This evening, I attended a stockholders meeting of Countless Galaxies (CGI). I only hold a handful of shares in CGI which I bought when I was testing out the Virtual Stock Exchange. My original intention was to provide a summary of the issues discussed, providing a small amount of background. However, my research led to a long exploration of one of the key players, so this post will focus on that and subsequent posts will explore more of the background and then the meeting. If you want a log of the meeting, look elsewhere. If you’re not interested in stock trading in Second Life, don’t hit more, otherwise...

CGI was approved for IPO on the World Stock Exchange (WSE) on May 8th, 2007. The announcement was signed by one Jasper Tizzy. While the announcements about the IPO remain on WSE, much of the other information has been removed, so it is a little hard to fill in all the pieces. On May 11th, they reported selling two million shares and the stock was trading at around L$ 4.25. A separate announcement on the 11th described Jasper as “Entrepeneur [sic] and owner of both Countless Galaxies and Linden Bank”. Glowing press releases continued through out the month of May, and then end abruptly.

It is worth noting that there was a thread over on SLExchange about Linden Bank. In the thread, people questioned why Jasper was doing what he was doing. One person suggested Jasper was a kid who didn’t know what he was doing. Jasper responded that he was a kid or a scam artist. He responded that he was 44 years old and denied being a scam artist. One person posted the WHOIS records for The Linden Bank, and found:

Private Web Communities, Inc (THELINDENBANK-COM-DOM)
1355 W Palmetto Park Rd
Boca Raton, FL 33486
usa
561 714-3475
webmaster@PrivateWebCommunities.com

Jasper responded, “Private Web Communities, Inc. Is my company.”

A little more digging revealed this information:

TechHandle: FC311-ARIN
TechName: Corsi, Frank
TechPhone: +1-561-714-3475
TechEmail: frankcorsi@yahoo.com

The Whois records for thelindenbank.com were updated on the 19th to

London - Private Web Communities, Inc (THELINDENBANK-COM-DOM)
635 Gator Dr. Suite A
Latana, FL 33462
usa
+011.5613822202

Asking around, I’ve been told that Jasper is in fact Frank Corsi, but that the numbers that he has provided have been disconnected.

Other research revealed that his servers had been used for spam back in 2004. A person who knows him says he claimed he owned the servers, but they were leased out to other people that did the spamming.

Other research shows a Carol Corsi at Frank’s old phone number, and carolcorsi@yahoo.com. She is listed as running http://www.astrological-services.com/ and having an email address there of carol@Astrological-Services.com

Also on Second Life exchange, back in February, there was a long discussion where Frank talked about his background. A little more information can be found in this SEC filing

So that gives you more than you may have wanted to know about Jasper/Frank’s background. Next, we will explore the history of CGI...