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The investor's home in a gated country-club community just off the Las Vegas strip is also the official address of more than 80 Slusser-related business ventures with names like 481TL LLC, CCHDDNV Inc., N15SB LLC and QEAT4 LLC. With their principals scattered across the country, the companies have the appearance of being tax-avoidance devices, just like the synfuels scheme. What, if anything, does Earthco's synfuel process do? Calls for information to Earthco and its employees were fruitless. When TIME reached Slusser, he promptly hung up the telephone after hearing the writer identify himself. A call to Earthco's office in Las Vegas proved equally unproductive. A woman who identified herself as Susan Trimboli said any questions would have to be answered by a Jim Scott in Sacramento, Calif. He turned out to be James Scott, who works out of Earthco's Las Vegas office. He is the president of Mid-Power Service Corp., another Las Vegas energy business. Until two weeks ago it was in bankruptcy court. Scott did not return calls, but Mark Davis, a Sacramento attorney and Scott associate, did. Asked about Slusser's current connection with Earthco, Davis replied, "The answer is zero. Neither as a shareholder, officer--no capacity whatsoever." But Davis declined to discuss Slusser's earlier involvement, the nature or origin of Earthco's technology or how it has reduced American dependence on foreign oil. "That's really all I have to say," he said.
Startec Inc., like Earthco, has a proprietary process for turning coal into synthetic fuel. The Dublin, Ohio, penny-stock company (last week's closing price: 35ยข), whose formula is used by nine plants in four states, started life in 1990 as Sports International Inc., owner of Ohio's Columbus Thunderbolts arena-football team. That lasted only a year. The team was sold in 1991, and Sports International transformed into Startec, hoping to cash in on the technology boom. Among its announced ventures was a plan to convert tires to energy. That didn't turn out either, but somewhere along the line, Startec latched onto a synthetic-fuel process that other companies would license.
At one point, it forged a working alliance with yet another penny-stock company, WasteMasters Inc., one of the fringe enterprises that flit in and out of the synfuel industry. Two former top WasteMasters operatives, a Dallas father-and-son team, are under federal indictment on charges of securities fraud, money laundering, assisting in the preparation of false tax returns and conspiracy--all unrelated to synthetic fuels. As was the case with Earthco, officials at Startec were unavailable for interviews.