Helping you dominate the game …. you need this toolbar

Cathy Hayes is a principal with Cowan Bolduc Doherty LLC and has 20 years of experience in public accounting. Cathy’s areas of specialization include high net worth individual taxation, small business tax planning and preparation (specifically real estate professionals and services-oriented businesses), and state and local taxation.

Cathy earned her Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and her Master of Science in Taxation from Bentley College. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants.

In her free time, Cathy enjoys running and participating in local road races and race series. She has completed two marathons.

A successful business leader, entrepreneur and philanthropist, Ernie Boch, Jr. is President and CEO of Boch Enterprises, based in Norwood.

Here to help you with your Document Management Needs

Read the DocuMentor blog now

Learn More raquo

Enlarge image

Facebook Insiders Limit IPO by Pushing $100 Billion Value

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

The Facebook Inc. ‘like’ logo is displayed on a sign at the entrance to company headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S.

The Facebook Inc. ‘like’ logo is displayed on a sign at the entrance to company headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Facebook Inc. (FB) is already trading
like a public company as insiders and wealthy investors use
private marketplaces to buy and sell stock in the social-
networking company ahead of its initial offering.

The shareholder base has grown to more than 1,000, compared
with the 50 to 100 investors most companies have when they go
public, according to an estimate by Sam Hamadeh, head of
research firm PrivCo. Private purchases pushed Facebook’s
valuation past $100 billion this month, possibly limiting
immediate gains for IPO investors, given that Facebook may seek
a $75 billion to $100 billion value.

“Facebook is a blue-chip stock and it’s not even public
yet,” said Kevin Landis, portfolio manager for the Firsthand
Technology Value Fund in San Jose, California. Facebook jumped
as high as $44 this month in private trading, valuing the
company at $103 billion and leaving it higher than when Landis
bought stock at about $30 to $31 in October. He said he aims to
add to his holdings.

While demand for the biggest Internet IPO on record may
push the stock even higher when Facebook goes public, private
trades through channels such as SecondMarket Inc. and SharesPost
Inc. are already making it possible for employees and venture
capitalists to cash out. That may have lessened pressure on
Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg to hold an IPO before
this year.

Secondary Offering

Facebook, which filed for an initial share sale this month,
has yet to set its price range for the IPO. People with
knowledge of the matter said earlier this year that Zuckerberg
was weighing a valuation of as much as $100 billion.

Larry Yu, a spokesman for Menlo Park, California-based
Facebook, declined to comment.

The private trading may make Facebook’s debut more like a
secondary offering, where holders sell stock in an already
public company, said Barry Ritholtz, CEO of FusionIQ, an
equities research firm.

“The people buying now at the IPO price are presuming
there’s lots of upside — I’m skeptical,” said Ritholtz, whose
firm is based in New York. “There’s a lot of smart money
agitating for the highest possible valuation, and they don’t
necessarily have the investing public’s best interest at
heart.”

Insiders and investors with $1 million of net worth and a
salary of more than $200,000 can qualify to buy stock on private
marketplaces, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission rules. In an auction last week on SharesPost,
Facebook stock traded for $42, valuing the company at $98
billion.

Higher Value?

Widely traded private companies that held IPOs in 2011
traded at about 25 percent to 30 percent less than their
eventual IPO price in the two months prior to going public,
according to Ori Bash, a vice president at Pluris Valuation
Advisors. Facebook may see a smaller gain because it has been
traded more, owned by larger investors and researched more
thoroughly than other private companies, Bash said. It’s also
possible the shares will continue to surge, he said.

“If these private-market trades are truly reflective of
Facebook’s valuation, there’s a possibility that demand for the
IPO shares could drive it even higher than its anticipated $100
billion valuation,” Bash said.

LinkedIn Corp. (LKND), which had 560 shareholders of record as of
April 15, 2011, was valued at $35 a share in private trading in
March of that year, two months before the IPO. The company’s
initial public offering priced 29 percent higher in May at $45,
giving it a valuation of $4.25 billion. Shares more than doubled
to close at $94.25 on the first day of trading.

Early Investors Win

The shareholders who got into Facebook earliest –including
the hundreds of employees who received restricted stock units as
part of their compensation packages — will see the most gains,
said Larry Albukerk, a broker of private securities.

Based on private-market trading, Facebook is “realizing
full value at the IPO, which is the goal of all companies,” he
said. “They don’t want to leave money on the table. Do the RSU
holders and current shareholders benefit? Absolutely.”

Private markets have emerged since the tech boom of the
late 1990s and Google Inc. (GOOG)’s IPO in 2004. SharesPost, based in
San Bruno, California, began in 2009, and SecondMarket predates
SharesPost, offering private share transactions since 2008.
Since the start of the service, New York-based SecondMarket’s
private-market stock trades have topped $1 billion. Facebook is
planning to raise $5 billion with its IPO.

Pricier Than LinkedIn

While the private markets are giving investors a better
idea of where the public market prices shares, they don’t
completely replicate the Nasdaq Stock Market or New York Stock
Exchange, said Landis, the portfolio manager.

“The idea that it should give you the perfect indication
on price — i.e. there would be zero bounce because it’s
perfectly priced in — I’m not sure I’d buy that,” he said.

Facebook’s sales surged 88 percent to $3.71 billion in
2011, according to the IPO filing, and may climb to $6.1 billion
this year, EMarketer Inc. estimates show.

At $100 billion, the company would be valued at about 27
times last year’s sales, almost double the 14.5 times trailing
12-month sales at which professional-networking service LinkedIn
Corp. went public in May. It’s almost triple the multiple of 9.8
times implied by online coupon-company Groupon Inc. (GRPN)’s IPO price
in November, and four times social-gaming provider Zynga Inc.’s
multiple of 6.8 times at its December IPO, Bloomberg data show.

Facebook has 1,070 Class B shareholders based on its latest
filing, almost double the tally for LinkedIn ahead of its IPO,
according to regulatory filings.

“Arguably, given the number of investors that are already
in Facebook, that IPO has already occurred,” Mark Mahaney, an
analyst at Citigroup Inc., said in an interview on Bloomberg
Radio this month.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Brian Womack in San Francisco at
bwomack1@bloomberg.net;
Lee Spears in New York at
lspears3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Jennifer Sondag at
jsondag@bloomberg.net;
Tom Giles at
tgiles5@bloomberg.net

• LinkedIn
• Google +1
• Print

Social network wants permission to inspect the contents of four previously undisclosed accounts, allegedly in use since 2003.

Facebook has accused Paul Ceglia, the man who claims he’s entitled to half of the social network, of concealing e-mail accounts during his ongoing lawsuit, including one called getzuck@gmail.com.

The “getzuck” account was uncovered by Facebook’s forensics experts, along with three other rather innocuously named accounts that Ceglia has been using since 2003, lawyers for the social network said in a motion filed yesterday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.

The motion (see below) asks the court to approve subpoenas allowing Facebook’s attorneys to inspect the contents of the accounts, which also include landlubber39@yahoo.com, paulc@hush.com, and alleganypellets@gmail.com.

Ceglia’s ongoing obstruction–in the face of repeated motions to compel–has prejudiced defendants by denying them access to time-sensitive electronic material that this court ordered Ceglia to disclose more than six months ago. Ceglia’s attorney Dean Boland appears to have recognized as much. After learning that his client had failed to identify webmail accounts in yet another violation of this court’s orders, he sent an e-mail to defendants’ attorneys offering to provide signed consent forms for two of the four undisclosed accounts: landlubber39@yahoo.com and paulc@hush.com. He did not, however, mention or offer Ceglia’s consent to the inspection of the alleganypellets@gmail.com or getzuck@gmail.com accounts.

The filing notes that previous motions to compel have led to sanctions against Ceglia. Federal Magistrate Leslie G. Foschio in Buffalo, N.Y., last week ordered Ceglia to reimburse Facebook nearly $76,000 in attorneys’ fees related to the case. That was on top of a $5,000 contempt sanction Ceglia was ordered to pay last month for delays in making his e-mails available in his case against Facebook.

Boland did not respond to a request for comment.

Ceglia, who claims he has a contract with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that entitles him to a 50 percent ownership in the company, was ordered last August to hand over his e-mail account and passwords. After he failed to do so, Facebook filed a motion requesting an order compelling him to do so. That hearing also revealed that Ceglia’s attorney at the time, Jeffrey Lake, was told by Ceglia that he wouldn’t comply with the order.

Lake soon withdrew from the case, becoming the latest in a string of attorneys who stopped representing Ceglia since he initially filed a lawsuit against Facebook and its co-founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, in 2010. Ceglia claims that he and Zuckerberg entered into a contract in 2003 to design and develop the Web site that would ultimately become Facebook.

Ceglia has cited more than a dozen e-mails purportedly between himself and Zuckerberg that detail discussions on design, development, and business plans regarding the development of Facebook. However, Zuckerberg and Facebook have called the alleged Facebook contract a “cut-and-paste job,” describing the purported e-mails as “complete fabrications.”

Facebook motion for e-mail subpoenas

    There’s an old adage that everything tastes better when it’s
made with love.

    And that’s certainly true if you ask the staff at Mental
Health America of Los Angeles, which operates out of the MHA
Village in downtown Long Beach.

    A step inside the MHA building on Elm Street, and the aroma
of baking cookies and brownies permeates the air — it’s the smell
of the Village Cookie Shoppe owned and operated by the

nonprofit MHA as a way to provide employment skills to people
with mental disabilities.

    No cookie-cutter formula, what the bakers put into their
work at the MHA Village comes back tenfold because proceeds from
cookie sales are reinvested back into the MHA’s service programs —
meanwhile, those working in the kitchen are learning basic job
skills, such as showing up on time, being cleaned up and ready to
work, how to interact with others on a team and finding that they
are able to produce quality baked goods.

    “Even though we use the same sugar and butter as everyone
else, the way in which we mix them, and the love that’s in them,
that’s what makes our cookies unique,” said Susan Hagar, the
general manager of the Village Cookie Shoppe as well as the MHA
Village’s Deli 456 and catering services.

    Hagar has overseen the Cookie Shoppe and other food services
— the deli is open to the public for breakfast and lunch and
catering services are available for private events anytime — for
the past 16 years. In that role, she works directly with employees
who suffer from various mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder,
schizophrenia, severe depression and more as those employees
overcome obstacles and learn workplace skills that can be applied
to jobs throughout the Long Beach community.

    Typically about 50% of the participants in the Cookie Shoppe
and other work-based programs at the MHA are able to find job
placement in the community.

    For Lorenzo Benavidez III and Jose Bonilla, who have staffed
the Cookie Shoppe for the past few months, working at the MHA
Village has been an opportunity to learn about baking cookies and
so much more.

    “I love cooking food for people,” Benavidez said. “Although
I’ve worked at hotels and restaurants before, I’ve never had the
opportunity to bake something, and I never learned the value of
teamwork before working here.”

    Bonilla, who had never worked in the food industry before
coming to the MHA, said working in a restaurant is now his dream
job.

    “I’ve learned how to cook,” he said. “I’ve never had
experience in the kitchen before, but I want to pursue a job… I
enjoy making people feel happy through the stomach.”

    Established in 1924, the MHA is a non-residential program
for people recovering from mental illness. Dave Pilon, president
and CEO of MHA, said the focus of the program is helping mentally
ill people realize their potential to be productive parts of the
community. Many MHA members are people who may have a history of
homelessness or hospitalization, Pilon said. After getting help
through the MHA, 75% of those members who were homeless are able to
find housing, and the MHA reports a 65% reduction in the
hospitalization of its members.

    Paul Barry, executive director of the MHA Village, said the
success of the program is that it encourages its members to stop
focusing on their illness. Currently, the MHA Village has about 450
members using its services — all members live in the Long Beach
area.

    “We want people to accomplish goals outside of their
illness,” he explained. “We do things like job placement,
reconnecting these people with their family, helping them go back
to school and otherwise showing them they that can contribute or
assist others.”

    Because the MHA Village wants its members to have a quality
experience when working at the deli, bakery or other jobs at the
Village, Barry said only the finest ingredients — and a few trade
secrets — are used for cooking.

    “The quality of our cookies is on par with Mrs. Fields,” he
said. “We want our members to be proud of what they are making. A
quality product translates into a quality experience. We want them
to feel proud enough to say they can do something else and have
pride.”

    Barry added that the holiday season and Valentine’s Day are
typically busy times of the year for the Cookie Shoppe (selling
more than 15,000 cookies around Christmas time), but he hopes the
community will continue supporting the MHA Village year-round by
purchasing cookies at the Village or online and using the Village’s
deli and catering services.

    For details, visit www.VillageCookieShoppe.com. Or visit the
MHA Village at 456 Elm Ave. in downtown Long Beach.

February 22, 2012, Chris
 

For many of us, Zynga is the thing we hate most about Facebook, getting requests to harvest crops from high school classmates we don’t even remember.

For poker players, however, getting Zynga to join the fun when Internet poker is finally regulated in the United States may be like landing the homecoming queen as your prom date.

If you’re one of the seven people not on Facebook, Zynga has built a multibillion-dollar empire developing the most popular social-networking games in the world. You can plant seeds in FarmVille, whack wiseguys in Mafia Wars, find out how dumb you are in Words With Friends and, of course, match wits with friends and foes alike in Zynga Poker.

Zynga lines its ivory castle by selling credits to players to help them advance in the games. And it’s because of this wildly simple and wildly successful business model that Zynga has danced around whether it wants to bet its$9 billion net worth on real-money poker.

Consistently, and as recently as Jan. 2, Zynga officials have insisted they have no interest in getting into for-money online poker. At least one reason given is that execs fear playing for real money may destroy the playful competition its customers wage daily with friends and family. (We have to assume Shaun Deeb and his grandmother don’t have Zynga accounts).

But in an earnings conference call on Feb. 16, Zynga’s chief operating officer John Schappert finally put a name to unconfirmed rumors that the company was possibly having a change of heart.

“I think it’s actually a very interesting opportunity, because we’re in an unique position,” Schappert said of for-money gaming. “We have the world’s largest online poker game.”

So I think it’s time for us to start wondering what the world of poker will be like with Zynga in the middle of it.

What’s the one stat that has led more online poker sites to crash and burn than any other? Player liquidity. And it’s simply not an issue for Zynga. I’d tell you its poker game, the largest free one in the world, gets 7 million daily users and has more than 30 million overall users. But those numbers are likely to be hopelessly out of date by the time you’re reading this. Suffice to say, it’s big. Huge, as Donald Trump would say. No doubt, casino giants such as Caesars Entertainment will kick open the gates with large player bases, but there’s not a company on earth that wouldn’t drool over having7 million daily players right now.

For sure, sharp players are salivating over the prospect of so many free poker players turned loose in a for-money environment. But aside from the fact that, if we’re all honest, we’ll admit we’ve lost more money in our playing careers to the Radars of the world than to the Hawkeyes, that’s not why we should be excited. The reason is cultivating tomorrow’s poker players took a huge hit on April 15, 2011.

No longer being able to play poker easily in the comfort of their pajamas led many prospective players to pick up new hobbies. Some won’t return when online poker does. Many didn’t make the leap to the live poker world, either. We need a non-intimidating feeder system for the world of poker. Ladies and gentleman, I give you Zynga.

The one reason Zynga executives seemingly have been resistant to enter our world is the one reason it’s so vital that it does.

— Scott Long is co-publisher of Ante Up. Email scott@anteupmagazine.com.

Renee Graziano is the raven-haired, fiery-tongued star of “Mob Wives,” the VH1 reality show created by her sister Jennifer Graziano, which chronicles the lives of six Staten Island women coping with their spouses or fathers getting locked up for mafia-related crimes. Graziano hung out at Seminole Casino Coconut Creek Feb. 18 to celebrate the opening of Sorrisi Italian restaurant and do a complimentary meet and greet with fans. As the daughter of mobster Anthony Graziano, former consigliere of the Bonanno crime family, Graziano has been immersed in Italian mob culture her entire life. After watching too many friends and relatives end up in the clink, she was inspired to start Jail Mail Inc., a prison pen pal service that maintains frequent correspondence with inmates. The entrepreneurial diva has also come out with her own line of T-shirts on Reneegrazianoonline.com. The shirts highlight some of her signature sayings such as “I’m not a mobster, I’m a mob star” and “You want to play Mafia Wars? I win bitch!”Here’s what Graziano had to say about fur, mob stereotypes and stalkers.

Being one of the most fashionable “Mob Wives,” will you be releasing more clothing designs of your own?

“I’ve been in the styling industry for a while so I’d like to start a new line of clothing. I’m working on some faux furs. After PETA has contacted me about my fur situation and sent me some videos, I felt that they have a really good, strong point and so I decided to make a line of faux furs. I’m also coming out with my own line of jewelry, Mob Candy, as well as a T-shirt line called Lunatickle in the next few months.”

• Topics
• 
  
  Organized Crime
  
• 
  
  Prozac (drug)
  
• 
  
  VH1 (tv network)
  
• See more topics »

What’s your favorite Italian food?

“I love Francese—like shrimp Francese.”

What surprises can we expect as the second season of “Mob Wives” continues to unfold in the upcoming weeks?

“Well, it’s a hint but it’s already been public. My ex-husband has cooperated with the government against my father so that’s out there and comes up around episode nine or 10 of the show. So there will be a lot more drama from Renee. It’s very real.”

What’s your favorite mob movie?

“Definitely Goodfellas.”

What’s the biggest stereotype being from a “connected” family?

“Everyone thinks it’s glamorous. It’s very far from glamorous. We might look glamorous. Any woman can look glamorous. It’s the lifestyle that’s very hurtful and people think ‘Well the men committed the crime so they should just deal with it.’ Well it’s not fair. I didn’t commit the crime. You almost feel as if you take responsibility for what the men did so it’s very hard. I think people should lay off the women and realize we’re moms like a lot of other moms and we’re doing what we need to do to live and make sure our children are OK.”

What’s the secret to coping with this lifestyle? What gets you through?

“Prozac, therapy—a lot of that. I suffer from depression. I do take Prozac and I’m not embarrassed to say it. Therapy is good for anybody and it’s always good to talk to your priest.”

What are you giving up for Lent?

“That’s a good question. I have no idea. I’ve got to think about that one.”

What’s the one beauty product you can‘t live without?

“OCC eye shadows and lip tar. It’s the best.”

What has been your craziest fan encounter?

“I had a man drive from Connecticut several times to my father’s house and it was more than creepy, but I straightened it out.”

Do you ever get a chance to come down to South Florida?

“I love Florida and I’m here at least six times a year. The shopping is incredible—especially in South Beach.”

“Mob Wives” airs 8 p.m. Sundays on VH1. Follow Renee Graziano at Twitter.com/reneegraziano.

 Contact Joanie Cox at jcox@citylinkmagazine.com. Follow Joanie Cox at Twitter.com/joaniecox.

Users of a chat service linked to the heavily-trafficked YouPorn website have had their personal information compromised after a third-party service provider failed to secure its data, YouPorn’s owners said Wednesday.

Luxembourg-based Manwin Holding SARL said the chat site had been disabled and would remain offline until an investigation was carried out. Manwin spokeswoman Kate Miller stressed that the site was run by an outside company on separate servers and that there was no breach at YouPorn itself.

“YouPorn continues to ensure that all appropriate measures and tools are in place to maintain the security of its infrastructure, and to safeguard the privacy of its users,” she said in a statement.

It remains unclear how many people were potentially affected by the breach. Thousands of leaked email address and password combinations purportedly linked to the chat service were circulating online, but their authenticity could not be confirmed by The Associated Press. At least some of the addresses appeared to be bogus or inactive.

Manwin runs some of the world’s most-visited pornography websites, and its YouPorn offering is one of the 100 most-popular sites on the planet, according to web information company Alexa.

Miller said she could not immediately say who ran the chat service, called YP Chat. The site was down Wednesday, but a cached version described it as an “affiliate partner program site licensed by YouPorn”.

Earlier this month, a hacker claimed to have broken into a site associated with Manwin-owned pornography maker Brazzers and published a stash of usernames and passwords.

The company said at the time it had taken steps to notify the users involved.

AP