Pay By Touch founder puts a 4,500 percent markup on company
An ex-employee tell us that before his departure, former Pay By Touch CEO John Rogers shopped the company around to investors for $5 a share. (The company isn't publicly traded, but has issued shares to investors and employees.) It didn't seem like much until I took a closer look at Rogers's bankruptcy filling — specifically item 10 on page 21.
There, it says Rogers recently sold 26 million shares of the company, in order to loan the company money so it could pay employees' salaries. Flip to page 18, section 2, and you'll see the sale totaled $3 million, or about $0.11 per share. That's a lot less than $5. You have to wonder: Did Rogers disclose this 4,500 percent markup to potential investors? Sounds like Rogers knows what Pay By Touch is really worth — and it's not what he's trying to charge for it.