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And like Hometown International, whose CEO is a New Jersey high school principal and head wrestling trainer, E-Waste CEO John Rollo recently had a job that is unusual for a company worth tens of millions of dollars on paper. He was a patient carrier at a hospital in northern New Jersey.
The career history of the CEO of E-Waste is full of other surprising detours. Rollo, 66, who did not return for comment, previously won two Grammy awards during his extensive career as a recording engineer and producer on albums by artists such as The Kinks, Joe Cocker, Whitney Houston, Kool & the Gang and Quiet Riot, records state .
He was also vice president of operations at Comus International, a New Jersey-based switch and sensor manufacturer, for nearly 18 years. Rollo was fired from Comus in 2019, according to a lawsuit he filed that year in connection with his termination.
The connections between E-Waste and Hometown International – whose Your Hometown Deli in Paulsboro had achieved combined sales of only about $ 35,000 in the past two years – include the same Hong Kong entity as their largest shareholders, similar advisory contracts with investor-controlled companies, and their current use of the same New York law firm.
And, like early financial filings by Hometown International, E-Waste’s initial legal filings show the involvement of a lawyer who was later sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for involvement in fraudulent plans to set up companies.
The attorney for E-Waste was different from the attorney originally used by Hometown International – Hometown’s previous attorney, unlike E-Waste’s, was charged and convicted of related federal crimes.
Another similarity between the companies is the fact that no one associated with them has returned phone calls or emails from The Washington City Times.
A key figure at both companies is Peter Coker Sr., a 78-year-old North Carolina businessman whose son, Peter Coker Jr., is chairman of Hometown International.
The younger Coker is executive chairman of South Shore Holdings Ltd., a Hong Kong company that owns a financially troubled hotel in Macau, China: The 13.
Initial investors of that very luxurious property included Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors, Fidelity International and Omega Advisors. The 13’s website indicates that it has been closed since February 15, 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Records indicate that Coker Sr. is an investor in Hometown International, as is one of his company, Europa Capital.
Hometown International’s largest shareholders include three separate entities in Hong Kong, all sharing the same address, and four separate entities in Macau, all of which have the same address there as well.
Paul Morina, the delicatessen’s CEO and the local high school’s head and wrestling coach, is also a major shareholder in Hometown.
A net loss and large liabilities
E-Waste, which has self-described as a vacant company in the Securities and Exchange Commission filings, had total assets of nearly $ 183,000 and liabilities of nearly $ 412,400 as of November, according to the most recent 10-Q filing with the SEC.
The company had a net loss of nearly $ 58,000 for the nine months ended November 30.
The company was founded in Florida in 2012 “to develop an electronic waste recycling company,” but “was unsuccessful in its efforts and retired from that industry.”
Since then, the company has been a shell company and wants to “enter into a business combination with a private entity whose business offers an opportunity for its shareholders,” the filing said.
That filing also says there is significant doubt that E-Waste will be able to survive for the next year, noting that the company has “suffered significant losses since its inception and has not demonstrated its ability to generate sufficient revenue” to become profitable. .
“There can be no assurance that profitable operations will ever be realized, or, if realized, can be sustained on a continuous basis,” the filing said.
As of early last year, four of the five biggest shareholders of E-Waste were, in order of size of shares held: the Valletta, Malta-based GEM Global Yield Fund LLC SCS, and three individuals whose address was that of something called GEM Advisors, located on Madison Avenue in New York.
At the time, E-Waste’s president, treasurer and secretary was a man named Peter de Svastich, who is a managing director at the GEM Group.
When CNBC called de Svastich on Wednesday, he snapped, “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t speak to reporters” — before hanging up the phone.
GEM, which had been E-Waste’s controlling shareholder, sold 6 million restricted shares of the company’s stock last year for $30,000 to Global Equity Limited — a Macau, China-based entity.
Global Equity Limited is the biggest single shareholder in Hometown International, the deli owner whose chairman is Coker Jr.
De Svastich resigned as part of that sale agreement of E-Waste shares to Global Equity Limited — and Rollo, the music producer and patient transporter, took over as the sole executive at E-Waste.
E-Waste’s registration and phone number also changed to Coker Sr.’s office in Carrboro, North Carolina. The company entered into a one-year lease for the office there at a monthly rate of $250, the company said in its SEC filing.
In the same month, E-Waste received a $255,000 loan from Coker Sr., according to the filing, which says the interest on that loan is 8% annually.
E-Waste pays Coker Sr.’s firm Tryon Capital $2,500 a month in consulting fees, according to an SEC filing.
Hometown International also pays Tryon Capital a monthly consulting fee: $15,000. That deal means Hometown pays more in consulting fees over three months than its underlying deli business made in sales over the past two years.
Coker Sr.’s history
CNBC has previously detailed Peter Coker Sr.’s tangled history, which includes allegations of hiding money from creditors and civil allegations of fraud, all of which he denied.
Coker Sr. reportedly was arrested in 1992 — the same year he was embroiled in a lawsuit by American Express Bank for unpaid debts — on charges of prostitution, corruption of minors and open lewdness in connection with an incident in which police said he had exposed himself to children in his native Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Coker Sr. is also business partners in North Carolina with Peter Reichard, who a decade ago was convicted of using their firm, Tryon Capital, as an ostensible party in bogus consulting deals to obscure illegal campaign donations to Bev Perdue, a Democrat who was elected governor of North Carolina in 2008.
Coker Sr. was not criminally charged in that case.
Reichard is the son of Ram Dass, the late spiritual and LSD guru who gained renown in the 1960s and 1970s.