‘CHiPs’ Actor’s Journey in the Land of Penny Stocks

October 8, 2010, 3:31 pm

Courtesy Everett Collection Larry Wilcox, left, and Erik Estrada astride their motorcycles in “CHiPs.”

5:34 p.m. | Updated Larry Wilcox became famous for playing Officer Jon Baker on the hit television series “CHiPs” decades ago. But what about his most recent role — as the president and chief executive of a California company called the UC Hub Group?

Mr. Wilcox, 63, was among a handful of people who were accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday of securities fraud and paying illicit kickbacks in order to manipulate the price of penny-stock companies, the UC Hub Group among them.

What the UC Hub Group actually does, however, is an open question.

Mr. Wilcox is accused of paying $16,000 in kickbacks to an undercover F.B.I. agent in return for the agent purchasing 1.6 million restricted shares of stock in Mr. Wilcox’s company — which the S.E.C. said in its complaint “purports to be in the mining, energy, and global Web television businesses.”

The UC Hub Group’s Web site, with garishly snazzy Flash animation and chirpy background music, says that the company “is currently focused on Precious Metals, Gems, and the Oil and Gas Industry.”

But it is hard to discern what being focused on such things actually entails — a matter that has long been the subject of debate on an investors message board about the company. (There even exists a blog devoted to arguing that Mr. Wilcox is up to no good, and for nefariousness beyond the kickback scheme in which the S.E.C. has accused him of partaking.)

Neither Mr. Wilcox nor his lawyer returned telephone messages from DealBook. But what information is readily available suggests that “Ponch” might not be so happy with what his former “CHiPs” partner has been up to lately.

Ponch, of course, is Erik Estrada, the star of “CHiPs,” a show about the California Highway Patrol that was broadcast from 1977 to 1983. Riding with Ponch was Mr. Wilcox as Officer Baker.

But Mr. Wilcox’s acting career petered out over the next decade – although he did make a cameo on “30 Rock” last season — and at some point, evidently, he decided to switch from acting to business. The Web site for Mr. Wilcox’s company dates back to 1999, when the “UC” in its name stood for “United Communications.”

Mr. Wilcox’s vision appears to have changed with time, however, as witnessed by the varying ways that press releases and company Web pages have described the UC Hub Group over the years:

1999: “UC HUB was formed to distribute data, voice and video via an ATM network combined with unique ‘reconfigurable media servers’ that will serve the Satellite industry and the ATM networks.”

2002: “UC HUB’s strategic architecture includes teaming with municipalities, utility companies, cable companies, affinity groups, and software companies to offer bundled services to Digital Cities and the existing customer base through UC HUB’s unique integrated digital distribution technology represented as a Digital Access Hub.”

2005: “Presently, UC Hub Group offers communication services that include online billing, Wi-Fi, VoIP, long distance, phone systems, software, Municipal Government software and banking services.”

2007: “UC Hub Group, Inc. is a versatile holding company engaged through its subsidiaries and otherwise in distribution of electronic services to municipalities, businesses and retail customers, virtual and electronic financial services, and developing software and operations in securities-collateralized and asset-based lending industries domestically and overseas.”

2008: “UC Hub Group, Inc., operates as a software development, marketing and digital distribution company for transaction based operations on the web and mobile phone.”

At some point in 2008 or 2009, however, the focus of the business evidently changed, and the UC Hub Group’s technocentric Web site begot a mining-and-drilling Web site. (View the evolution of UC Hub Group’s Web pages here.)

But Mr. Wilcox’s propensity toward verbose press releases touting impending business ventures continued unabated. The current Web site lists nearly two dozen statements over the last two years, primarily regarding the two major projects the company says it is undertaking: a sapphire- and gold-mining operation in Montana, and an oil-drilling operation in Illinois.

The nature of those two operations is unclear. The UC Hub Group reported no revenue for the quarter ending April 30, the most recent period for which financial information is available.

Meanwhile, the company has not been permitted to mine in Montana, according to a spokeswoman for the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. In Illinois, there are no active drilling permits for either the UC Hub Group or the Illinois-based drilling company that it described as its partner, according to a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

And the scale of the UC Hub Group’s operations appears modest, at least from the evidence offered on the company’s Web site. A recent shareholder letter refers to a well whose daily output was “maybe” five barrels, and photographs make the purported drilling operation look more like a souped-up science-fair project than a money-making industrial-scale operation.

In any case, Mr. Wilcox is no longer listed on the UC Hub Group Web site as part of the company’s management. And while no other employees could be reached for comment — the phone number listed on the site goes to a voicemail box for Mr. Wilcox — the company does offer a pre-emptive defense of sorts on its home page.

“UC Hub and management value their reputation for integrity and honest dealing,” it says.

But that reputation appears to be suffering. Shares of the UC Hub Group declined 63 percent to $0.0026 in over-the-counter trading on Friday afternoon.

– Thomas Kaplan