NatLamp execs indicted UPDATE

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on December 18th, 2008

The Philadelphia Inquirer had a followup yesterday. The indictments were handed down in the district court just across the river in Philly, we suppose because the scheme to inflate the National Lampoon stock involved a bank account in Blue Bell, a suburb of Philadelphia.

There are names in this article. And one or two of them sound vaguely familiar.

Basically, the scam goes like this. The CEO, Daniel Lakin, “accused of hiring someone to invest money in the company’s stock to manipulate the market and create the appearance of ‘steady demand,'” according to the account on the ABCNews.com site. In this way, Lakin hoped to “create better conditions for potential buyers and ‘strategic partnerships’ for the company.”

To do this, he enlisted Eduardo Rodriguez, a “stock promoter” from Linvingston, NJ. Sounds familiar. To manipulate the stock, Rodriguez enlisted the aid and cooperation of three other companies. One of those companies, Advatech Corp, of Edison, NJ, is said to be headed up by Richard J. Margulies. That too sounds familiar.

We googled Margulies’ name and found this article from the Newark Star Ledger, by Greg Saitz, and it confirmed our suspicions.

The former chief executive of a bankrupt company that ran Rascals comedy clubs has been charged with securities fraud and branded a corrupt stock promoter by federal regulators.

Criminal charges against Livingston resident Eduardo Rodriguez and six others were unsealed in Philadelphia yesterday. Federal prosecutors and securities regulators accused Rodriguez, 49, of participating earlier this year in four separate schemes to artificially inflate the prices of penny stocks.

Rodriguez faces up to 80 years in the slammer.

See our post from September, in which we quote from a September 19 article in NJ Monthly.

The former chief executive of a bankrupt public company that ran Rascals comedy and night clubs used company money to pay for at least $400,000 in personal expenses, according to a complaint filed in bankruptcy court.

Former CEO Eduardo Rodriguez used an American Express card issued to a one-time consultant of Headliners Entertainment Group to charge family vacations to Disneyland Paris, Jamaica, Cancun and Florida, the complaint filed earlier this week alleged. He then had Headliners or one of its subsidiaries pay the bill, according to court papers filed by a bankruptcy trustee overseeing the company’s liquidation.

Apparently, this was only the tip of the iceberg. Rodriguez’ activities have been keeping investigators and judges in at least two states busy for some time.

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