Wilkes and Horizon Sports

The SDUT continues their terrific work into some of the shenanigans in SanDiego - this time filling in some more details about Wilkes et al (via Laura, as usual):

"As federal dollars were pouring into PerfectWave, Wilkes ran across two technologies being developed by Randy Beck, his next-door neighbor in Poway.

While trying to diversify his golf equipment company, Horizon Sports Technology, Beck had developed a system that could carry sounds over a long distance. He also had a technology that could be used to improve the chassis of lightweight vehicles.

Beck showed his technologies to Wilkes in fall 2003, according to a lawsuit Beck filed in San Diego Superior Court in July.

According to the lawsuit, Wilkes told Beck that for $1.5 million in lobbying fees and related expenses, he could get a $25 million Navy contract for the acoustical sound system. For $300,000 more, Wilkes said he could also get an earmark for Beck's automotive technology to be used in the Freedom Car, a fuel-efficient vehicle the Energy Department was trying to develop.

“Wilkes represented that he had always been successful in obtaining the contracts he pursued,” Beck said in his suit.

According to the suit, Wilkes told Beck that any contract he signed with the government would include a 50 percent profit, which the two men would split.

Beck agreed to the deal. To raise money to pay Wilkes' lobbying fees, Beck, his brother Gary and business partner Tod Boretto mortgaged their homes.

The suit said the mortgages for the Beck brothers were arranged, at Wilkes' suggestion, by Long Island-based Coastal Capital Corp. – the same company that financed a second mortgage on Cunningham's house in Rancho Santa Fe.

According to Cunningham's plea agreement, Wilkes paid $525,000 and his then-business partner Mitchell Wade paid $500,000 to pay off the mortgage. Wade and Thomas Kontogiannis, the founder of Coastal Capital, both have been identified as co-conspirators in the Cunningham bribery case.

In May 2004, Wilkes launched two joint ventures to promote Beck's technology: Acoustical Communications Systems for the sound project and Optimum Composite Design for the automotive technology. Documents were drawn up so Wilkes would own 51 percent of the companies, the same as his stake in PerfectWave."

This clears up some of the questions that Joe Cannon asked in December about the HST/Wilkes link.

I'm curious about the Kontogiannis link. He is the guy who bought Cunningham's first boat and went on the trip to Saudi Arabia with the Duke for reasons that arent yet clear. If Wilkes had to call on Kontogiannis, then presumably the mortgages of the HST homes weren't quite commercial - otherwise the HST crew would have been able to mortgage the homes through their regular banking arrangements. Was Kontogiannis doing a favour for Wilkes? or was the favour for The Duke? The simplest/most likely answer would be that the favour was for Duke - which raises a whole bunch of nutha questions...

Any thoughts?