Complaint Review: Creative Technologies Holdings Inc - Nationwide

Should anybody been a victim of stock fraud under creative technologies holdings, etc... you had learn the hard lesson. But worry not because if you need this persons to be caught, they are holding their office in Mandaluyong City, Philippines, in a condominium because they do not have a business license to present for commercial unit. They are mostly in residential areas. And most of them are now in Mandaluyong City, preferably, 8-E Wackwack condominium. They were caught once, but was bailed and again back on their work or I should say, back to stealing other persons hard earnings. So beware of them. Do not transact over the phone.

In CY2000, CT+E [Creative Technology & Entertainment, Falls Church, Virginia] contracted yours.com, LLC, as a strategic consultant and brand disciplinarian to set up a proprietary software enterprise that would produce a series of online gaming solutions delivered through a variety of exclusive online property sites based in the Dutch Antilles. Each of the five consultants hired by CT+E were given specific assignments and titles, to build out the online gaming framework for CT+E. I had the lead role of overseeing all of the hired consultants to ensure that each of their individual efforts worked in close harmony, met key milestones and delivered on their assignments in a timely manner. I was also tasked to provide access to other outside disciplines that CT+E could hire when a specific need was required [i.e. computer programmers, coders, linguistics, graphic web designers, etc.] But in the short span of 10 months, the Manila investor elected to shut CT+E down along with several other enterprises that they owned. And with this action, the investor, his accounting firm, his legal advisor's, elected to not honor any of the consultants final contract payments which left an outstanding amount of $250,000 still due. Neither yours.com, LLC or any of the other consultants owned shares in the company or had any role in seeking investors to participate in CT+E and/or the parent holding company. We were each hired to satisfy our specific contract assignments. Needless to say, no one was pleased with this final outcome.

Amador "Ding" Pastrana currently lives at 3505 Regency at Salcedo, Tordesillas St. Salcedo Village, Makati, Metro Manila, Philippines. He is heading an events company called CircuitAsia (www.circuitasia.com); and rumor has it that his events are merely a front for drug trafficking. He has also set up a publication called Generation Pink (gp.circuitasia.com), web networking called Fabuloush.com, as well as a foundation called Gift Foundation (giftfoundation.info). He is currently setting up more call centers in Manila. His e-mail address is [email protected], and his cellular phone number is +6329178013464.

I realize this is an old subject and has received no replies in a couple of years, but I have only come across it recently, and wanted to leave my own reply for the record. My name is Jerry Garner, and I was also employed by this company. In fact, I had consulted with Manan Shah several times before this company was established, for a full 3 months before anyone else was involved. At that time, it was only Manan, Roland (who was based in Denver) and some mysterious investor in Manilla whom I had never spoken to. I was also left owed money by this company, as was everyone else who worked there. By the end of it all, we had all gone a full month without being paid and remained as a matter of good faith and because we believed in the product we were developing, only to be fed a lot of lies and excuses about why the money was held up. Eventually, we were all called into the conference room where Manan and Josh(ua) told us the company was closed and would be filing bankruptcy (which never happened so far as I am aware). When we left the conference room, we found that our codes had been removed from the door locks to prevent us from re-entering. I can confirm that everything that Mr Yamron and Mr Kolowich stated on this matter (above) is absolutely true and correct. Manan and Roland were the ones who had actual ownership. The rest of us were just employees who had the promise of stock options (that we never received), and all of us were left owing money. I was lucky in that mine was only a few thousand dollars. I know one employee who was owed over $30,000 in back salary, and another who was owed close to $100,000 in back salary and expenses. So anyway, I can confirm that Mr Yamron and Mr Kolowich were victims here, and should not have their names associated with the ownership of this company - they simply were not in that role. I cannot confirm anything to do with the holding company being based in the West Indies, as previously reported. All of the paperwork I ever saw referenced the holding company being based in Las Vegas, and the holding company then owned Creative Technology & Entertainment Inc in Falls Church, VA, which employed us. I do know, with certainty, that Mr Pastrana had funded a similar company operating in Dominica, so a presence in the West Indies would not be totally surprising to me - I have just never directly seen a reference to any holding company located there. I am more than happy to address this issue with anyone who has a reason to explore it further. Post your comments below...

I am an italian investor and I started three years ago in making overseas investments with Duke's and company. Then I have been convinced to move to an other company called Price Warner, and then to an other company called Brooks Pearson and, at the end, I have being contacted by Clanvale Securities sa which is now in Guatemala (or it should be). I have invested a lot of money (more than 600,000U$) in Digitalrech Holdings and Creative Technologies Holdings. I am trying to get back at least part of my money but everytime I call this people they say that due to the market's difficulties, it's hard to sell any kind of stock. Last time they called me on my cell phone the number shown on the display was: 0063-324-206326 which means is from Philippine and not from Guatemala which prefix is 00502. Any time I am calling them in Guatemala City the secretary says: " the person you asked for is in a meeting or he is not available" and then, after 30-40 minutes they call me back. My wife and I we don't know what to do. During last year we received a lot of phone calls from people asking us to sell our stock for a lot of money. But everybody was asking at least 10% as "deposit to be put in a special found to guarantee all the transaction". All af this sounds scams and now, I also discovered your web site and I am writing this because I don't know what to do. Any help will be appreciate. With best regards Guido and Paola Bargero But I will do anything I can to see these people

INVESTIGATIVE REPORT PART 1: FILIPINO IS KING OF GLOBAL HI-TECH FRAUD Manila, April 15, 2002 (STAR) By Sheila Samonte-Pesayco - Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (First of a series) The operator of what could be the biggest scam syndicate in the world is a Filipino, authorities in various countries say. Just 30 years old, Amador Apungan Pastrana, has become the face of 21st-century high-tech fraud. According to authorities here and abroad, he is the brains of a global network of boiler room operation that have duped hundreds of thousands of investors with little knowledge of the financial market, but with lots of money to spare. Pastranas alleged victims include 4,000 people who lost $35 million they invested in one of his shell companies, thousands of retirees in Australia and New Zealand, and nearly 700 South Africans who lost a total of $28 million, of which $5 million belonged to businessman Lino Leoni, one of the owners of the renowned DeBeers diamond company. Accounts in the Internet and Australian newspapers say Pastrana has already amassed some $6 billion in a mere eight years, a wealth accumulated largely from running at least 150 boiler rooms in nine countries. But his operations have also earned him the ire of the police and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and in some European countries. None, however, has managed to catch up with the slippery Filipino. Pastrana, who maintains posh homes in Manila and Los Angeles, is now on the watchlist of authorities in many countries, including the Philippines. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has also begun to investigate his activities. Police in Austria want to talk to him, as well as to US national Regis Possino, a disbarred lawyer convicted of fraud and drug dealing, and shady Saudi Arabian businessman Adnan Khashoggi. Media reports say the three men were members of a consortium that bought a small Viennese bank without a brokering license, and then turned it into a boiler room. But Tomas Syquia, acting director of the Compliance and Enforcement Division of the Philippine SEC, says building a case against the international syndicate is difficult because of the complexity of the modus operandi. Most of the victims are all overseas, making it hard and costly to gather information and court evidence. As of this writing, the PCIJ has yet to hear from Pastrana or his legal representatives in Manila, to whom it sent a written list of questions. Still, James Martin, director of Sydney-based Stock Investigation Research Society (SIRS), a network of victims of boiler room operators, says, "He (Pastrana) is the Henry Ford of boiler rooms. He has taken it into mass production scale like no one else." Called "boiler rooms" because they usually work out of cramped office spaces with desks and telephones and apply high-pressure sales pitches on their victims, operations like that of Pastranas can be found in practically every continent. Each office has an army of telemarketers that call up retirees, pensioners, lottery winners anybody whos neither a banker nor a broker who are thousands of miles away, and more than likely in another country. The glorified telemarketers then pitch stocks of "pinksheet" companies, or those whose shares sell for a fraction of a penny, listed on the unregulated Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board (OTCBB) of the US NASDAQ. These boiler rooms hire expatriates with Western accents who present themselves as hotshot brokers of securities firms that have impressive-sounding names such as Morgan Lynch (a cross of US investment banks J.P. Morgan and Merrill Lynch), Griffin Securities, Muller & Sons, Dukes & Company, and Knowle & Sachs. They send out glossy newsletters, put up Internet sites and pester the potential victim with follow-up calls until he agrees to part with his savings and buy the stocks. Clients, who plunk down amounts that range from $1,000 to $5 million each, then receive instructions on how to send the payment by telegraphic transfer to a bank overseas. The companies collapse their operations after six months to a year or when too many clients itching to see returns start burning their phone lines. But like zombies, the firms come alive again in another office address or in another part of the world, using a different name and another set of incorporation papers. Often, too, the salespeople would say they are calling from Bangkok, Hong Kong or China, even if they are making the calls in, say, Manila. Clients who try to cash in on their investments are never successful. More often than not, the boiler rooms do not really buy the shares and merely pocket the money. When the clients run to their respective SECs for help, they find out they have put their trust in obscure companies that do not even hold a license to trade stocks or a legitimate office address. Their phone calls go to business centers paid to render secretarial work and receive calls that are automatically re-routed to the boiler rooms landlines. Engineer Peter Harvey, who lives in the remote town of Kondinin in Western Australia, admits losing $150,000 from investing in OTCBB shares offered by boiler rooms allegedly owned by Pastrana. In an e-mail interview, Harvey recounts how he was first "sold" shares of companies believed to be part of Pastranas own pinksheet empire, and then later told that his account was being transferred to another firm and then another. As Harvey tells it, he had first dealt with First Federal Capital, a company operating in Makati City but based in Palau, in 1997. A year later, he was told his account was being transferred to Pryce Weston, which had supposedly bought First Federal. In 1999, another company called Saxon and Swift, which also had offices in Vanuatu and Hong Kong, took over Pryce Weston. Harvey says the same thing happened with Bradshaw Global Asset Management, another boiler room company then based in Makati but with a representative office in Rancho Sta. Margarita in California. Sometime in early 2000, Bradshaws operations were taken over by Newport Pacific Securities and Management, also based in Makati. According to Harvey, Newport eventually ceased operations, and his account was moved to Gibson and Peterson Company, based in Bangkok. "I even flew over to the Philippines to meet them and have a look at their operations," says Harvey. He says he did not find anything suspicious at the time. Now, though, he has only one word to describe these companies: "parasites." Yet while Pastrana seems to be the present king of boiler rooms, he was not the inventor of this elaborate scam. Experts say boiler rooms began more than a decade ago in the United States, particularly in Florida, where they reportedly flourished due to lax investment rules there as well as the large population of retirees. SIRSs Martin reckons boiler rooms boomed soon after 1990, when the US SEC allowed the trading of the so-called "Regulation S" shares. The policy, meant to respond to the increasing globalization of the capital markets, allows the sale of securities not registered with the US SEC to be sold to offshore investors. But Martin says what it has really done is to allow boiler rooms to mislead investors outside of the United States. These investors are led to believe they are being sold shares in legitimate US companies, and that the transactions have the seal of approval of US regulators. Coming at a time when stock markets were doing very well, the boiler rooms hit pay dirt in the hundreds of thousands of people eager to invest even their nest eggs. When the FBI conducted a major sweep in the early 1990s, the boiler rooms simply moved their operations outside of the United States, eventually choosing countries that had no extradition arrangements with US law enforcement agencies, or with weak rules of law. Many of the boiler rooms thus set up their dialing offices in Canada, Hong Kong, the Bahamas, Panama, Costa Rica, Liberia and South Africa. Some apparently wound up in the Philippines, with one of them eventually employing Pastrana. A BS Computer Science graduate of Trinity College in Quezon City, Pastrana had first worked as a crewmember in a McDonalds outlet before he chanced upon a newspaper ad for telemarketers in a Makati-based firm called Griffin Securities. It turned out to be a boiler room operation, but Pastrana lasted long enough in the company to master the "business." Some of his former employees were told that Pastrana took some vital diskettes with him when he resigned from Griffin. They believe he used these to help set up his first company, which became First Federal Capital. According to the Philippine SEC records of AAP Management, Inc., his flagship company, Pastrana managed to have more than 10 companies in just a span of five years. It is believed these companies form part of his legitimate business and still do not include his boiler rooms. Among those listed as his previous positions were managing director of First Federal Capital, Inc. and president of Mendez Prior Hall, which authorities raided and were able to seize documents from showing the extent of its boiler room operations. Today, Pastrana is said to own more than 100 boiler rooms and shell companies around the world. Some of them are incorporated in small tax-haven territories such as the Bahamas, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Mauritius, Cayman Islands, Western Samoa, Turks and Caicos, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Island of Nevis, and the republics of Liberia and Seychelles. Those in the United States were incorporated in Nevada, Florida, Delaware and South Carolina. Martin, who says he was duped by Pastrana in an even more complicated way, has also received reports that Pastrana in the early 1990s had crossed paths with Sherman Mazur, a German national who was then running boiler rooms in the United States. In 1993, Mazur was sentenced to five years in prison in California for securities fraud. While he was serving time, Mazur reportedly passed on the management of his boiler rooms to Pastrana, "whom he trusted," says Martin. "But Amador not only took over these boiler rooms, (he) set up more." Records obtained on Pastranas US corporate empire as of June 2000, though, lists only seven OTCBB-listed companies created out of a series of reverse mergers and acquisition of dormant firms. The results are several holding companies operating only on paper, usually with the same corporate secretary, Roy Rayo, or Filipino lawyer Claudine Montenegro whom Martin also sued for practising in the US without a license. The seven US holding companies are neatly spread out into different sectors. Apart from Digital Reach Holdings Corp., which takes care of investments, there is Key Holdings Corp., which was incorporated in Nevada, but is an online gaming company based in Antigua or Dominican Republic. Netsat Holdings Ltd. is said to focus on telecommunications and Internet service, Your Future Holdings Inc. on educational development and technology, Labco Pharma on pharmaceuticals, and another Cayman-based holding company for food. There is also Stratasys, once owned by Martin but is now Pastranas, which is a Bermuda-based holding firm supposedly handling software development. The shares of these companies are listed on the OTCBB, which is highly vulnerable to price manipulation. Not surprisingly, these nearly worthless company stocks are among the offerings of Pastranas boiler rooms. Harvey himself says he was among those who loaded up on Labco Pharma shares. While the clients of his operations permanently part ways with their money, Pastrana has yet to stop raking it in. According to one of his former employees here in Manila, his companies tills rang up a total of some $5 million a day in 2000. Other ex-employees say more than a third of that automatically went to Pastrana while only a tenth was used to buy legitimate stocks in behalf of clients. A former resident of a squatter community in Guadalupe Viejo in Makati, Pastrana is now said to own a $2.8-million apartment penthouse on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. "He also bought his mother a lovely gift: a $14-million house in Rancho Santa Margarita in Mission Viejo, California," says Martin. "A very nice son, dont you think?" In the Philippines, his properties reportedly include two luxury condominium units in the high-end Essensa East in Taguig, a villa with a view of the sea in Caylabne Bay, the Winners restaurant on Arnaiz Avenue in Makati, and units at The Peak, also in Makati. Authorities hot on Pastranas trail say some of the properties have been placed under the name of his front companies such as Euro Pacific Trade Inc., or those of members of his immediate family. Pastranas megabucks have also found their way into listed conglomerates such as Hong Kongs Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., as well as Singapore Telecoms, US metal producer Alcoa Inc., Pacific Cyberworks of Hong Kong, and US semiconductor firm Intel. United Resources Asset Management Inc., which was set up in May 2000 and now acts as investment manager for the entire Pastrana group of companies, had a portfolio of $200,000 invested in these stocks. In its first year of operation, the company targeted an investment of over $20 million a year, according to AAP Management records. Some of his associates say that despite his supposed riches, Pastrana still has some simple joys, among them buying brand-name shoes at bargain prices in either Bangkok or Hong Kong. But he is also known for e-mailing his personal secretary to keep replenishing his stock of blue and black Mont Blanc pens, as well as showing off the results of his latest liposuction or the wonders cosmetic surgery has done on his face. Obviously, too, Pastrana is making good a promise his former associates say he made to himself several years back. When he was still a struggling college student, Pastrana was said to have sworn in true Scarlett OHara fashion: "I shall never go hungry again." Manan and Roland have resurrected Digital Reach....I would go after these assets in that they used the CTH money to fund the resurrection of this company. Roland and Manan owned 20% of CTE and they kept the front up on CTE and CTH to get funding for Digital Reach.... This would be easy and Roland and Manan's operation is well funded, plus the assets are worth major bucks.... I was the Chief Technology Officer of Creative Technology and Entertainment, a company owned by Amador Pastrana via Creative Technology Holding and UR Capital. Amador Pastrana, Manan Shah and Roland Roland Thomas have several companies still active in the US and I am aware of all seven. They are using their boiler rooms to fund these defunct Shell companies UR Captial is the front organization for them in Los Angles. Please see www.digitalreach.com which James Martin previous firm Bertren invested in with Amador's capital. They are still active and have used Amador Pastrana's money and Creative Technology Holding Investors money to continue to fund Digital Reach

I was hired by this Virginia based company to be the Chief Marketing and Sales Officer. I was a virtual employee. I live in California. I was only aware of the fact that we had a Phillipino investor through a management company in Los Angeles. I was never involved in the funding or financial aspect above and beyond my departmental budgets. I was informed like the other employees that we had lost our funding and were going to have to shut down. The primary roles were held by Manan Shah and Joshua Simons both who live in Virginia. I had to get the State of Virginia to get them to pay me my wages. I also was ripped off for over $20,000 in travel related business expenses that were never reimbursed. I also worked for Creative Technology + Entertainment Group and not for the Holding company as stated. I was ripped off by these people as well and do not appretiate being linked to them as some type of crook. The crook in this situation is the broker selling bogus stock, the original investor that was washing money through our company that I was unaware of and the two individuals mentioned above.

Manan Shah and Amador Pastrano are the individuals responsible for this company. They hired me as CTO and closed the company using my name under Creative Technology Holding. They owe me over $100,000 in salary and expenses. I had my lawyer write a letter to have my name removed from their website. They also defrauded an investor from South Africa of over $75,000 through the same firm. Manan Shah is the CEO and aided in this fradulent action on a continuing basis. His contact information follows: Manan Shah [email protected] Phone: 703-502-9169 and 703-627-9387 Please contact me should you need my assistance. I have contact the US SEC and filed several complaints against them.