost, and the funds paid or accrued hundreds of thousands in management fees every year since 2004.

The SEC further alleges that beginning in late 2003, Hicks fraudulently solicited investors to put money in new funds by telling them that the majority of their investments would be placed in unrestricted, free-trading shares (meaning shares that were available to be sold), cash, or near cash. According to the complaint, Hicks raised $80 million for the new funds between 2004 and 2007. The complaint further alleges that, at year-end 2006, more than one-third of the assets in one new fund (and more than half of the assets in another new fund) were invested in relatively illiquid deals. By 2007, the SEC alleges, many investors in these funds were having difficulty redeeming their money because it had been invested in relatively illiquid securities.

The SEC also alleges that between 2005 and 2008, Southridge and Hicks caused certain of the funds that had available cash to pay approximately $5 million of legal and administrative expenses of older funds that were illiquid and had no available cash. The SEC's complaint alleges that investors in the funds from which money was taken were not told about this misappropriation of fund assets while it was taking place. According to the SEC's complaint, in February 2009, Hicks sent a letter to investors admitting that certain legal and administrative expenses had been improperly allocated between the funds. Rather than repaying the money to the funds, however, the SEC alleges that Southridge and Hicks transferred certain illiquid securities to the funds.
The SEC complaint charges defendants with violations of Section 17(a) of the Securities Act, Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5 thereunder, and Sections 206(1), 206(2) and 206(4) if the Investment Advisers Act and Rule 206(4)-8 thereunder. The Commission seeks injunctive relief, disgorgement of profits, prejudgment interest, and financial penalties.
The Commission acknowledges the assistance of the Connecticut Department of Banking, Securities and Business Investments Division in its investigation.

https://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2010/lr21709.htm

Investor’s fraud claims against fund’s principal allowed to proceed
October 15 2012
A New York state trial court has recently denied in part a defendant’s motion to dismiss, finding that a prior arbitration between plaintiff and a hedge fund allegedly controlled by defendant did not prevent plaintiff from asserting claims for fraud, breach of fiduciary duty and negligent misrepresentation. Pine St. Assoc., L.P. v. Hicks, 651440-2011, NYLJ 1202560693274, at *1 (Sup. Ct. N.Y. Co. 2012). The court did, however, grant defendants motion to dismiss plaintiff’s claims for unjust enrichment.

Background
Beginning in 2005, plaintiff Pine Street Associates (“Pine Street”) invested, as a limited partner, approximately $8.3 million in Southridge Partners, L.P. (“Southridge Fund”), an investment vehicle allegedly controlled by the defendant Stephen M. Hicks. Pursuant to the operative limited partnership agreement (the “Agreement”), investors were permitted to redeem their investments, allegedly a key factor in Pine Street’s decision to invest (and later remain invested in) the fund. That agreement also gave the Fund’s General Partner the right to suspend any redemption in certain circumstances: “The General Partner shall have the right, exercisable in the General Partner’s sole and absolutely discretion, to suspend or postpone the payment and effective date of any redemption [under various specified circumstances including] at such other times as the General Partner, in its sole discretion, may determine.”
On October 3, 2008, amidst the backdrop of the global financial crisis, Pine Street sought to redeem its remaining investment in Southridge Fund — estimated at $8,076,457.85 — as of December 31, 2008. The redemption was acknowledged and Southridge Fund informed Pine Street that the valuation date for the redemption would be December 31, 2008. However, Southridge Fund thereafter failed to satisfy Pine Street’s redemption request.
Notwithstanding Southridge Fund’s prior representations that 75 percent of the fund’s portfolio was in cash and free trading securities, in December 2008 Hicks requested that Pine Street delay its redemption due to the crisis in the financial markets. Thereafter Pine Street proposed and Southridge Fund rejected four redemption schedules, failing to satisfy Pine Street’s redemption request.

http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=5ccee7da-73dc-4b1e-b51d-6c9d5d7e4525


This is the Ridgefield, CT home of Stephen M. Hicks and Mary C. Hicks.

Stephen M. Hicks is a hedge fund manager for Southridge Capital Management LLC, which is headquarted in Ridgefield. Mr. Hicks was educated at Kings College, where he received his B.S., and then went on to earn his M.B.A. from Fordham University.

He gained a lot of notiriety for defrauding invesotrs and for securities violations by federal and state authorities .

The home, situated on 2.97 acres of land, was purchased in 1999 for $1,735,000. The home has a pond, a swimming pool, and pool house. According to public property records, the home has a current appraised value of $2,905,857.
http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/stephen-m-hicks-estate/

Southridge Partners aka Southridge Capital Management Stephen Hicks
Stephen Hicks Fraud Raided by FBI SEC Investigation New York and Connecticut

Southridge Capital Management, a Ridgefield, Conn., hedge fund firm run by Stephen Hicks that primarily employs an investment strategy known as PIPEs, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.
The SEC has opened an investigation into Southridge, according to two subpoenas the SEC sent in late July to companies that had received financing from the firm's hedge funds.

In the five-page subpoenas, Vyta Corp. and Hyperdynamics Corp. ( HDY - news - people ), two micro-cap companies that have been fighting Southridge for years in court, were asked by the SEC to produce documents reflecting all transfers of cash between them and the Southridge hedge funds over a four-year period. The companies were also told to provide documents relating to securities they issued to Southridge and communications between the companies and Southridge.
Late last week, the Ridgefield Police Department searched Southridge's offices, executing a search warrant on behalf of Morgenthau. The search was first reported by Bloomberg News.

Hicks' main investment strategy has been to make private investments in public equities, known as PIPEs, in which Hicks invested in thinly traded stocks. In these deals, Hicks would get securities that were convertible into discounted common shares of the companies in which he invested.

Hicks and Southridge Capital were the subject of a 2002 Forbes article (see "Sinking Fund") on death spiral preferred financings that also detailed the work of Mark Valentine, former chairman of Canadian brokerage Thomson Kernaghan. Southridge was a key client of the now defunct Thomson Kernaghan. Valentine pleaded guilty in March 2004 to U.S. federal charges of securities fraud, receiving nine months of house arrest and four years of probation. He was also banned from working as a stockbroker.

Hicks founded Southridge Capital in 1996 and also set up an affiliated brokerage, Southridge Group, which provides investment banking and financial advisory services. Southridge claims its funds have provided $1.3 billion in capital to over 250 issuers worldwide.