Golf/Sienna Exec Linked To Web Sites

A manager at a Hawaiian Internet service provider said recently that six Web sites formerly hosted by the firm were paid for by Jim Bolt of Rogers, chief operating officer of Sienna Broadcasting Corp., formerly known as Golf Entertainment Inc.

One of the sites, www.islampartners.com, featured a history of the Islamic faith and described plans to build a Mosque and establish a family service center near the Benton County Sheriff’s Department and jail. The site also included a photo of former Sheriff Andy Lee and pages of information about his department.

Bolt, Golf/Sienna Vice President and General Counsel John Dodge and Tim Brooker, a former CEO of Golf/Sienna, initiated numerous lawsuits in recent years against Lee and other elected Benton County officials. Lee eventually filed suit, but the group won a default judgment when Lee’s lawyer failed to answer one of many counterclaims.

Litigation in that matter is ongoing, but Lee said he believes Bolt created the Islamic site “in an effort to negatively impact” his November 2001 re-election campaign. Lee, who retired in December after serving as sheriff for 14 years, won that election with about 65 percent of the vote.

But Lee said he believes the site’s intent was to create the impression in traditionally conservative Benton County that his office was actively trying to establish a Muslim community base. At the time of the election, America was still reeling from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists.

June Yu, manager of SpringWeb, an ISP at Ewa Beach, Hawaii, said the site was set up before the terror attacks on America, so it didn’t send up any red flags. A man who identified himself as Lennal Shabbaz, Yu said, paid for the site using Bolt’s PNC Bank Visa credit card.

“Mr. Bolt said that Mr. Shabbaz was a friend and that it was OK to go ahead and set up the site,” Yu said. “[Shabbaz] supplied the correct information, the correct phone number and other security information, and we had already dealt with Mr. Bolt on other sites, so we thought it was OK to verify the card.”

Some time after September 11, Yu said, a government official that she declined to identify called to inquire about the Islam Partners site.

Yu said other sites were paid for by a man identifying himself as Budd Bewee, who also used Bolt’s credit card. Bolt’s card was used to create five other sites from November 1998 to March 2002:

• www.archronicle.com, the site of a former Rogers-based print publication, Arkansas Chronicle, where Bolt worked

• www.theauthorities.com

• www.exporting.to

• www.organical.com

• www.ever-rich.net

Two of the accounts, www.archronicle.com and www.theauthorities.com, fell $360 delinquent after charges to Bolt’s credit card were denied and remain in collections today, Yu said.

“[Bolt] was a sweet talker, but we sent the [debt] to a collection agency,” Yu said. “We tried to collect payment, but he said a couple of times that he’d already sent it. When the account fell two months behind, we tried to call the number listed for Mr. Bewee and Mr. Bolt answered. He said Bud Bewee no longer worked there and that he would take care of payment.

“We kept extending him time, because he’d been a good customer. But Mr. Bolt claimed that his company was in transition, that it got bought by a Nasdaq company and that it became publicly held on Dec. 31, 2001. He wanted us to set up a site for the new company, but we didn’t because he owed us money.”

Yu said the domain name for Bolt’s new site was to be www.golf-entertainment.com.

Golf/Sienna is traded on the Over-The-Counter Bulletin Board (OTCBB), an electronic quotation system that is not part of the Nasdaq stock market. A warning posted on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Web site says: “Fraudsters often claim that an OTCBB company is a Nasdaq company to mislead investors into thinking that the company is bigger than it actually is.”

More on Golf/Sienna

•?Golf Entertainment Inc., the Springdale penny stock company now called Sienna Entertainment Corp., and an outside entity called Genesis Trust may have been more ambitious than originally thought.

• State Attorney General Mike Beebe said a recent rash of white-collar crimes and securities violations are a reflection of an overall problem in American business.

• The state Securities Department began an investigation of Golf/Sienna after the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal and Arkansas Business began its reporting on the company. But where is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission?

•?Embroiled in at least six legal battles, Golf/Sienna produces more litigation than television programming.