More Huberfeld and Optionable Inc. – A PIECE OF PLATINUM ANYONE?

 

MURRAY HUBERFELD, MARK NORDLICHT AND OBTIONABLE….

Thanks to our contributor on this one. – LM

Murray Huberfeld grew up in the Bronx and growing up became accustomed to selling off bogus and fraudulent deals. He never grew out of the habit, evidenced by relentlessly ongoing activities in private sector and public market activities. Every case or situation in which he continues to remain unscathed represents an unfortunate continuation of the status quo. He is a link to the Rothstein scandal. I wonder what that’s a link to. Arnold Rothstein?
Optionable Inc, the brokerage located in Valhalla, New York, transacts in the brokerage of
energy derivatives to brokerage and financial services firms globally. On January 22, 2007, NYMEX Holdings, parent to the New York Mercantile Exchange, issued a news release that the they were purchasing a 19% stake in the pink sheet Optionable Inc (OTC:OPBL). While the purchase may be questionable in and of itself, the history of those involved and one particular person tend to stand out.

NYMEX Chairman R. Schaeffer’s announcement of a 19% stake in Optionable, which increased revenues to $16 million from under $6 million. Such was reflected in Optionable’s stock price. But behind the commodity derivative brokerage’s arguably manufactured numbers exists a clinging reliance on related party transactions and often depends on one sole supplier or customer. Such parties include Capital Energy Services, a firm with a President and CEO accounting for a significant interest in Optionable’s revenue last year.

The Bank of Montreal must come as no surprise. According to Optionable filings, this bank accounted for a comparable amount of the Company’s revenues. Optionable received an advantage from this practice, achieving almost 80% margins when otherwise comparing to 56% with nonrelated parties.

David Lee, Bank of Montreal Commodity Trader, accounted for 18% of Optionable’s revenue. Mark Nordlicht founded Optionable Inc in 2000 with the backing of his like-minded morally challenged father, Jules Nordlicht, who had been federally prosecuted for manipulating the oil markets and withholding $27 million in illegal profits.

According to an April 2017 New York Post Article by Roddy Boyd, Jules owns 2.19 million shares.
635 Beach 19th Street
Far Rockaway, NY 11691
contact@optionable.com
Source: OTC Markets
NY Post: Roddy Boyd

Le Pen, Diamonds, Lev Leviev, Berel Lazar, New York

 

https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2017/05/05/le-pens-trump-tower-italian-fundraiser-tied-to-lega-nord-russia-are-diamonds-le-pens-best-friend/

Le Pen’s Trump Tower Italian Fundraiser Tied to Lega Nord-Russia; Are Diamonds Le Pen’s Best Friend?

 

Will France get an anti-American president, Marine Le Pen, who doesn’t even know that New York City is located there? Does she think that Trump Tower is in Montreal? “Vive le Quebec Libre! Vive le Canada Français et vive la France!” said De Gaulle on July 24, 1967 in Montreal: http://youtu.be/rGm6imM-7AI

And are diamonds Le Pen’s best friend, as once sang by another bleached blond? In “Gentlemen Prefer Blonds“-“Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friends“, Marilyn Monroe sang that the French may be willing to die for love, but that she prefers diamonds. Link: http://youtu.be/g__ANxxwKIk And, love won’t pay for Marine Le Pen’s campaign, it seems. The French connection would’t do. She needed an Italian connection in Trump Tower.

Enter her Italian “fixer”, George “Guido” Lombardi, apparently Giorgio Guido Lombardi, who migrated from Italy to the US in the 1970s. Lombardi states in an interview at the beginning of the BBC Panorama documentary “Marine Le Pen: Who’s Funding France’s Far Right” ( http://youtu.be/0ClNpJYuqdE ) that there were people at the cocktail-fundraiser, which he held for Marine Le Pen in Trump Tower, who could have contributed a million dollars “without blinking an eye“. Was one of them the “King of Diamonds?”

According to the New York Post, long-time friend of Putin “Israeli diamond dealer Lev Leviev was the mysterious businessman hustled through the shut-down Lincoln Tunnel on behalf of a [New York Mayor] Bill de Blasio fundraiser.” http://nypost.com/2016/06/21/bribed-cops-shut-down-lincoln-tunnel-lane-for-king-of-diamonds Did he help Marine Le Pen too?

…

According to the New York Times, “The political operative she [Marine Le Pen] went to meet at Trump Tower, George G. Lombardi, is a businessman who has made a career as a liaison between two right-wing Italian political parties — the Northern League and Forza Italia — and like-minded people in the United States. He has also worked with the National Front since 2012…” Pictures of Lombardi with former Senate majority leader Bob Dole, and former NY Republican Senator Alfonse D’Amato, as well as a younger Trump, are found on one of his web sites, they say: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/13/world/europe/marine-le-pen-trump.html. Recall: https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2017/03/23/russian-oligarch-deripaska-tied-to-manafort-also-has-past-links-to-bob-dole/

In a more recent interview with the New York Times, Lombardi says that he was born in Geneva and moved to Rome, as a child, and that it was the 1968 protests, and popularity of communism at his university, that made him leave for America. He says that he started out in the jewelry business, then turned to real estate. He married the apparently older widow of real estate magnate Frank Lahainer, who already lived in Trump Tower, and was originally from Trieste, Italy, as was Frank Lahainer. Trieste faces Venice, on the Adriatic. See: “A Trump Tower Neighbor Is the Point Man for Europe’s Populists“. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/14/world/europe/trump-tower-neighbor-europe-populists-orban-wilders-le-pen.html (Did the New York Times confuse Geneva with Genoa (Genova), or was he born in Switzerland?)

Although it was apparently bought by Frank Lahainer, the 25 carat diamond, mentioned in the 2002 Washington Post article, called up a memory about the sell-off of huge diamonds by Russia in the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Lev Leviev is believed to have helped liquidate these assets. Lev Leviev is also reportedly behind Putin’s Milan born Rabbi Berel Lazar (Lombardi’s dual compatriot: American-Italian)

Isn’t it bizarre that Putin’s official Rabbi Lazar was born in Milan, in Lombardy Italy, and ordained Rabbi in New York City? Lazar is a member of the Chabad Ludavitch sect, who have their own book, which is not used by mainstream Judaism. Lazar is reported as having both American and Russian citizenship and his wife as having American citizenship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berel_Lazar They presumably have Israeli citizenship too. And, while Lazar has recently been quoted as saying that, if Le Pen wins, France’s Jews will have to leave France, we don’t know if he is playing at Briar Rabbit, nor if he thinks that a bad thing. (See JTA .org: “Russian chief rabbi says Jews should leave France if Marine Le Pen elected“, April 22, 2017) Lazar may want to bring the Jewish diaspora to Israel for the arrival of the Messiah. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chabad_messianism#Anticipation Another Putin friend-Russian Oligarch-Chabad supporter, Roman Abramovich, is currently building a new house in Israel. And, building lots of housing for the diaspora would be big business for real estate magnates. This could include Trump’s sons and son-in-law.

…

Jona Rechnitz: Loan Shark? Diamond Dealer? Lucky Gambler? Real Estate Mogul? Shoshana by any other name…

 

NYPost: http://nypost.com/2017/04/26/key-witness-in-nypd-corruption-probe-was-an-alleged-loan-shark/

Key witness in NYPD corruption probe was an alleged ‘loan shark’’

The government’s key witness in multiple corruption probes was a part-time “loan shark” who made money doling out predatory loans, court documents alleged on Tuesday.

Jona Rechnitz — the government’s witness against two NYPD cops accused of taking bribes — “was nothing more than a loan shark” when it came to his business dealings with Hamlet Peralta, the former owner of a Harlem eatery that was popular with cops, Peralta’s lawyer said.

Peralta, the former owner of the Hudson River Cafe, stands accused of running a $12 million Ponzi scheme tied to an allegedly fictitious wholesale liquor business.

Peralta’s lawyer, Cesar de Castro, made the allegations against Rechnitz as part of a legal tug-of-war with feds about what evidence can be introduced at Peralta’s upcoming May trial.

The government wants to call as witnesses victims of Peralta’s alleged scheme who were recruited by Rechnitz — and who learned of the scheme through Rechnitz.

De Castro has objected, arguing that statements made by Rechnitz cannot be offered as the truth because he was engaged in his own loan-sharking scheme.

“Evidence at trial will show that (Rechnitz) was not Mr. Peralta’s agent but the architect of his own scheme in order to bleed Mr. Peralta dry,” de Castro said.

Rechnitz’s lawyer, Alan Levine, declined to comment.

Rechnitz, a real estate investor, is also the government’s key witness in the upcoming bribery trial of Norman Seabrook, former head of NYC’s correction officers’ union.

 

http://nypost.com/2017/04/26/key-witness-in-nypd-corruption-probe-was-an-alleged-loan-shark/

A Platinum Loan or a Nordlict Investment – the Yeshiva Business and WTA

A PLATINUM EDUCATION FOR JEWISH CHILDREN, A MODEL TO BE EMULATED, OR – PERHAPS NOT…

This article should be viewed as a follow up to an article we published earlier in April regarding Westchester Torah Academy and alleged “Loans” from Mark Nordlicht to the Westchester Torah Academy.

We contend that the “Loans” were donations. Whether they began as a means of hiding money, a lot of it, and shielding Nordlicht from potential financial liability or evolved and have been converted is a question for debate. We have our theories.

We further posit that subject only to the previous paragraph, the “donations” are now being called back as “Loans” to give Nordlicht visible and “clean” (i.e. laundered) working capital to manage his current legal woes. Each and every dollar Nordlicht is referring to as “Loans” represents an injustice to the Westchester Torah Academy and all of its students and their families..

We finally maintain that if investigators want justice for those many, many people aggrieved by Platinums’ litany of carefully planned and executed swindles, they need to open Nordlicht’s personal financial statements and trusts, scrutinize the money, its providence and underlying transaction. Nordlicht’s (and Bodner’s) personal family trusts, which we believe are comprised of Platinums’ assets should unshieded  from creditors of Platinum and all of its many victims.

See 2012:

 The Times of Israel reported: http://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/lower-tuition-school-model-spawning-imitators/

Lower-Tuition School Model Spawning Imitators

Impact of just-opened yeshiva being felt, but financial projections remain untested.

By Julie Wiener November 20, 2012, 12:00 am

 

Rabbi Netanel Gralla, head of Yeshivat He’Atid, has two things he wants everyone to know about his school.

First, teachers have not been replaced by computers. And second, while the tuition — $8,990 for kindergarten and first grade — is substantially lower than that of other area day schools, the students are hardly enduring a no-frills education.

“We have art, music and gym,” the 40-year-old father of seven points out to a visitor during a recent tour of the Bergenfield, N.J. elementary school. “We’re not cutting corners.”

With its dual approach of making Jewish education affordable and using “blended learning,” a mix of computerized and face-to-face instruction, He’Atid — the name means “Yeshiva of the Future” — has been open just two and a half months.

But already, the 116-student Orthodox school’s impact is being felt in the Jewish day school world; other Bergen County schools are lowering tuition in the younger grades and looking to incorporate more technology. Meanwhile, two new Orthodox schools following He’Atid’s model are on track to open next year: Westchester Torah Academy in New Rochelle and Tiferet Academy in Long Island’s Five Towns.

The two planned schools, along with He’Atid, have the financial backing of the New York-based Affordable Jewish Education (AJE), an ambitious nonprofit so new it is still awaiting 501(c)3 approval.

Established by 44-year-old hedge fund manager Mark Nordlicht (who, through an intermediary, declined to be interviewed) together with six anonymous donors, AJE’s goal is nothing less than solving the day school tuition crisis by creating a new breed of tech-savvy, lower-cost schools.

“This is an urgent problem, and we have a sense of urgency,” says Jeff Kiderman, AJE’s executive director. “We can’t take a wait-and-see approach; this is the time to act.”

The money from AJE is intended solely as a startup investment to get the schools “on their feet”; the goal is that eventually the schools will be financially self-sustaining.

“The point is not to redistribute who’s paying, but to change how much it actually costs,” says Kiderman.

The He’Atid approach, inspired in part by innovative charter schools like California’s RocketShip and Arizona’s Carpe Diem, is not without its critics. While it’s hard to object to lower tuition, some parents — and leaders of established day schools — are skeptical about blended learning, which has yet to be proven successful on a large scale or over the long term. Others wonder whether AJE and He’Atid’s budget projections are realistic — the school, currently spending over $11,000 per student, is supposed to break even financially in its third year — or if the model risks faltering as it expands (the target size is about 1,000 students in pre-K through eighth grade).

Not helping the matter is that He’Atid and AJE have refused to make public the details of the “model” they are using to project expenses, although they have revealed that cost savings will come from “efficiencies” like larger class sizes, fewer administrators and group purchasing.

“The ‘model’ is just our prediction of what we think will happen — what’s more important is what actually happens,” says Kiderman. “We are constantly tweaking the model as we learn more, and we are prepared to share it with any school who wishes to learn from it.

Says Gershon Distenfeld, He’Atid’s president: “We’re happy to go over it one on one, but with no context everything gets misinterpreted.”

 

Echo Therapeutics Inc, one in a String of Platinum Decimated Companies…. Answering Some Questions.

The below is an article that was posted in Valuewalk. The author asks some obvious and reasonable questions. Taken in a vacuum, one might wonder. However, when viewed through the looking glass of Platinum corporate savagery, the answers to those questions take on a whole new perspective.

Our comments are in red. – LM

Echo Therapeutics Inc (ECTE) – A Stock With No Revenue And A Short Catalyst

 http://www.valuewalk.com/2016/06/echo-therapeutics-ecte-short/

Platinum Partners is the largest investor in Echo Therapeutics (common, warrants, pref and debt). Below is the author’s take on the stock itself, but it raises some bigger questions regarding Platinum such as:

1. why was platinum (a $1 billion fund) repeatedly investing in such a micro cap stock. Because as part of Platinum’s strategy, Platinum acts as the savior “institutional investor,” proceeds to increase value through name recognition, to take control, divest the company of its most valuable assets and equity and then to tank the stock and leave nothing for investors. Most likely in bankruptcy, Platinum repurchases the company at a substantial discount or holds onto the assets and sells them.
2. How did Platinum value its investment in the warrants and preferred as there is no “market” for these illiquid investments. The value is an arbitrary number intended to guide other investors who view Platinum’s investment as a benchmark. As you know there were some questions about how Platinum valued some of its other investments. See Black Elk and Optionable, Echo Therapeutics and dozens if not hundreds of others. They all follow the same pattern of setting a benchmark, enticing other investors to increase capital thereby increasing value and then tanking the company by divesting it of its assets through a series of tender offers, mergers, special purpose vehicles or strategic partners. In Echo’s case it was a Chinese partner who made promises of Chinese FDA approval to appear legitimate.
3. Did Platinum invest in ECTE while at the same time preventing Platinum investors from withdrawing from the fund (aka failing to honor redemption requests). Most likely or they created a class of shares in which they too were investors and then voted one class over the other thereby diluting the equity for the second class. That was followed by removing the value through a series of tenders, mergers, corporate takeovers, strategic partnerships…

Echo Therapeutics Inc (ECTE) – An Overvalued Stock

Echo Therapeutics (ECTE) has no revenue, is losing money, is facing delisting from the Nasdaq exchange, needs capital, recently filed a shelf offering (very late in the day on a Friday!) and faces competition from much larger industry competitors. According to the latest 10Q, the company had only $42k of unrestricted cash (not much cushion for a company that burns over $1mm per quarter) yet boasts an equity market cap of almost $35 million (using the 20 million shares, which includes convert pref,…most data sources like yahoo and Bloomberg use only 11 million shares outstanding). The company also expects to have negative cash flows for the foreseeable future as it funds its operating losses and capital expenditures. Echo Therapeutics is up 25% YTD and up 100% from its 52 week low. This was not the case initially. The software had value. The company was a Platinum target from start to finish.

To make it an even more attractive short candidate, consider that its largest shareholder is Platinum Partners, the fund that one of its executives has been accused of paying bribes to a union boss in exchange for an investment and the same fund that yesterday the FBI raided on reportedly as part of an investigation into Platinum’s valuation of its hard to value illiquid assets. It has also been reported that Platinum will be liquidating some or all of its funds (which makes the short even more interesting). Finally, it has been reported that Platinum failed to honor redemption requests from investors and that Platinum has defaulted on a $30 million loan from New Mountain Capital…in other words, Platinum appears to have some very serious problems and their future is uncertain. Platinum Partners gets involved to give the company seeming legitimacy, name recognition, institutional investor interest thereby enticing other investors.

Furthermore, Platinum’s investment (and ECTE’s market cap) are larger than it might initially appear as most of Platinum’s investment is in the form of convertible Preferred stock, so the number of shares outstanding is, theoretically larger than it appears on the cover of the 10q. In addition there are Blockers limiting the number of shares that the preferred can be converted into, so the ownership table in the proxy table understates Platinum’s true ownership, although the footnotes give more accurate information. Precisely why their pattern of corporate savagery works.

Echo Therapeutics is trying to develop a non-invasive (aka no needles), wireless, continuous glucose monitoring system. You can see the latest presentation at http://echotx.com/investors/investor-relations/ . The company has been developing its products for several years now but still has no commercially viable product. It probably doesn’t help that they spend more on SG&A than they do on R&D and that they compete with companies with significantly greater resources. ECTE does talk about getting approval from the Chinese FDA (we have our doubts) and the company does put out press releases on things that we believe are of limited real value. Promises of Chinese FDA approval was a ruse to add seeming legitimacy to its choice of strategic partner, also a Platinum related entity, in China. Meetings were held in China, thereby removing the US entrepreneurs and board members from earshot. To reiterate, the supposed FDA Approval in China was a ruse intended to make the entire scheme appear legitimate, reasonable and even value enhancing.

To avoid delisting from the Nasdaq, by the July 5, 2016 ECTE will need stockholders’ equity above $2.5 million (last quarter it was negative $4.7 million) and to provide projections that it can maintain that amount through June 30, 2017 (remember the company loses money and lost $2.6 million last quarter). ECTE could, theoretically meet the Nasdaq requirements by doing one of 2 things, neither of which would be good for current shareholders: 1) Raise equity through a recently filed (but not yet effective) $25 million shelf, although it is unclear if ECTE has enough time to pursue this option and who would buy the stock or 2) Have Platinum convert some/all of its preferred stock into common stock, although given Platinum’s other problems I’m not sure how focused they are on ECTE at the moment.

In addition to being ECTE’s largest shareholder, Platinum has the right to nominate one director to ECTE’s Board. Platinum’s designee is ECTE’s Chairman, Michael M. Goldberg. Goldberg’s previous biographies indicate he used to work for Platinum. However his employment by Platinum is not mentioned in the bio listed in ECTE’s SEC filings and we wonder why. (Note: Mr. Goldberg is also Board Director for ticker NAVB, another Platinum related company whose stock has cratered recently.) Each and every member of the Platinum team from start to finish is a Platinum person, friend, family member, financial colleague and co-conspirator. This is part of the same Platinum pattern. Platinum Controls all aspects of the entity it takes over. It is carefully planned, reflecting savvy, a clear understanding both of the markets and of investor behavior and a willingness to destroy the most vulnerable, those who began the venture and did not know enough to prevent Platinum from stepping in.

Besides Michael Goldberg, Echo Therapeutics has 2 other non-employee directors, one of whom is Mr. Goldberg’s first cousin. Couldn’t ECTE find a qualified director who was not related to an existing Board member? To be clear, we don’t know either of the Goldbergs nor are we suggesting they have done anything wrong. However, their ties to Platinum (and each other) are red flags for us. They should be huge red flags, warning signs a cause for running in the opposite direction.

Not surprisingly, ECTE has failed to attract much interest from institutional investors. If ECTE is such an interesting investment, why have so many sophisticated investors avoided it? Our opinion is that Platinum owns shares when the company is functioning with moderate returns, dumps those shares into the market, tanking the stock, which serves to make a company appear less financially viable. They then enter as the “legitimate institutional investor” at a lower market price, take over a majority of shares and proceed to acquire control in seemingly legal contracts and transactions then divest the company of its most valuable assets under the guise of  trying to rebuild a company. In reality the entire path from start to finish is a well orchestrated ballet, with a chorus of additional dancers waiting at the sideline to step in and steal the show.

Based on the latest proxy as of April 2016 we estimate Platinum’s investment to consist of 783k common shares, 5.6 mm shares (theorectically convertible from preferred stock) and 2.8 million warrants. Clearly exiting its position will be challenging considering the company needs to sell shares too to raise cash and the trading volume is limited. No surprises. It was orchestrated in similar fashion in EVERY other deal that Platinum has entered (see Objectionable, Black Elk and others).

Echo Therapeutics is an overvalued stock where we believe both insiders and the company will need to sell large numbers of shares and we don’t see how either can occur at these prices. Echo Therapeutics can be saved if the Receiver in Bankruptcy sees the company through the looking glass of Platinum’s involvement and facilitates its recovery by denying Platinum and its partners any involvement.

A Platinum/Uber Collaboration and $8M In Losses to Investors

How several small-time investors got hosed when Uber crashed the taxi market

Unhappy about their losses the green cab owners have sued their broker and his partners for allegedly cheating them out of $8 million

When Dr. Amarpreet Singh received a tip from a patient back in 2013, he was all ears. The city was expanding its taxi fleet, the patient explained. Would he be interested in investing in cabs? “I said I’d certainly like to talk to someone about that,” recalled Singh, chief of oculo-facial plastic surgery at Harlem Hospital Center.

Singh’s patient introduced him to a taxi broker, who said the city was issuing thousands of permits for a new line of cabs, called green taxis, that would pick up passengers in the outer boroughs and upper Manhattan. Some green-taxi owners were already reaping profits of as much as $550 every week, the broker said, and it wasn’t expensive to get in on the action, because the city was offering incentives for cabs retrofitted to accommodate passengers in wheelchairs.

Singh liked the idea of helping disabled New Yorkers get around town, so he paid the broker $75,000 for five green-cab permits, plus another $325,000 for vehicles. Then he waited for drivers to rent his taxis. And waited some more. After nearly two years he got in touch with his patient to see what was up with the investment. Singh learned his cabs were lying fallow in Mill Basin, Brooklyn. He dashed over and found a parking lot filled with 600 cars, none with license plates and some not even outfitted as taxis.

“It was just a sea of green,” said Singh. “I walked out telling myself, Oh my God, what have I done?”

The collapse of the taxi business has dramatically altered New York’s streetscape. Spurred by the advent of Uber and other apps, the number of drivers looking for passengers has grown by 40%, but the surge has meant less business for cabbies, who are making 30% fewer trips than only three years ago. Those who invested in yellow or green cabs are seeing their investments wiped out as drivers flock to rivals or pursue other work and cars sit idle. Since 2013 5,000 taxi drivers have thrown in the towel, and last month Queens-based Melrose Credit Union was seized by state regulators after delinquent cab loans soared tenfold in just 18 months. The stock price of the city’s preeminent taxi lender, Medallion Financial Corp., has fallen so far that one share now costs less than a subway ride.

Among those sucked into the vortex are scores of novice investors who saw the same potential in green cabs as what yellow-taxi medallions offered decades ago: cheap investments (the first medallions sold for $10 in 1937 before peaking at more than $1 million) with yearly returns that far outpaced the stock market. But these small-time players bought green cabs just before the taxi business began its free fall. Singh is in this group along with a dozen other investors, including a home health care company president, a purchasing manager at a software firm, a vice president of sales at a printing company and a commercial real estate broker in Baltimore.

Jake Zamansky, a prominent plaintiff lawyer on Wall Street, said people need to be wary about buying into taxis and other investments that don’t have the same disclosure requirements as publicly traded stocks and bonds. “It’s imperative investors do their own due diligence or stay away,” he said.

The taxi investors are not happy about their losses and have sued in Brooklyn state court, alleging their green-cab broker and his partners cheated them out of $8 million by selling taxi permits “in the manner of a Ponzi scheme.” They also allege the defendants funneled millions of dollars’ worth of taxi money into Platinum Partners, a large hedge fund that federal prosecutors likened to a Ponzi scheme after it collapsed last year.

Billed as a slam dunk

Mark Nordlicht – WTA – A Platinum Swindle, “Loans”? “Donations”?

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Westchester Torah Academy – Case Number 68936/2016

According to court papers, WTA owed Nordlicht over $3 million and was trying to get a bank loan to pay him off. Financing for WTA has been denied; Nordlict is calling the Loans; and the children who attend that school are collateral damage.

Putting together the pieces of a puzzle of circuitous loans, investments, promissory notes, tax deductions, it looks like Mark Nordlicht (of Platinum fame) needed to reclaim the money he “donated,” “loaned,” to WTA presumably to pay his lawyers. WTA, now in a precarious financial position, had to withdraw the petition once Nordlicht was arrested.

Apparently desperate for cash, and despite what appears to be a schematic for fraud and theft from unwitting investors which included friends and people who trusted him, Mark Nordlicht now appears to be forcing Westchester Torah Academy to take on millions of dollars in debt in order to repay him for a “loan” he made to the school to acquire a new property.  The “loans” looked conveniently like “donations” before Mr. Nordlicht got himself into financial hot water.

Keep in mind of course, nobody has any idea where he obtained the money that was “loaned,” “donated,” whatever to WTA. Platinum Partners, perhaps? In court papers filed in late December 2016 , WTA filed a petition (see above links) to take out a mortgage on property that would have resulted in Nordlicht receiving proceeds of over $1 million on account of a promissory note he entered into with the school.

It appears that without creating yet another venture (Ponzi Scheme), Nordlicht has turned his attention to a day school. One can only wonder why the school would go along with this calamity of an arrangement, particularly given that Nordlicht was the primary source of funding (loans, donations – who knows what) of the school and it is unclear how the school will continue to function without his “donations” somehow called loans, somehow generating promissory notes – doesn’t add up.

Not surprisingly, once Nordlicht was arrested the NY Attorney General opposed the school’s application to obtain the mortgage. If WTA cannot operate in a responsible manner (and who knows what else the school “owes” to Nordlicht) it is good that at least someone is paying attention.

We are hoping the new Attorney General will next investigate the school and how it was funded. Our guess, this is yet another piece of the Platinum Partners pattern of pilfering.