Who is Linda Contreras and why is she CEO of TEXG? Mexican chick with a nose ring
mark Anderson"
"California consultant
Desperately in need of financing help in late 2003, the company turned to a Southern California financier, Mark Roy Anderson, for money and ideas. Anderson seemed like a white knight for the struggling company.
Although Anderson denies it, Sonoran officials said that he represented himself as a wealthy investor and the son of Robert Anderson, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Arco, the West Coast's largest gasoline retailer through its chain of am/pm mini-marts. He is not Anderson's son. But Mark Roy Anderson brought fresh ideas. He introduced a plan to get rid of Sonoran properties that were draining precious cash, and he recommended buying oil and gas fields that could yield more money.
All these things were enough to convince ex-CEO Punzo, a one-time Canadian restaurant owner with no oil-and-gas experience before Sonoran, that Anderson was a consultant who could turn things around. However, court documents filed by Sonoran suggest Punzo was unaware that Anderson has served prison time for a scheme.
During meetings at Anderson's Beverly Hills office and by phone, Anderson said he would invest $3 million as long as Sonoran agreed to follow his advice. Anderson's strategy: sell California oil and gas wells that were draining cash, buy more lucrative properties and swap out management.
Following Anderson's suggestions, Sonoran pursued several acquisitions of oil and gas wells in Louisiana. Anderson found properties, negotiated sales terms and arranged financing. Anderson also wanted a new management team experienced in the oil and gas industry. He sought out a London oilman, Paul Bristol, who was named chief executive officer in December 2003.
Because the company didn't have much cash, Bristol and Anderson instead were paid with company shares. The idea was that Bristol and Anderson would share the company's wealth as its prospects improved. In a deal Anderson helped negotiate, Sonoran gave Bristol 3 million shares of company stock. Anderson was awarded 925,000 shares for his recruiting efforts.
Surge in 2004
When Bristol took over in December 2003, the company's share price had never cracked $1. That soon changed. Bristol had more than two decades of experience in the oil and gas world, working for companies in London and Africa. Sonoran's share price soon performed better than it ever had - or has since. The one-time penny stock jumped to a high of $4.25 on Jan. 14, 2004. It's unclear what led to the share price run-up, but it seemed that Anderson's moves were paying off. Sonoran touted its efforts to build a worldwide oil company in news releases, advertisements on financial news TV and international media.
In early 2004, the company issued three news releases promoting its efforts to find and extract oil in Iraq. The company said it opened a new office in Iraq and hired an Iraqi geologist and another consultant that formerly served the Iraqi Oil Ministry. The timing was significant. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had just been captured. U.S.-led coalition forces patrolled Baghdad's streets. And it seemed to be a matter of time before foreign oil companies could exploit the nation's rich reserves.
While investors seemed to embrace the company's new direction, Sonoran's brief period of rising shares soon faltered. Shares soon dipped below $1 and haven't broken that barrier yet. "The share price was much higher (in early 2004)," Rosenthal said. "I think it was the expectations that we would hit a big project in Iraq."
A declining share price wasn't the company's only challenge. Bristol resigned in April 2004 and was replaced by Rosenthal. A Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit filed by Sonoran claims that Anderson became unhappy with Bristol, his handpicked chief executive, and pushed for his removal.
Anderson said he did not force Bristol's departure and was as surprised as anyone when the British resident abruptly quit. Bristol could not be reached for comment. "I was very happy with him," Anderson said. "I thought he was talented and competent. The share price skyrocketed when he got on board."
Fraud allegations
After Bristol left and Rosenthal took over day-to-day operations, Sonoran soon learned that some deals Anderson patched together began to unravel. Sonoran claimed in a Los Angeles County Superior Court lawsuit that several deals Anderson arranged were nothing more than frauds and that he provided just a fraction of the $3 million financing. In one deal, Anderson persuaded Sonoran to buy and then sell a group of oil and gas leases in North Dakota. The company issued nearly 1.2 million shares to pay for the leases, known as the South Little Knife Project, but the company said in court documents that it never took ownership of the wells and couldn't even get geological reports that would have estimated how much oil and gas the wells contained.
In a deal in Bakersfield, Calif., Anderson collected nearly 1.7 million shares by telling Sonoran that he would sell a property he didn't own. Sonoran paid out the shares but never claimed title to the property. "The biggest problem and challenge for the company was this investor, Mark Roy Anderson," Rosenthal said recently. "(He) turned out not to be useful for us." Anderson, however, said it was Sonoran's failure to follow through on terms that scuttled the deals he proposed. "Had they bought the properties I recommended, I would have fulfilled the financing commitment," Anderson said. At the time, Rosenthal said, Punzo and other Sonoran representatives were unaware of Anderson's past.
In 1991, Anderson was convicted of a scheme to bilk investors out of millions of dollars by promising tax shelters to those who agreed to help fund historic building renovations. The deal ensnared about 1,500 investors who poured in $50 million. Anderson pled no contest to fraud charges. He was sentenced to seven years in prison and agreed to pay nearly $7 million to his victims. Anderson later appealed his conviction, and he was released from custody in March 1996, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
In 2005, Sonoran sued Anderson to recoup about 8 million shares of company stock that Anderson and his related companies were paid for deals he brought to Sonoran. The two sides in June settled the Los Angeles County Superior Court lawsuit. Anderson gave back the shares to Sonoran and the company agreed to give Anderson Bakersfield-area oil property.
Anderson said the settlement was "something I accepted, so I took it." "
all public stuff , do your dd
Reach the reporter at ken.alltucker@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8285.!
