Chris Jensen: Jensen is well known in the penny arena, though he keeps a lower profile today than once upon a time. Back in the day, he worked more visibly for some very bad companies as a promoter, consultant, financier in a small way, and even as a CEO. In 2001 and 2002 he received 2 million shares of stock, 1 million of them free trading, in eConnect (ECNC, ECNT), one of the decade's biggest scams. His old friend Rick Wilson got 725,000 shares in the same time period. By early January 2003, Jensen had received 5.5 million shares of ECNC; his brother Peter, 2.2 million. He had also become CEO of the company. His appointment, at first as acting CEO, was announced on 10 October 2002, along with the resignation of former CEO Thomas Hughes.
In addition to helping in the ways described above, in 2001 Jensen announced that one of his own private companies, Gold Stake, was allowing its customers to purchase its nutritional supplements using ECNC's "revolutionary" eCashPad, which was a gadget that allowed users to swipe their own credit cards. The fact that it never caught on had little to do with the merits or lack thereof of the product.
eConnect was already in trouble by the time Jensen was introduced to it. On 13 March 2000, the SEC suspended trading"because of questions… concerning… a purported license arrangement regarding Palm™ organizers, a purported strategic alliance with a brokerage firm to distribute one of eConnect's products, and the amount of revenue reportedly generated by one of eConnect's websites." Ten days later, the agency followed up with a lawsuit alleging that ECNC and Hughes had engaged in a scheme to "artificially inflate the value of eConnect's stock by disseminating fraudulent press releases, primarily over the Internet." A temporary restraining order was granted, and a swift judgment was handed down.
Though monetary penalties were levied, no officer-director ban was imposed on Hughes. He carried on as before, having evidently failed to learn his lesson. Two years later, on 25 July 2001, the SEC suspended trading in the stock once again. This time, not only were civil charges filed against the company; Hughes was also indicted on seven counts of fraud, wire fraud, and contempt of court. In early 2004, he was sentenced to 97 months--more than 8 years--in federal prison. As noted above, he was replaced by Jensen, who served as CEO until the SEC revokedECNT's (as it was by then) registration on 29 October 2004.
Before and after his stint with eConnect, Jensen was involved in the even more notorious Pinnacle Business Management/CMKM Diamonds scam, easily the biggest penny con job of the first five years of the new century. The companies were run behind the scenes by the same gang of crooks; not coincidentally, they attracted many of the same fanatical followers. When PCBM (later Serac Holdings) collapsed under the weight of its own mismanagement and fraud, shareholders transferred their allegiance to CMKX and its sleazy though charismatic leader, Urban Casavant. CMKX had everything: the promise of diamonds in unimaginable quantity, shameless appeals directed at the religious and members of the military, and best of all, a Funny Car that raced at NASCAR events. Casavant was always in attendance at the races, and fans were gifted with t-shirts, caps, hotdogs, and on one notable occasion, free stock. By the end of the summer of 2004, there were nearly 800 billion shares of CMKX common issued and outstanding.
In October of that year, the SEC suspended trading in CMKX's "sister" company U.S. Canadian Minerals (then USCA). The action cast a pall over the long-awaited party in Las Vegas thrown for loyal shareholders that very weekend. Brave merrymakers scarfed down bacon-wrapped shrimp and told each other everything was fine, despite the antics of a liquored-up woman who staggered onstage to tell Casavant he was a fraud. Needless to say, she was right on target.
In 2005, the SEC suspended trading and revoked the registration of CMKX stock. It subsequently sued 14 people involved in the larger enterprise, including those sanctioned in the earlier PCBM action. The Department of Justice secured a sweeping criminal indictment. The matter has yet to go to trial, but is expected to do so soon.
What did all this have to do with Jensen? He was hanging around the edges, performing services in return for stock. He received CMKX paper as early as 1999, and nearly ten years later was deposed in the SEC's civil action against the perps. He was also closely associated with Jeffrey Turino, one of the PCBM/CMKX"masterminds." In 2004, he introduced Keith Houser to Turino. Houser was in the market for a public shell, and Turino offered him one of PCBM's subsidiaries, called Corbel Holding, Inc. Houser bought the shell, which is now called BioTech Medics, Inc (BMCS). Things did not go well, and in 2007 Houser brought a civil suit in Texas, naming Jensen and a number of others as defendants. The action eventually fizzled, ending in dismissal for non-prosecution.
None of these associations landed Jensen in serious trouble, but it is perhaps understandable that he prefers to stay out of the limelight nowadays.
