Fraud alleged at National Lampoon
The chief executive of Los Angeles entertainment firm National Lampoon Inc., best known for the comedy and parody films produced under its brand name, was charged Monday with securities fraud in an alleged scheme to artificially boost the company’s stock price.
Daniel S. Laikin, 46, was named in a criminal case filed by the Justice Department in Philadelphia, and was arrested in L.A. on Monday, prosecutors said. He and the company also were named in a civil suit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The case is part of a broader crackdown on alleged stock manipulation that led to civil and criminal charges against a total of seven people in three separate schemes that authorities said had the same Livingston, N.J., stock promoter -- Eduardo Rodriguez, 49, of Cheetah Consulting Group -- as a central figure.
National Lampoon calls itself “the leading brand in comedy,” but it’s a tiny operation. Most of its $7.4 million in revenue in the fiscal year ended in July came from licensing and publishing fees on previous productions, including the 1978 hit movie “Animal House.” The company lost $1.7 million in the last fiscal year.
The stock, about 40% of which is owned by Laikin, has mostly languished under $2 a share since 2005 as the company has continued to bleed red ink while searching for a sustainable business strategy.
The government alleges that Laikin, along with Las Vegas consultant Dennis Barsky, sought to artificially inflate the price of National Lampoon stock by paying kickbacks to promoters for buying the shares in the market.
The scheme, according to the government: From March to June of this year, Laikin and Barsky paid at least $68,000 to Rodriguez, another alleged stock promoter and a government informant to induce the purchase of at least 87,500 shares of National Lampoon.
The goal, the SEC said, was to drive the stock price up to at least $5 a share. But the stock never closed above $2.13 a share in the period, and by late June was at $1.60.
The SEC on Monday suspended trading in National Lampoon. It last traded Friday at about 73 cents.
Rodriguez also was charged in the National Lampoon case and was named in two other alleged stock-manipulation cases: One involving Advatech Corp. of West Palm Beach, Fla., and the other a restaurant start-up company called SwedishVegas Inc., supposedly based in Arcadia.
The SEC and the Justice Department also brought charges Monday against two other alleged stock promoters in the SwedishVegas case: Alex Kanakaris of Newport Beach and Richard Epstein of Parkland, Fla. The agency suspended trading in SwedishVegas shares in July, when the stock was trading at 3 cents a share.
None of the defendants could be reached for comment. A National Lampoon spokesman declined to comment.
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