Aye, matey, pirates least of sunken treasure risks Penny stock venture in Denver financing hunt for shipwrecks By James Paton, Rocky Mountain News
Published July 18, 2008 at 9:05 p.m.
In documents filed with regulators, Marine Exploration cites "pirates" as a risk, and it is not referring to copyright infringement.
The Denver-based business is financing a mission to find shipwrecks and sunken treasure. So far Marine Exploration said it has raised roughly $1.2 million to back the effort, led by partner Hispaniola Ventures, and has identified two possible troves near the Dominican Republic.
"The Street is waiting for us to push off into the wild blue sea," said Rob Stevens, a venture capitalist who took the company public with Paul Enright.
The penny stock universe is full of highly risky, superspeculative investment propositions, and Marine Exploration is one of them. The company's business plan is a long shot, admits Stevens, who compared Marine Exploration to buying a lottery ticket.
The company, whose stock trades on the Pink Sheets and closed at 5 cents a share on Friday, acknowledged in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that "there is a possibility that the shipwrecks may have already been salvaged or may not be found, or may not have had anything valuable on board at the time of the sinking."
The company, meanwhile, could burn through all the money before it finds any booty.
Marine Exploration, led by 32-year- old CEO Miguel Thomas Gonzalez, also noted that governments and other parties may claim that they have a right to the shipwrecks. Gonzalez, according to the latest SEC filings, is the only paid employee for the company, making $24,000 a year.
"We could spend a great deal of money and receive no revenue for our work," the company said.
The United Nations cites an estimate that more than 3 million shipwrecks sit on ocean floors. The UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage aims to protect sites of historic significance and to stop commercial exploitation.
Marine Exploration said it would take that into consideration. The company said the initiative could hinder its efforts but noted that certain governments have declined to sign it.
Then there is the pirate problem on top of concerns such as the economy and the competition. The company cited the remote risk of theft by "pirates or poachers" and said robberies on the high seas "may not be adequately covered by insurance."
The company also was involved in a legal dispute with CLX & Associates, a firm hired to promote the stock "in part by creating positive investor relations for and public awareness of Marine," documents show.
CLX received about 15 million shares of stock in return for its services but violated restrictions by seeking to sell the shares, the Denver firm said.
CLX and Robert Weidenbaum, head of the Florida- based company, denied the allegations and countered with their own lawsuit against Marine Exploration. Among CLX's allegations is the claim that it "refused to embark" on a scheme to manipulate Marine's stock price.
Weidenbaum declined to comment.
The two sides finally agreed to settle the case, according to a document filed this week in federal court in Denver.
Marine Exploration has an agreement with Burt Webber, a treasure hunter who has found a number of shipwrecks in the past, the company said. Webber is credited with finding the Spanish galleon Concepcion in the late 1970s off the coast of the Dominican Republic. Now he has his sights set on what he believes are two more.
The plan is for half of the proceeds to go to the government controlling the waters. Webber's Hispaniola Ventures would receive one-quarter, and Marine Exploration would get the rest.
Webber successfully tested the sophisticated technology he will use to try to find the wrecks, according to Stevens, and the company is waiting for the Coast Guard to certify the ship, the 128-foot Ocean Lady.
Some may confuse Marine Exploration with a similarly named company, Tampa, Fla.- based Odyssey Marine Exploration. The stock, which trades on the Nasdaq, was hovering above $4 this week. That company last year announced it found 500,000 silver coins and other artifacts at a location in the Atlantic Ocean. But the treasure-hunting company has been fighting the Spanish government over ownership.
Denver-based Marine is just getting started. "We are in the very early stages," Stevens said. "They are a more mature company. We would love to be there."
Stevens, 42, and Enright, 46, sold a portion of their stock in recent months. Stevens said they have put the proceeds from the sales back into the business to fund Webber's operation. Most of the initial money raised came from the two businessmen.
Another investor is West Mountain Prime, which owns 10 million shares of Marine stock, according to an SEC filing. West Mountain Prime is controlled by Pat Stryker, the Fort Collins billionaire, and Joseph Zimlich, other regulatory documents show. Brian Klemsz, listed as the manager of West Mountain, declined to comment on the investment.
It is uncertain how long it will take for the operation to bear any fruit or whether Marine will even stay in business. Its annual report for the year that ended June 30, 2007, cited "substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern."
Still, the company has aimed to mitigate the risks by aligning itself with Webber and to gain investors' confidence by being transparent, Stevens said.
Stevens added that it is difficult to predict when the company would have anything positive to report.
"It's a challenge," he said. "Everyone wants a hard and fast date. There are a lot of moving parts."
patonj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2544
Marine Exploration Inc.
Denver-based
* Ticker: Trades on the Pink Sheets under the symbol MEXP
* Incorporated: March 2007
* Plan: To fund a treasure-hunting operation in Caribbean waters
* What's next: Working with joint venture partner Hispaniola Ventures and the Dominican Republic to explore at least one shipwreck
* President: Miguel Thomas Gonzalez
* Joint venture partner: Burt Webber, credited with discovering the Spanish Galleon Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion. Webber's expedition yielded more than 60,000 silver coins, bullion, gold chains and priceless artifacts.
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