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November 11 , 2016

Ellsworth Young LLP


777 North Rainbow Rd , Suite 270
Las Vegas, Nevada 89107

Gentlemen:

I am writing to let you know how pleased we were to have had our company represented
by Ellsworth Young LLP . While it is not enjoyable to be involved in litigation , having Bob
Young and Catherine McGovern of EY LLP by our side and achieving the results they did
made the process a successful one. They understood our complex issues and worked
with us during a very difficult time.

We were impressed with their dedication and concern , and the quality of work was
second to none, as shown by the satisfactory results obtained .

EY LLP was there for us at a crucial time and the services and costs was exemplary.
Thank you for a job well done!

Yours truly,

IJ. L.
Anthony L. Havens
Chief Executive Officer

28 West 44th Street, Suite 2001, New York, NY 10036 Tel: 800-882-0778 Fax: 212-239-2822
Propane
10 November 2016

RE: Reference for Ellsworth Young LLP

Dear Mr. Pratter:

I am the CEO of Propane Health Group Corporation. Recently our company


retained the services of Ellsworth Young, LLP. I am pleased to report that
the services they provided were fast, efficient, and effective.

Litigation can be a complex and painful process, but Ellsworth Young did a
tremendous job at staying on top of the issues and representing our
positions well. They made complex issues simple, and they knew how to
best protect our interests.

Importantly, they also provided strong support on a personal level,


understanding the difficulties we faced and guiding us to deal with the
situation in the best manner possible.

I highly recommend Ellsworth Young.

Kind Regards,

1
James Nathanielsz
Chief Executive Officer

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Players Network has filed a complaint against Vis Vires Group,
KBM Worldwide, Asher Enterprises Inc. and Seth and Curt Kramer,
individually.
(OTCQB: PNTV), a fully reporting publicly traded company, annou::ced today that it
has filed a law suit in the district Court of Clark County, Nevada, is Vires Group Inc.
KBM Worldwide, Inc. Asher Enterprises Inc. Seth Cramer and Curt Cramer,
individually. The case is currently contested by the defendants in both Federal and
State Courts in NewYorkand Nevada.

The forgoing defendants are all companies owned or controlled by Curt or Seth Kramer
both defendants in PNTV's actions and Curt is a defendant in other actions filed by
FINRA relating to by virtue of FINRA Rule 6490(d)(3)(3), that states the regulator has
"actual knowledge that ... promoters or other persons connected to the issuer ... are the
subject of a pending, adjudicated or settled regulatory action or investigation by a federal,
state or foreign regulatory agency, or a self-regulatory organization; or a civil or criminal
action related to fraud or securities laws violations," it can reject corporate action
requests.

In the Finra case against Curt Kramer, it is specifically stated that it:"has actual
knowledge of a November 25, 2013 Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC")
Cease-and-Desist Order (Administrative Proceeding File No. 3-15621) ("SEC Order")
involving Curt Kramer ("Kramer"), President of Asher Enterprises, a convertible note
holder of ECOS. The SEC's investigation found that Kramer and his firms Mazuma
Corporation, Mazuma Funding Corporation, and Mazuma Holding Corporation ("his
Mazuma firms"), obtained unregistered shares in penny stock issuers Laidlaw Energy
Group ("Laidlaw'} and Bederra Corporation ("Bederra'}. According to the SEC Order
Kramer and his Mazuma firms purchased two billion Laidlaw shares, which amounted to
80% of Laidlaw's outstanding shares at the time. They purchased these shares at a
significant discount from prevailing market prices. Kramer and his Mazuma firms
purchased the shares in 35 tranches with no six-month gaps, thus quantifying the
transactions as a single integrated offering through which Laidlaw exceeded the $1
million limit under Rule 504 by raising a total of $1,259,550. No registration statement
was filed for any shares that Laidlaw offered and sold to Kramer and his Mazuma firms,
nor was any registration statement filed for any shares that Kramer and his Mazuma
firms subsequently re-sold into the public market. Despite exceeding the $1 million limit,
Kramer and his Mazuma firms continued to acquire and sell additional Laidlaw shares
and profited by $126,963 from these transactions.

Further, according to the SEC Order, Kramer and Mazuma Holdings Corporation
acquired more than one billion shares of Bederra in 2009 and 2010 through 21 separate
transactions from the principal of Bederra's transfer agent, who had misappropriated the
Bederra share certificates. Again they purchased the shares at a significant discount
from prevailing market prices and re-sold the misappropriated Bederra shares to the
public without any registration statement for profit of$934,404.

In this case PNTV is suing for an undisclosed amount for injunctive relief, actual
damages and punitive damages.
The suit was filed on behalf ofPNTV by Bloom Donohue Young LLP a national law
firm with offices in New York, Pennsylvania, California and Nevada which firm
specializes in toxic debt relief cases.

For further information call:


Candy Nickens public information officer Bloom Donohue Young LLP 702-988-2300

or email info@playersnetwork.com or info@bdyllp.com

About Players Network:

Players Network is a diversified company with holdings in the Legalized Medical


Marijuana and Media Industries. The Medical Marijuana asset is primarily through
the Company's 80% ownership in Green Leaf Farms Holdings, Inc. The Company
uses its proprietary Enterprise Web Platform to develop Branded Digital Lifestyle
Television Networks for itself and its partners in a wide range of lifestyle categories.
Players Network's current channels "Players Network", "Vegas on Demand" and
"Real Vegas TV" focus on Las Vegas and Gaming Lifestyles. Its newest channel,
"WeedTV.com,targets the rapidly expanding cannabis community. These VOD
Channels are on TV in over 23,000,000 homes on Comcast, and on the Internet and
Mobile Platforms on Hulu, Google, YouTube and Yahoo Video, and on DVD and
through worldwide television syndication. For more information please visit
www.playersnetwork.com

Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act:


With the exception of the historical information contained in this Release and the
attached Shareholder Report, the matters described herein contain forward-looking
statements that involve risk and uncertainties that may individually or mutually
impact the matters herein described, including but not limited to: the ability of the
Company to increase revenues in the future due to the developing and
unpredictable markets for its products, the ability to achieve a positive cash flow,
the ability to obtain orders for or install its products, the ability to obtain new
customers and the ability to continue to commercialize its products, which could
cause actual results or revenues to differ materially from those contemplated by
these statements.
Hangover Joes Answers KBM and Addresses Toxic Loan Issues Faced by Small Public
Companies Throughout America

Hangover Joe' s Holding Corporation (OTCQB: HJOE), developers of Hangover Recovery Shot
and Git-R-Done-Energy, along with Git-R-Done Productions, Inc. and Larry the Cable Guy,
announced today that it has filed a verified answer in the Court of the Eastern District ofNew
York, against KBM Worldwide Inc.
Among the numerous responses include usury and violation of market manipulation provisions
byKBM.

"The system used to finance small companies in the United States today has become completely
insane," said Matthew Veal, CEO ofHangover Joe's. "This business was started with friends and
family funding that eventually exceeded several hundred thousand dollars. The business grew to
where it sold product in the millions, but as a startup did not qualify for traditional or SBA
funding and needed additional capital for growth. It was approached about going public with the
promise of significant investment, which of course did not materialize. Its only option for
financing has been the nightmare of convertible loans.

These loans as a group all have been repaid not only to the extent of the entire amount of their
principal but significant interest as well, not at the effective interest rates of the loans and
meritless fees added on to them, but certainly at or near the legal rate of interest. However, the
convertible loan process also triggered a deluge of short sellers and paid bashers adding to the
degree of difficulty by a process of attempted shaming in social media working stock boards and
otherwise to inhibit potential investors and customers. This is an attempt to harm the company
and we don't take these matters lightly. To further add insult to injury, several of these lenders
have now sued us, including dubious claims against individual members of management which
seek to further and unfairly harm reputations, and we have responded to these as well. This is
done thousands oftimes in our economy today, destroying companies, jobs, and investor wealth
in the process. And for what gain? Hangover Joe's at least has come through the process strong
enough to hire talented attorneys who have started the process of removing this scourge from our
capital markets.

We are launching dealers all over the USA and expect to expand our existing international
operations. Ours is a real company and a real brand and we are standing up to this type of
injustice to all of our stakeholders, the shareholders, the believers, the distributors, the retailers
and consumers of our brand. With the progress we have made there are new investors looking to
fund the company, and our brand is growing and has a strong following. The type of predators
we have faced count on companies not having real products or sales and being too weak to fight
back. That is not the case in Hangover Joe's and we will defend ourselves against all such attacks
and respond in the court systems." We find inspiration for our views in the Jose Marti, "Liberty
is the right .. ... to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy."The action was filed on
behalf ofHJOE by Ellsworth Young LLP (www.eyllp.com), a national law firm with capabilities
in New York, California, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, Utah and Arizona which
specializes in toxic debt relief cases.

Interested in a Dealer/Distributorship to sell HJOE products? Contact SMS at


www.smsdealerships.com. Hangover Joe's is the exclusive producer of "The Hangover"
Recovery Shot, and one of the nation's top selling anti-hangover recover drink & hangover
recovery shot. Git-R-Done-Energy is an officially licensed product of Git-R-Done Productions,
Inc. and Larry the Cable Guy and is a healthy energy drink. Hangover Joe's is a publicly traded
company and is trading on the OTCPK as HJOE Additional details of the Company's business,
fmances, appointments and agreements can be found as part of the Company's public disclosure
as a reporting issuer with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") available at
www.sec.gov. For more information, visit our website at www.GitRDoneEnergy.com &
www.hangoverjoes.com or https://www.facebook.com/GitRDoneEnergy , on twitter
@GitRDoneEnergy and on Instagram: HangoverJoescom or check us out on YouTube.

Forward-Looking Statements
This news release contains "forward-looking statements." Statements in this press release that are
not purely historical are forward-looking statements and include any statements regarding
beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Such forward-looking statements
include, among other things, the Company's expectations regarding the development of
marketing and sales relations nationally. Actual results could differ from those projected in any
forward-looking statements due to numerous factors. Such factors include, among others, the
inherent uncertainties associated with developing new products and operating as a development
stage Company, our ability to raise the additional funding we will need to continue to pursue our
business and product development plans, competition in the industry in which we operate and
market conditions. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news
release, and we assume no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the
reasons why actual results could differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements,
except as required by applicable law, including the securities laws ofthe United States. Although
we believe that any beliefs, plans, expectations and intentions contained in this press release are
reasonable, there can be no assurance that any such beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions will
prove to be accurate. Investors should consult all of the information set forth herein and should
also refer to the risk factors disclosure outlined in the reports and other documents we file with
the SEC, available at www.sec.gov.

For information on the companies stock: http://investorshangout.com/Hangover-Joes-Holding-


Corporation-HJOE-57917/

Contact: lnfo@HangoverJoes.com
This 27-Year-Oid Made Millions Riding the Death Spirals of Penny Stocks
Josh Sason profited by lending failing companies money
by
Zeke Faux
March 12, 2015 - s:oo AM EDT
From
Subscribe

Two thousand people cheered as Joshua Sason walked up to a boxing ring at an


arena in Providence late last year. He trailed the actor Miles Teller, and the crowd
was made up of extras-they were shooting a boxing movie, directed by the guy
who made Boiler Room. Sason got to make a cameo in the fighter's entourage
because he's producing the movie with Martin Scorsese and put up the budget.
He's 27 years old.
After the December shoot, Sason took a Christmas vacation in Malaysia with his
lingerie-model girlfriend, Rachel Marie Thomas. He checked on the renovation
of his Tribeca penthouse. And he hit a recording studio in London to help mix
an album by an Israeli actress and singer he's signed for his company, Magna,
which he describes as a global investment firm.

Six years ago, Sason was living in his parents' house on Long Island, doing
clerical work for a debt-collection law firm and dreaming of becoming a pop star.
Then a family friend showed him a trick that seems to have earned him millions
in the stock market. He won't say exactly what he does or how much he's made,
but regulatory filings by dozens of companies show that Magna has invested
more than $200 million since 2012.

Sason, who has full sleeves of tattoos he covers with tailored three-piece suits,
calls himself a self-taught value investor. He has about 30 employees in trading,
venture capital, music, and film. "I'm not going to give away the details of how
we do what we do," he says in a January interview at his 16th-floor office in
Manhattan's financial district. "We create businesses, and we invest."

Actually, it's a little more complicated than that. What Sason discovered is a way
to get shares in desperate and broke companies at big discounts by lending them
money. Magna has done deals with at least 80 companies. Of those, the stocks
of 71 have gone down since the investment. He can still tum a profit, because
the terms of the deals allow him to tum debt into equity at a fixed discount. No
matter where the stock is trading, he gets it for less. rl
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Magna functions as a pawnshop for penny stocks-shares of obscure ventures


that change hands far from the rules of the New York Stock Exchange. His
customers have included a would-be Chilean copper miner, an inventor of
thought-controlled phones, and at least two executives later busted for fraud.
They come to Sason to trade a lot of their stock for a little bit of money. Often
they're aware the deal is likely to be bad for their shareholders.

If the share price goes lower before Magna can unload its investment, the
companies have to give up even more stock, all but eliminating the risk for Sason.
Critics call it "death-spiral fmancing" because it drives stocks into the ground.
Others in the field say they sometimes make double, triple, or even 10 times their
investment in just a few months.

The business is legal, but the loopholes in securities law it exploits are too
sketchy for most of the Ivy League types at banks and hedge funds. At least six
other lenders of last resort to penny-stock companies have been sued by the
Securities and Exchange Commission for breaking the rules around dumping
shares or other violations. One was arrested by the FBI. It's worked out better
for Sason, who hasn't had any issues with the authorities. He's using death-spiral
profits to diversify Magna and tum himself into an entertainment mogul.

The son of an Israeli immigrant who works as a contractor, Sason grew up in


Plainview, a middle-class Long Island suburb about an hour east of Manhattan,
in a beige ranch-style house near the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway. When he
was 10 or 11 he started a rock band called The Descent with some neighborhood
kids. They did Blink-182 covers, and he sang and played drums, guitar, and
keyboards.
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Sason built a recording studio in his parents' basement and started writing music
for the band. The Descent got pretty good. Around sophomore year, someone got
their music in front of Trevor Pryce, a 260-pound defensive end for the Denver
Broncos who invested in music as a sideline. He flew to Long Island to sign them
to his record label-but first he had to sit down with their concerned parents. "I
was in the living room with five Jewish families surrounding me asking me about
calculus," he says. "It was hilarious." Pryce gave Sason and his bandmates
$5,000 each, and they started to dress the part of rock stars at school, according
to Chris Antonelli, a band member. "We called it Rock Star Fridays," Antonelli
says. "I'd wear my grandmother's mink coat and sunglasses, and Josh would
wear a boa."

The Descent played showcases for executives from major labels, but the other
kids Sason and Antonelli recruited weren't very good. "They botched it beyond
belief," Pryce says.

"It was a big letdown," Antonelli says. "There was a lot of anticipation that we
were going to be the Next Big Thing, and it didn't happen."

Sason enrolled at nearby Hofstra University and lived at home. A second band,
Vibes, was less successful, playing its biggest shows at Temple Beth Am in
Merrick, N.Y. Bandmate Michael Morgan says Sason was eager for another shot
at the big time. "When you're signed to a record label and you're in high school,
your perception of success has to change," Morgan says. "You're like, 'OK,
that's possible. What else? What's next?'"

Sason got a job making deliveries in his black Mustang for an Asian restaurant,
then did filing for the debt-collection firm. Morgan says they worked out together
every day at a Jewish community center-where kids now play basketball in the
Joshua A. Sason Gymnasium, renamed in 2013 after a donation.

In an entrepreneurship class at Hofstra, where he was a member of the class of


2009, Sason came up with a plan to import sand from Israel and sell it as a
collectible called "Sand from the Holy Land." He liked the 2006 Oprah-endorsed
documentary The Secret, based on a self-help book about the power of positive
thinking. Another friend says Sason still talks about his belief in the book's "law
of attraction"-how you can achieve anything you want by imagining that it will
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The way Sason tells his story, that's pretty much what happened to him. He says
he was on vacation with his family in Puerto Rico when he read The Intelligent
Investor, the 1949 book by Benjamin Graham that Warren Buffett cites as an
inspiration. "It was pretty much a life-changing moment for me," Sason says. "I
read it once. The second time I read it, I went through and highlighted it. The
highlights became a guideline for me to write my own interpretation."

Sason says he doubled his bar mitzvah money on blue-chip stocks in 2009. "I
realized I had maybe a little bit of a knack for how investing works," he says. He
borrowed his mother's retirement savings, took a "low six-figure" loan from a
friend of the family, and started Magna from his bedroom. The business grew,
Sason says, as word spread about how Magna could fmance small companies.

"It was a gradual and progressive growth," he said in the January interview.
"There wasn't anything in particular that I would recall from back in the day, to
be honest with you."

I still couldn't understand how a wannabe musician from Long Island had
become a millionaire investor virtually overnight. I'd found a 2012 lawsuit in
which a fmancier named Y ossef Kahlon accused Sason of copying his business
model, but the only thing Sason would say about him is that they hadn't spoken
myears.

There's little else online about Kahlon, and his number is unlisted. His address
is on the lawsuit, though, so I drive to his house in Great Neck, N.Y., a wealthy
town on Long Island's north shore. A white Range Rover is parked in the
semicircular driveway outside the brick colonial mansion, which was listed for
sale last year for $6.3 million. Dance music thumps from inside. A slim man with
gelled black hair and gray stubble answers the door and says Kahlon isn't home.
An e-mail arrives the next day. "My name is Yossi Kahlon," it says. "I heard you
are looking for me." We arrange to meet at a steakhouse in Manhattan, and at the
appointed time, the man with the gelled black hair walks up. It was Kahlon after
all. "Nice to meet you again," he says. Then he pulls out a wad of tens and
hundreds to pay for a Tanqueray and tonic and tells the story of how he met and
mentored Josh Sason.
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Kahlon, 48, is an Israeli immigrant, too. After arriving in Queens in 1989 and
driving for a taxi service, he built a small fortune by getting in early on arcade
games and fmancing car dealerships. He hired Sason's father to work on his
house and soon befriended the family, inviting them over for holidays. One
Passover, when Josh won the traditional game of hide-the-matzoh, which usually
comes with a prize of$1 or $10, Kahlon says he gave the kid $1,000.

Around 2009, Kahlon heard the Sasons were having financial issues. He told the
elder Sason he could help. "I said, 'Bring your son here, I'll teach him to make
money,'" says Kahlon, who by then was in the penny-stock business.

The market for penny stocks can be traced back to the serum of brokers who used
to trade shares that weren't welcome on the New York Stock Exchange. A 1920
article in Munsey's magazine called them "a close-packed mass of creatures
apparently human" and described the auctioning of shares in a puppy.

Penny stocks exist so that, say, an oil wildcatter with a hunch he's about to drill
a gusher can raise the money he needs without the hassle of listing on an
exchange. They feed a desire for a hot tip that could double or triple. It's a
disreputable comer of the market. Many listings are bogus. Most are, at best, just
a guy with an idea, and often that idea is to raise some money so he can pay
himself a fat salary. Other listings are real businesses that have been dropped
from the big exchanges because they're on the verge of failure.

Kahlon paid brokers to scour the market for penny stocks with high trading
volume, then call the companies to see if they wanted to issue new stock. These
struggling companies can't sell new shares to the public the usual way, by
enlisting a proper investment bank, because it's too expensive and the offerings
too tiny. But they can sell to private investors such as Kahlon. They gave him
steep discounts, and he'd sell the shares into the public market right away, often
doubling his money as everyone else's shares were diluted. There are laws
against doing this, but Kahlon thought he spotted an exception in Texas. He
incorporated his company there, while operating from New York.

Kahlon says he showed Sason how to trade like him-and then cut off contact
so that no one could accuse them of conspiring. "I'll teach you the business, but
the minute you open, we can't talk anymore," he said to Sason. "I don't have any
friends in this business." Texas corporate records show Sason incorporated l.DQJ
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Once Magna got going, Sason's younger brother, Ari, dropped out of the
University at Buffalo and started working with him in their parents' home. They
pulled a sewing machine table out of the garage and set it up in Sason's bedroom
for Ari. They quickly made enough money to move to a suite at 5 Hanover Square
in Manhattan and hired a team of"fmders" to identify targets.

"They had at least two guys pretty much cold-calling corporations they would
look up on the Internet," says John Perez, who worked for Magna for a few
months in 2012 as a trading assistant. "The other two guys worked on the deals."
One of Sason's salesmen, Ari Morris, made up the alias "Michael Goldberg" to
use for himself on the phone. Magna's website listed Goldberg as "director of
structured investments" in 2012. Clients say he sounded nice.

Magna wasn't the only group calling. Executives of penny companies say that
when their stock has a high trading volume, they get bombarded by young
salesmen and washed-up bankers asking if they need cash-and often they say
yes.

That activity caught the attention of the SEC. In the summer of2012, the agency
filed separate lawsuits against Kahlon and another penny-stock fmancier, saying
their clever Texas loophole in fact wasn't. The SEC said Kahlon made
$7.7 million buying penny stocks at deep discounts and dumping them on the
public. Kahlon says he did nothing wrong; the case is still pending.

Kahlon closed down his fund. He hoped his former student would help with legal
costs. Sason didn't, and Kahlon says he felt slighted-not given enough credit
or respect for bringing Sason in on the game. Kahlon sued Sason, alleging that
he damaged a relationship with a broker; a judge dismissed the case.

"I want to help the company, I really do"

When I ask Sason about Kahlon's story, he says it isn't true. ''Nobody showed
me the business," he writes in an e-mail. While his family friend's success
inspired him to look into penny stocks, he says Magna's deals aren't like
Kahlon's, the shared mail drop was a coincidence, and he never got a $1,000
Passover prize.
None ofthe SEC actions mentioned Magna, and Sason has never been in trouble
with the agency. Almost all of the regulatory filings by Magna's clients show
deals that are more intricately constructed than Kahlon's.

Paul Riss' s deal with Magna in July 20 11 was typical. The New York
entrepreneur's company, Pervasip, was developing a communications app to
compete with Skype, but it was down to its last $100,000, barely enough to last
a month at the rate the company was losing money. When Magna's "Michael
Goldberg" called offering cash, he didn't even ask to look at the app, Riss says.
"All they care about is the liquidity of the stock," he says. "They want to see how
many dollars are trading a month."

On the surface, the $75,000 loan Magna offered seemed all right. It was in the
form of an "8 percent convertible promissory note," meaning it asked for an
8 percent return and gave Sason the right to convert it into stock. The fme print
explained that if Pervasip didn't pay back the money within six months, the
lender could convert at a 45 percent discount to the market price. So, no matter
where Pervasip' s stock was trading, the company had to give Magna shares that
were worth more than $136,000-an 82 percent return in just six months.
Essentially, Magna locked in a fixed return.

The lower the shares went, the more Pervasip had to give up so Magna could get
its money. The only risk Magna took is that no one would buy Pervasip's stock
at any price. "Unfortunately, that's about the only money available," Riss says.

Pervasip didn't repay, and gave the discounted shares to Magna in January 2012.
Riss says he doesn't have records that show just how much Magna made. After
bouncing up to 3 for a bit, Pervasip now trades for nine-thousandths of a penny.
Riss says he still gets calls from lenders like Magna offering more money.

An analysis of 80 public filings shows that a company that does a deal with
Magna sees its shares plummet 55 percent over the next year, on average. Most
never recover and wind up trading for thousandths of a penny or less. Sason says
that's not Magna's fault.

"I want to help the company, I really do," he says. "We never, ever make an
investment where we knew our activity in the marketplace would potentially 00(!)
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Sason bought his penthouse in Tribeca for $4.2 million in January 2013. At some
point he upgraded from the Mustang to a $200,000 two-door Mercedes-Benz, his
high school buddy Antonelli says. He started hanging out at Lavo, a bottle-
service club in midtown Manhattan popular with celebrities. "He's there like
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday," says Antonelli, "holding court with all the
beautiful waitresses."

Magna's biggest score came in 2013, when it helped a Greek shipping company
called Newlead avoid bankruptcy. The shipper, which once owned 15 tankers
and container ships, was down to four vessels. It had enough cash to cover about
a month of operating losses.

The deal had a twist. Instead of giving Newlead a loan, Magna paid some of
Newlead's lenders for the right to collect its old debts. After Magna sued
Newlead to collect, the two companies quickly filed a settlement where New lead
agreed to give Magna discounted stock that it could sell right away. A New York
state judge signed off on the arrangement.

Sason said in an affidavit filed in the case that Magna, together with an unnamed
partner, paid off $45 million of debt and received stock that it sold for
$62 million-a $17 million profit before expenses.

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The fmancing technique is legal as long as the debts that are being paid off are
real and the fmancier doesn't kick any of the money from the stock sale back to
the company, according to Mark Lefkowitz, another penny-stock fmancier who
pleaded guilty in 2012 to breaking those rules. "The bottom line is, it's supposed
to be used for bona fide conversions of debt to equity," says Lefkowitz, who's
cooperating with the FBI. He cut an interview off quickly, saying he was due to
be sentenced soon and needed to check with his FBI handler before talking.

The financing may have saved Newlead as a company-it avoided bankruptcy


and bought new tankers-but it ruined it as a stock. The company has been so
thoroughly pillaged that if you'd bought $3 million of shares in March 2013, just
before Magna invested, you'd be left with a dime. Adjusted for reverse splits, the
shares trade for 20 billionths of a penny-$0.0000000002. Newlead did not
respond to a request for comment.

It's hard to say exactly how much Magna has profited since 2010. Sason says
Magna has done $200 million of deals, confirming calculations from clients'
regulatory filings, though some were with partners. He says the majority of the
company's equity is his, with the rest owned by his employees.

Rivals in the business say that penny-stock fmanciers typically demand at least
a 50 percent return, a figure supported by SEC fmdings. Sason says he can count
the deals that backfrred "on one hand." By any reasonable estimate, his returns
would top almost any hedge fund. "The returns are healthy," he says. "We're not
getting into any business or any strategy not to be profitable."

Since the Newlead score, Magna has been diversifying. Sason started a
"ventures" division, which invested in PledgeMusic, a London-based website
that lets musicians sell albums they're working on in advance, and Mainz, a sort
of high-end receptionist outsourcing company. He hired a former executive at
Madonna's record label to help him run his entertainment division.

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Sason got into filmmaking through Chad Verdi, who started producing
movies in 2011 after financing penny-stock companies that failed at 0
nuclear waste cleanup and military chemical detection. Verdi was ...-!
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producing straight-to-video-on-demand movies when he met Sason. tlO


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After Sason invested in a romantic comedy, Verdi took him to meet
Martin Scorsese at his office in New York's theater district. The director
mentioned a documentary he was making about the New York Review of
Books. "We ended up putting some finishing funds into that, and we were
executive producers on that project," Sason says.
Then Verdi approached Sason about funding a biopic-the story of Vinny
Pazienza, a boxer from Rhode Island who came back to win three titles after
breaking his neck in a car crash. Scorsese had come on as a producer for the film,
called Bleed for This. Also on board was Boiler Room director Ben
Younger. Boiler Room is a classic about penny-stock swindles, but Younger
didn't see any connection.
"We were looking for fmancing," says Younger, "and Joshua came in and saved
the day." Younger says it wasn't Sason's idea to make a cameo in the movie.
"He's an artist, so he's respectful of other artists' process." Younger and Verdi
say the budget for Bleed for Thisis $6 million; Sason says it's lower but won't
give a number.
Sason is preparing to move Magna to 40 Wall St., a tower down the block from
the New York Stock Exchange, where he signed a lease for two full floors. He
says trading stocks is now just one-twelfth of Magna's business.

"I'm really trying to build a company and build an organization that's here for
the next 1,000 years," Sason says. "I want to build something powerful and
something meaningful and lasting."

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