Keep in mind when Cargile came on, most of these problems were unknown to him, unless he was lying to shareholders. The only reason he wasn't making bogus statements about the cell was that it doesn't seem like anybody actually told him what that was. Just look at the first few conference calls after he took over, he clearly underestimated how big the issues were. I don't think he even knew that Nelson and all the original venture capital firms that founded SLTD work out of the same office in Santa Barbara. Which is:
1933 Cliff Drive
Santa Barbara, CA 93109
United States
Nelson and friends are massive fraudsters, in reality they also scammed Cargile (if we assume he is honest, and personally I do) by not letting him in on what happened until they were long gone.
Unless you do 100's of hours of due diligence, 99% of people looking at this company would think that Cargile took a successful company and ran it into the ground. Because if you just look at the financials, that is what happened. The real story is of course a lot more complicated. Cargile likely knows that unless he turns the company around, he will have a difficult time having a career after this for those reasons, not enough people know the truth to explain otherwise.
But here is the thing, and a lot of what you said is true.
They put him in a bind, they made it in his best interest to look the other way and let them get away with stealing your money. And you are right, if Cargile were to actually go after them it would be incredibly risky, the most likely result would be that the company would get sued by angry investors and go bankrupt, putting him out of a job and sending the stock to 0.
Basically the old management has the shareholders in a hostage situation. Either let them get away with their fraud and theft, or lose what little you have left. This is what I mean about them winning.
They won completely. It's in their own victims best interest to let them get away with it. This was a very well run scam, perfect in almost every way.
