While researching the economic trends here in Nevada, I ran across a story about a Nevada based company called Gameplan Inc. (GPLA). Kim Christensen, writing in the L.A. Times, reports that Gameplan’s CEO, James R. Halstead, already a veteran parolee on five felony counts in a $1 million scheme involving crude oil and German bank shares, has been ordered to repay $22 million to roughly 80 investors in his company.
Halstead was supposed to be investing in PIPEs (private investment in public equity), but at some point he apparently changed his mind. Halstead has not been charged with a crime, but in a tentative order issued by Federal District Judge David O. Carter, the LA Times reports:
…Halstead had purchased $12 million in real estate and “hundreds of thousands of dollars in jewelry, which he lost in a taxi in Arizona and never reported to police.”
Halstead also used investors’ money to pay household expenses of $15,000 to $25,000 a month, Carter wrote, and placed $389,000 in a deferred compensation plan for his wife, who was listed as an officer of GamePlan, which Halstead ran from his Santa Ana home.
Halstead also “showered his mistress with large sums of money and expensive gifts,” about $750,000 worth in 2006 alone, Carter wrote.
“The icing on the cake, perhaps, is that on Christmas Eve 2005, Halstead bought her a brand-new Ferrari convertible,” he said. “This token cost $201,005.”
Incredibly, GPLA is still listed at $0.20/share on the OTC Bullitan Board. The Wild West lives on.
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