I've reread this several times. I just need to comment...
We're talking more than just phone numbers that never answer, or the $50 million joint venture partner that may not exist, or even the crooked promoter and the listing on the American Stock Exchange.
Pretty strong accusations right out of the gate.
I've called Globetel a couple times before and they answered the phone right away.
I also looked into Apogeo, the joint venture partner. They are on the Sunbiz site but they do seem a little weak as a company. They were only formed this spring. Some more digging here would be helpful.
Crooked promoter - explained further down.
Beyond all that we're talking about a company that increased its stock price by nearly 500 percent earlier this year by launching itself into a business, 65,000 feet over the snake-infested jungles of Colombia, that looks to be based, both literally and figuratively, on the ultimate marketing tool of Wall Street itself: actual hot air.
What! 500%, now I am upset, was I asleep when this happened or did Mr. Byron not realize there was a RS?
I base GTE on the phone cards, telephony, strat, etc., but no mention here
The company in question, which goes by the name of Globetel Communications Inc., is only one of many such in-your-face promotions that have lately sprung to life before the glassy-eyed stares of the regulators.
In your face!!! We are dying out here for news. I wish it was in my face!
IT'S pretty much the same story with Globe tel Communications, Inc., which has been kicking around Wall Street under one name or another for nearly the whole of the last quarter-century.
2 top executives quit?!? I don't think so. But I am surprised, 25yrs? Is that correct?
Beginning as a Nevada homebuilder, the company switched thereafter to the beckoning opportunities of the shock absorber business, followed by a foray into syphilis detection test kits. After that came the computer business, and finally, the "voice over the Internet" telecommunications business, which the company operated out of a 600-square-foot office in Hickory Hill, N.C., under the name of American Diversified Group Inc.
At the start of 2000, the company merged with a Miami-based outfit called Global Transmedia Communications Corp. and changed its name to Globetel Communications.
Yet it wasn't until the combined companies hooked up with another telecom outfit, called Sanswire Technologies Inc., in early 2004 that Globetel's stock price at last began to gain some lift.
Ya, so.
That's because Sanswire had a hot story and was already shopping it around using the services of a South Florida firm of stock promoters known as Wall Street Capital Funding.
By acquiring it in April of last year for what looks to have been no more than $3 million worth of stock= smart move, Globetel turned Sanswire's Big New Opportunity into its own — namely, a plan for bouncing telephone calls off a specially created network of geosynchronous relay stations 12 miles above the surface of the earth, where the stratosphere meets outer space.
Sound cutting edge? In fact, it gets even better because these relay stations weren't going to be plain old humdrum satellites at all, but something far more intriguing. So, are you ready for — blimps?
That's right, folks, instead of satellites, Globetel's infrastructure is going to be assembled out of blimps — the same things you see floating over used car lots on summer Sundays, bearing messages on the sides like, "Blowout Special" and " '98 Dakota — Klean and Mean."
(Globetel press releases say not to call them blimps because they're rigid-framed, 21st century aircraft. But the company has a picture of one on its Web site, and frankly, it looks like a blimp to me.) I do agree with this. The website needs to get up to speed. I have said this before. If this is a 'company for the future' get a fancier web site. Use the actual pictures that are already there instead of the mock image. I really like the one 'tethered, weighted and floating'.
Anyway, since bold new thinking is best conveyed with bold new words, Globetel is using its own trademarked name for its (don't call 'em) blimps in space: stratellites — the first of which is set to float heavenward by year's end, reaching a sub-orbital, stationary position 65,000 feet above the earth where it will soon be joined by four others.
THERE's just one thing: That pre-determined, sub-orbital position at the doorway to outer space turns out to be 12 miles above the jungles of Colombia, which is not yet what you'd call a booming market for voice-over-the-internet telecommunications services.
(On the other hand, high above the jungles of Colombia is one place where you could say you've got 500 of the things in orbit, and who is going to say otherwise?)
Not even worth much of a reply. 500? We would be out of business
We wanted to ask a company spokesman why a squadron of (don't call 'em) blimps over Colombia promised to become anything more than the high concept for a "Seinfeld" routine, but couldn't get further than a voice recording for the PR person, which said "high call volume" meant not to expect a return call anytime soon.
Squadron? I don't even think it was 3?
Next we came upon a press release announcing plans by a Florida company called Apogeo Enterprises Corp. to invest $50 million in Globetel's not-blimps project, and tried to call them up, too, since anyone planning to invest $50 million in something must surely know what he's doing.
Unfortunately, it proved impossible to locate a business by that name in Florida or anywhere else.
Not true, they are listed. They may of been created for this venture, who knows, but they exist on sunbiz.com
Another possible source of information might have been a man named Paul Taboada, who issued a large number of press releases for the company during 2002 when it was still known as American Diversified Group Inc.
A search of SEC filings revealed that Taboada is now a private investor and consultant to Globetel, and has already invested $500,000 in the company, which is apparently being used as tide-me-over money until that big $50 million rolls in and construction of the not-blimps gets going in earnest.
Unfortunately, Taboada didn't turn out to have the credentials for which one might have hoped.
During the period when he was writing press releases for American Diversified Group, Taboada was working as Director of Corporate Finance for the firm of Hornblower & Weeks.
In that capacity, Taboada issued a research report for American Diversified that turned out to be so over-hyped and distorted in its thumbs-up analysis of the company's prospects that the National Association of Securities Dealers wound up suspending not just Taboada but the entire firm of Hornblower & Weeks from issuing any reports about any companies for six months.
Now he's working for American Diversified's renamed successor from the inside and apparently has half a million dollars on the line, so who could possibly trust a word he'd have to say about anything regarding Globetel?
Paul, I'd be calling a really good expensive lawyer if I were you if these statements are at all false. This reads like a proverbial lynching. Bu I also think that some correspondence or article etc,from Globetel to support Paul or dispute these claims is deserving of us investors.
In addition, I do believe it is our responsibility to do our DD but I also believe it is GlobeTel's responsibility to rebute these claims NOT with just the PR released today but at the shareholders meeting and the web site.
