In 1981,75 Upper Midwest investors put from $50,000 to
$250,000 into the hands of a firm then called Dain Bosworth,
Minneapolis brokerage. It was for an oil-gas company called
Martin Oil, headquartered in a Denver suburb. It was to
run the Martinex 81-1 and 81-II partnerships. Dain Bosworth
received about 5-million dollars in investments by October of
1981.
In June of 1983, the oilman who was asked by Dain Bosworth to form the company to prospect for oil in the states of North Dakota, Wyoming and Oklahoma, sold all of his interests in Martinex to Princeton Energy, a firm from South San Francisco, California. The "oilman", Martin Wohnlich, removed $675,000 of the 81-I June assessment in the middle of the period in which assessments were to be collected... And sold it all for various sums which varied from 6-million to 2-million.
The firm that bought Martin Oil thought they also bought the Martinex partnership... Which was always owned by the investors
brought in by Dain Bosworth.
Investors first went to Dain to complain in January of 1985... After two years of frustrating investor inquiries by
failing to respond at all... Or saying "we're looking into it"..
Etc.investors started lawsuits against both Dain Bosworth
and Princeton Energy as well as Wohnlich and Martin Oil/Martinex.
Princeton managed to escape with bankruptcy. Same with
Wphnlich and Martin Oil. The lawsuits produced no real
response by Dain Bosworth — thru various name changes —
until Dain shopped for a judge who promptly threw out our
lawsuit for "lack of prosecution". This "lack" was the result of our endless bargaining with Dain (now called Dain Rauscher)
which stalled and stalled via an adroit Doug Coleman, a v.P.
Should any effort of any kind be made again in 2000... After
four face-to-face visits of investors with the SEC
Enforcement Division in Washington, a toothless tiger? Should
investors burn all documents and file and forget? Is it
really all dead and done-with? Any suggestions that work... For there has been no redress... No satisfactory wind-up... Just papers still out there in boxes in my garage?
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