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New York (HedgeCo.Net) – Petters Group Worldwide has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after feds launched a probe into an alleged $3 billion scam that was said to be orchestrated by the founder. The subsidiary company under investigation is Petters Co. Inc., a Minneapolis-based venture capital firm.
In a ponzi-like scheme, Tom Petters allegedly used new money brought in by investors to fund his lavish lifestyle by creating false retail transactions.
The company has not made any comments on the pending fraud case, only that filing for bankruptcy was “in the best interest” of the business and that the receiver will “assess the business and develop plans for them that best serve the interests of their creditors, employees, suppliers and customers.”
In addition to the federal probe, PCI also has big-time Chicago hedge fund Ritchie Capital Management to deal with. Ritchie has claimed that it lost $275 million as a result of the scam, and they want that money back.
However, there is some question as to whether Minnesota or Illinois should have jurisdiction regarding the Ritchie case. R.J. Zayed, the attorney representing Ritchie, wants the matter handled in Illinois court, saying, "We’re not just creditors, we’re victims of fraud."
This is the second fraud-related scheme that Ritchie Capital has found itself in the middle of as of late. The fund had recently purchased several hundred million dollars of life insurance from Coventry First, a Pennsylvania-based life insurance company. It was eventually found out that Coventry was defrauding clients out of millions of dollars by paying insurance brokers to suppress competitive bids.
Tom Petters was arrested earlier this month with charges of money laundering, wire fraud, mail fraud and obstruction of justice. He was denied bail.
Julie Scuderi Senior Editor for HedgeCo.Net Email: julie@hedgeco.net
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Trilibis Mobile announced today that it has raised $5.7 million in Series B financing.
Alternative Investor Altos Ventures led the round with participation from ATA Ventures and several early individual investors. Ho Nam, General Partner and Co-Founder of Altos Ventures, has joined the board of Trilibis Mobile. Mike Hodges, Managing Director of ATA Ventures, has joined as a board observer.
"Trilibis has done a great job of establishing relationships with Tier 1 carriers and proving out the SmartPath platform with key content partners," said Ho Nam of Altos Ventures. "With this capital infusion, we look forward to working with the Trilibis team to continue to take market share and grow the business."
The newly raised capital will be used to fund development of the next generation of SmartPath to include support for native applications for BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile and Android devices. Additionally, Trilibis will devote some of the capital to boost its marketing and sales efforts.
"The tremendous increase in consumer adoption of smart phones has fueled the growth in mobile data services usage," said Alex Panelli, CEO of Trilibis. "Our objective is to capitalize on this emerging trend."
With this funding, Trilibis has raised a total of $8.3 million since inception.
Altos Ventures is a first-stage venture capital firm focused on leading investments in emerging technology companies with the goal of building market leaders. Altos manages $200 million in dedicated first-stage capital on behalf of leading endowment, fund-of-funds, financial and family office investors based in the United States and Asia.
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New York (HedgeCo.Net) – Matt Cohler, one of the early faces behind the wildly popular Facebook, will join venture capital firm Benchmark Capital. Cohler will assist in locating investment opportunities in web based services and will work with the company’s portfolio businesses, all while continuing to work with Facebook.
“Matt has set his sights extremely high, and at his young age has already helped to fundamentally change the face of the internet,” says Benchmark general partner Peter Fenton. “We could not be more thrilled to add Matt’s talents, relationships and passion to Benchmark.”
Coming on board with Facebook in 2005, Matt joined Forbes’ “Youngest Billionaire” Mark Zuckerberg and enjoyed profits of $150 million last year. Facebook is estimated to be worth as much as $15 billion. Prior to that, he was the Vice President and General Manager of LinkedIn, another social networking site for business professionals.
Benchmark manages approximately $2.8 billion in assets.
Julie Scuderi Senior Editor for HedgeCo.Net Email: julie@hedgeco.net
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Altassets – Cleantech-focused venture capital firm RockPort Capital Partners has closed its third fund, RockPort Capital Partners III, on over $450m, the hard cap of the fund. It had an initial target of $400m and held a first closing just three weeks ago, on $400m.
The new fund will continue the focus of RockPort’s previous funds, investing in the development of technology and products in emerging cleantech companies.
The investor base consists of US university endowments, family offices, foundations and institutional investors from both the US and Europe.
Wilber James, managing general partner, RockPort, said, ‘The cleantech sector provides enormous opportunities to identify and foster initiatives that offer solutions to global energy and natural resource needs, while providing superior investment returns. We have already seen how the teams we invest in can create enormous value. Our collaborative approach together with a business-building mentality and keen domain expertise has proven invaluable to growing companies.’
