One of the SEFE directors stands out from the rest, thirty year old Shannon Kerr. There are were some wonderful pictures of Shannon and her friends in London, in Las Vegas, and elsewhere on her Facebook page (UPDATE: No longer available, but it was here). One can see that Shannon is an attractive, and now, thanks to her SEFE shares, a wealthy young woman. But she has seen some tragedy in her life as well, including her father’s arrest in January of this year and her husband’s unfortunate passing in 2011. Still, it does appear that SEFE stock should have made her a millionaire many times over.
Just for fun, lets take a closer look at her resume. Here is the one from the most recent SEFE 10K filing:
Shannon Kerr, Director: On July 16, 2010, the Registrant appointed Shannon Kerr as a director to fill a vacancy on its Board of Directors. Ms. Kerr is a principal and co-founder of Del Mar Capital Advisors, LLC, a full service corporate finance advisory firm started in 2008. From 2007 to 2008, she served as Director of Operations for the Private Equity Division of Regal Securities in Newport Beach, California. From 2005 until 2007, Ms. Kerr worked as President of Eleventy-One, Inc., a firm specializing in capital markets strategy for small businesses with aims of raising funding and/or going public.
There are two ways to examine this little nugget. We can check what is disclosed, and we can also look for what she left out. First, lets go through what SEFE does mention. Del Mar Capital Advisors, is of little consequence right now. Her time at Regal Securites, however, is far more interesting. Given that she worked for a brokerage firm, the crack staff at BuyersStrike! HQ pulled her employment record, CRD#5406292 on file with FINRA. Perhaps while working at Regal, a firm that makes Rodman look top-tier in comparison, Shannon met her late husband Timothy Swanson aka Timothy J. Sosnowksi who worked for that firm as well.
Swanson, it turns out, not only worked at Regal, but according to his CRD #4760963, Tim also worked at World Equity Group. World is the home of SEFE‘smost recent backer, Craig Goodman, the man behind Riverbend LLC, and Mark Nevdahl worked there as well.
Mark Nevdahl‘s name came up when we first examined Shannon Kerr and her father Stephen aka Steve, here. We discovered that Mark was involved in the Heart Tronics (HRTT) fraud and has been linked to both the Kerr and the Quiel families. Mark also worked for Regal Securities, according to his CRD #1298931 on file with FINRA. What a coincidence.
Shannon’s official SEFE resume also mentions an outfit called Eleventy-One, Inc. Readers probably remember that in The Mass Psychology of Suckers Part 2, we wondered just where was the money coming from to fund Midnight Candle‘s (MDCL nka SEFE) expenses? If one was paying very close attention, one of the follow up posts subtly gave the answer.
Shannon Kerr (aka Shannon Swanson), through her firm Eleventy-One, Inc. was the mystery backer (read one of the agreements here). Strangely enough, that agreement is dated 2009, but according to her SEFE bio, Shannon left Eleventy-One in 2007! Ooops! Which document has the false statement? The 2011 10K or the Financing Agreement?
Even worse for Shannon and the SEFE scammers, while the bio says she worked at Eleventy-One, Inc. from 2005 to 2007, State of Nevada records show that the company was not even incorporated until May 2006. Fail! For a company that purports to revolutionize the energy business, these morons at Sefe, Inc. cannot even get their dates straight.
The official bio also leaves out some very important items.
First and foremost, it fails to mention that just a few months prior, Shannon was both the CEO and CFO of SEFE. Here is a 10K filing for 2010, signed by Shannon dated November, 2011. And in this letter to the SEC, dated November 7, 2011 Shannon signs as the President of SEFE. Amazingly, not once in the entire 2011 10K, is it ever mentioned that Shannon Kerr was an officer of the company. Perhaps the current CEO, Donald C. Johnston, needs to familiarize himself with the False Statements section of Sarb-Ox. Donnie signed off on the 10K and certainly must have known that Shannon was not just an officer, but had served as CEO, President and CFO. Any reasonable investor should consider that a material omission.
Her official bio also fails to mention several other positions she held, information that is easily available in her CRD. While the official bio has her working at Eleventy-One, from 2005 to 2007, her CRD never mentions that firm. Instead, the CRD shows that she spent that entire time working for a curious outfit in Scottsdale, AZ called CCN Worldwide.
According to State of Nevada records, CCN Worldwide is controlled by her daddy, Stephen Kerr and has shared an address with several well known scams including Ian Rice‘s Ikon Ventures (IKNV aka STTN) and Jaguar Investments (JGUR). One very well regarded internet sleuth, and entrepreneur, Steve Kirsch, has tracked down all of the players in the enormous Absolute Health (AHFI) and Concord America (CNDD) junk fax scams of the mid 00s. Kirsch has a very interesting section on Mr. Kerr, complete with contact info, available here.
So why leave out CCN Worldwide and fill the gap in the resume with Eleventy-One, a firm that did not even exist in 2005? Perhaps someone did not want investors being able to so easily link SEFE, Shannon, and her dad Steve?
[The following comment came from a user foolishly trying to masquerade as your author and from an IP address belonging to a Cox subscriber in the Phoenix, AZ area. – Editor]
Interesting you have this site to air dirty laundry on companies and people yet you won’t put your name out there? That’s odd or cowardly.
Oooooo…(I’m shaking in my boots) an IP address? With a Cox account? In Arizona? Is posting on your manure filled site…gasp! Good job Magnum PI. The question is who are you? An amateur, that’s all. If you were committed to reporting on the TRUTH, not these articles of lies after lies, then you may be viewed as credible. But you’re not and its unfortunate because you don’t even have the guts to call up one of these companies and find out the truth. That would take a respectable human being, and you are definitely not that. Continue down the road of being a cowardly, pathetic, novice securities fraud journalist who doesn’t check his facts, makes irrational & false assumptions and then goes and hides under a rock.
[@Fake Buyers Strike – Can you point out a single error of fact? And while we are it, what’s Magnum PI? – Editor]
I got a brochure pumping SEFE in the mail, from “Stocksdigest”, in late April, in Atlanta.
I also noticed SEFE is busy changing their address (see SEC filings):
1900 W. University Dr., Suite 231, Tempe AZ 85251
6821 East Thomas Road, Scottsdale, Arizona 85257 (reported 01/18/2012)
4700 Sterling Dr. Boulder, CO 80301 (reported 04/25/2012)
It had the Scotsdale address when I got the pump, so I looked it up: it’s a residential address, that is/was the HQ for other suspicious public companies (Spindle SPDL, Ecotality ECTY). Probably worth some more digging…
Here is the online version of the pump brochure: http://www.stocksdigest.com/sefe/
Note the $2.3M compensation + 2.7M SEFE shares held by the promoter, in the fine print.
[@Joey – Thanks for the link. Instinct leads me to believe that those 2.7mm shares are likely from Humble Harold‘s piece of the pie – Editor]
[The following comment came from a user foolishly trying to masquerade as your author and from an IP address belonging to a Cox subscriber in the Phoenix, AZ area. – Editor]
If you think Shannon yielded millions from selling stock, you are wrong. She is an affiliate. She would have to renounce her role as a director, wait 90 days, file rule 144, and then only sell a percentage of of the fully diluted…not exactly millions.
[@Fake Buyers Strike – Regardless of whether or not she has liquidated her SEFE stake, on paper her shares are worth a signficant sum. And given that SEFE, like all Kerr and Quiel linked OTCBB reverse merger companies, is an obvious fraud, why would anyone assume a SEFE insider would follow the rules. – Editor]
You’re a moron, I suggest if you don’t know how these pieces work you either educate your ignorant and pathetic existence or just shut up. Their law firm is Greenberg Traurig – on of the TOP firms in the country. Give ’em a call and see if she has sold anything? And if you are too inept to do that, look up what a 12B5-1 is. While you’re at it, here is a link to the rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission. You might want to brush up on a little light reading in your time between fabricating stories on companies and whatever the hell else you do. http://www.sec.gov/rules/final.shtml
[@Fake Buyers Strike – All having Greenberg Traurig as a law firm means is that SEFE’s checks to them have not bounced….yet. Hugz! – Editor]
The format for the Stock Digest’s promotion of SEFE is nearly the same as that of the one done for LEXG over a year ago and that of the one done for RAYSTREAM last Oct/Nov also by The Stock Detective, The Stock Hunter, etc., etc.
The just announced partnership between SEFE and CU-Boulder’s Prof. Al Gasiewski is quite interesting and needs plenty of further investigation. I noticed that in the referenced newspaper article on Stephen Kerr it was mentioned that he was on the CU golf team. Was that CU-Boulder? Has Stephen Kerr been a heavy contributor to CU-Boulder? There is plenty of speculation already surrounding SEFE’s decision to re-locate to Boulder and this opens up a completely new angle.