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Replies to post #14815 on FONU2 Inc (FONU)
The studio deal
In 2013, a potential bonanza appeared for Don Jr. and Blackburn.
Matthew Mellon, a member of the New York City branch of the wealthy Mellon family, introduced Don Jr. to Manu Kumaran, a movie producer from India, Kumaran told The Post. Kumaran wanted to build the largest movie studio in the United States and was looking for investors. The $700 million “Studioplex” planned by Kumaran’s company, Medient Studios, would be a campus-style complex with more than a dozen soundstages, an amphitheater, a hotel and living spaces for production workers over more than 1,500 acres on the outskirts of Savannah, Ga.
Medient, a publicly traded company, needed a builder. Don Jr. suggested that Kumaran consider using Titan Atlas Manufacturing’s concrete technology. In early 2013, Don Jr. introduced Kumaran and Blackburn, and began arranging a tour of the Pace Street warehouse.
“Manu did you have a chance to touch base with Jeremy,” Don Jr. asked in a Feb. 28, 2013, email to Kumaran obtained by The Post.
Don Jr.’s emails contained the subject line “Visit to Titan Atlas” and his title as “Executive Vice President of Development and Acquisitions” with the Trump Organization.
“Hey Donald,” Kumaran wrote back. “Unfortunately I don’t have Jeremy’s coordinates. Am standing by to get in touch with him at your convenience.”
Kumaran said Don Jr. ultimately decided not to invest. But Kumaran said he still thought Blackburn could help him, even though Blackburn had no experience building movie studios.
In May 2013, while the studio deal was percolating, Blackburn filed for personal bankruptcy in federal court in Salt Lake City. His $6.4 million in debts included the $3.65 million Deutsche Bank loan to Titan Atlas Manufacturing and the $750,000 judgment against him for civil fraud in 2006.
Kumaran told The Post that he had no idea that Blackburn was in financial difficulty.
On July 19, 2013, as Blackburn’s bankruptcy case was pending, a new company began operating in the Pace Street warehouse. It was called Titan Atlas Global, also known as TAG, and had been created by Durbano in Utah.
On paper, TAG was a new company free of the debts that Titan Atlas Manufacturing had accrued. But TAG marketed the same concrete-panel kits at the same website address, and it had some of the same workers, including Blackburn and his father.
Don Jr. leased the warehouse and the manufacturing equipment to TAG, but he was not an owner of the new company.
On Nov. 14, 2013, Blackburn was granted bankruptcy protection and his personal liability for the $6.4 million in debts was discharged. Blackburn became chief executive of Titan Atlas Global. It had a new group of investors, including a dentist in Fargo, N.D., and a Wall Street banker.
“I did not start TAG,” Blackburn wrote in an email, without providing details. “I was recruited and joined many months after it was started.”
In March 2014, Blackburn closed the deal to build Medient’s studio complex. A new Titan Atlas Global subsidiary, Shore Development and Construction, was to oversee construction. Medient highlighted that fact in statements to investors.
“We have considered some of the world’s largest construction companies to build the Studioplex,” Kumaran said in a news release. “TAG technology is green, represents a quantum leap in cost and time efficiencies in construction and is supremely robust — capable of withstanding over 300 mph winds, 9.1 Richter scale earthquakes and is entirely fire resistant.”
Bill Foley, an Atlanta-based architect who designed the 700-acre Pinewood Studios in Atlanta, was brought on to help Blackburn. Foley told The Post that he became alarmed after a few conference calls. Titan Atlas Global’s concrete panels could not work acoustically for a movie studio, he said.
“We quickly saw that Titan Atlas Global didn’t have anywhere near the firepower to do any project that size,” Foley told The Post. “They had no background at all in stage production.”
The studio deal eventually felt apart.
In June 2014, Kumaran was pushed out of Medient amid concerns about his financial management. In September 2016, the SEC accused Kumaran and two other Medient executives of stock fraud, alleging in a lawsuit that they used news releases that misled investors about the project’s construction.
Kumaran, who now lives abroad, defended the project.
“It was absolutely not a scam,” he told The Post. “The plan didn’t come to fruition but that’s not because the plan did not have legs.”
The SEC investigation is continuing.
