Sounds like trouble is brewing for this one
"In a filing this week, the company listed Langrill — now operating under the name and guise of “Chef Thomas” — as its administrator. How Langrill can hold this position, given his stock market ban, is not clear."
full article by David Baines
In Friday’s business section, we published a short report from the Edmonton Journal noting that Peter Pocklington had been named director and chairman of the board of Le Bon Table Brand Foods Corp., a Las Vegas-based food and beverage company.
“We are totally thrilled that he has joined our team,” the Journal quoted “Chef” Homer Lee Thomas, the company’s founder. “You have to know ‘Puck’ the way we know him. Everything he gets involved in turns to gold.”
Well, not quite.
Pocklington, former owner of the Edmonton Oilers, has a history of skating on the edge. In August 2008, he filed for bankruptcy, listing $19.6 million in debts and just $2,900 in assets. U.S. Justice Department officials were suspicious. In March 2009, armed FBI agents arrested him at his Palm Springs home and charged him with two counts of concealing assets. A trial is pending. Pocklington’s lawyer, Brent Romney, said in January that his client may plead guilty to a lesser charge to avoid jail time.
Not wanting the facts to get in the way of a good press release, Chef Thomas noted that Pocklington “now finds himself in a legal battle with the courts,” but quickly added that he is “confident things will work out.”
Thomas said he is aware of Pocklington’s “colourful and controversial background,” but was focusing on his business acumen.
The Journal might have reversed the question and asked whether Pocklington was aware of Thomas’s background, which is every bit as colourful and controversial.
In an earlier release, Le Bon Table said Chef Thomas’s skills “came to him when he studied culinary art in Switzerland.” That was when he was operating under his real name, Homer T. Langrill, and learning how to swindle people. According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, he incurred $15,000 in rent and telephone expenses in April 1986, then left the country without paying.
He wasn’t always so lucky. In 1985, he was convicted in Guatemala for grand theft and fraud, and served 12 months in a Guatemalan prison. Three years later, he was convicted in Virginia of two counts of wire fraud and sentenced to three years and 16 months, respectively, in jail. After serving these sentences, he violated his parole and was sent back to jail.
In September 1998, he was once again convicted, this time in Oregon for passing fictitious cheques. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison and five years of supervised release. After serving his prison sentence, he once again violated his parole provisions and was handed another two-year sentence.
In June 2003, a Nevada judge convicted Langrill of issuing false and misleading statements about a junior company listed on the OTC Bulletin board, and selling unregistered shares of that company into the market without reporting those dispositions. For these breaches, he was permanently barred from “participating in offerings of penny stock and acting as officers and directors of public companies.”
Le Bon Table is a penny stock offering. It’s listed on the Pink Sheets, a barely-regulated over-the-counter market in the United States, where it is currently trading at the grand price of three-quarters of a cent.
In a filing this week, the company listed Langrill — now operating under the name and guise of “Chef Thomas” — as its administrator. How Langrill can hold this position, given his stock market ban, is not clear. I was unable to reach him at the company’s office on Friday.
Homer’s associates, at least until now, have been just as colourful and controversial. Before Pocklington’s appointment, Le Bon Table’s chairman was Utah promoter James C. Barrus.
Barrus is chairman of National Gold Inc., which claims to have $26.6 billion US worth of assets, mainly mineral properties. (A footnote acknowledges that the asset valuations do not accord with generally accepted accounting principles).
Barrus is also chairman of another junior company called Otis Oil and Gas Corp. Neither of his companies are registered with SEC, but both are listed on the grandly named Pan American Stock Exchange, which bills itself as a “self-regulated Internet exchange.”
This exchange is domiciled in Belize, a well-known tax and secrecy haven. I have been unable to find any other reference to it. National Gold and Otis Oil are its only two listings.
Barrus claims to have received doctorate degrees — three of them, in geology, computer science and theology — all from Westport University. I have been unable to locate any university by that name.
Barrus also offers his own degrees in “constitutional concepts” through Da Vinci University, which once again appears to be his own creation. The university is an adjunct to the Constitutional Concepts Foundation, which is another mystery. It espouses — spews would be a better word — a Christian libertarian philosophy.
One of the resolutions in its garbled manifesto is to “declare the militia to consist of every able-bodied man and woman between the ages of 16 and 60” and to issue arms to each militia member.
Barrus has been listed as Le Bon Table’s chairman from last August to as recently as Thursday. It now appears that the Puck is going to pick up where he left off, wherever that is.
dbaines@vancouversun.com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
