El Con Communications, LLC

Obviously with the history of iDigi and the allegations of money being siphoned off then at “50 cents on the dollar” I was interested to have a look at the set up of some of the other companies in the Mooers Branton empire. There is a bewildering amount, a huge number of inactive companies (10 iDigi ‘whatever’ LLCs), but also several active companies too. Obviously the companies and their bank accounts that I suspect that have the real cash in them - the offshore accounts, the accounts in Iceland - are not going to show up on an internet search, but I thought I’d check out the web search at Delaware Corporation House and Florida Corporation House anyway. The websites are great, particularly the Florida one. Anyway, I found some interesting/amusing things:

240 S Pineapple Ave Sarasota, FL 34236
This address pops up as the address of dozens and dozens of companies, not just Mooers and Branton companies either. What is it? A huge tower block? Must be crowded huh? Well in fact it seems like 240 S Pineapple drive is just a lawyers office. The sort of place where you might get an imitation brass plaque outside, and a postbox inside. There are no massive offices for the powerhouse of the MB empire - at least not at their registered address. Why do they always have to be mysterious? To be honest it makes them look like they’ve something to hide :-). Check out some of the companies listed there - I didn’t make these up – I almost choked on my cornflakes when I found the first one:

El Con Communications, LLC
El Con Associates, L.L.L.P
Dodgepoint Associates, LLC
Courthouse Square Associates of St. Pete, Inc
….And dozens of others.

We’ve no way of knowing if any of the above are M&B companies, although they are named perfectly. Does El Con contain any money from the xMax con?

Anyway there are some that we know are M&B companies:

Binghamton Housing Group, L.L.C.
Mooers Branton & Co. Incorporated
Landmark Hospitality, LLC
MOOERS PARTNERS, LLC
MB MERCHANT GROUP, LLC
BRANTON PARTNERS, llc:
Branton Family Company LLC
BRANTON APTS CO., LLC:
SANDHILL MERCHANT GROUP, LLC
CONNECTCOM INC.
CONNECTCOM MERCHANT GROUP, LLC

Most of these we know absolutely nothing about. What assets they have. Where they came from. They’re just entries at the lawyers office. No websites, no mentions. Nothing. The only ones that do have any info on are Binghamton Associates and xG Technology Inc, and they both seem to owe money! Not huge amounts, but when you’ve got $22M in cash in the Company account, plus $70K a month, plus $300k a year, plus bonus, plus share options, you’d have thought these piddling amounts aren’t a problem.

Binghamton Associates LLC has Richard L. Mooers, Kevin S. Zern, and David S. Band (the lawyer) on the filing documents. They’ve just had a nice touch selling THIS hotel for $1.8M to Avichal Corp. With that in mind you’d have thought that the near $15,000 they owe to the City of Binghampton for unpaid water rates for another property at 92-98 State Street would be loose change. But they are about to be cut off! Hmmmm

And of course xG Technology, Inc. Firstly on the Florida filings they were about to be struck off in October 2007 for not returning their annual report, and had to send a nice letter to the authorities. That would’ve been interesting.

The Delaware filing is VERY informative. I’m not an expert on Delaware tax law, but as far as I understand you pay $250 if you’ve less than 1000 shares, or $250 for each million of assets divided by the number of shares. This is just the fee to be incorporated in Delaware, not the actual US business tax they’d pay. In the official filing we get the following information for the 2008 tax year.

Tax/Void Warning - Filing Information
File Number: 3562449
Name: XG TECHNOLOGY, INC
Tax Year: 2008
Tax: $41,590.16
Penalty: $0.00
1.5% Monthly Interest: $76.41
Previous Credit/Balance: $36,520.87 CR
Filing Fee: $25.00
Amount Due: $5,170.70

Begin Date End Date Designation/Stock Class No. of Shares Par Value/Share
05/08/2007 COMMON 500,000,000 .010000
PREFERRED 250,000,000 .010000


Whoa! Seven HUNDRED and fifty MILLION shares! That’s just silly. I thought the 129,925,276 they’ve already issued was a lot - There’s still 620,074,724 to go! That won’t be dilutive…...much! If I understand it correctly, by the tax they owe for this year it seems they value their own assets at $166M – a long way from the $1.5B their promoters were talking about.

The most interesting bit though is for a company with $22M of ‘cash, or cash equivalents’ in hand they don’t seem to be able to find $5k to pay their taxes! Hmmmm.