Baltia Hit With $22 Million Judgment, Largest Shareholder Arrested

Baltia Hit With $22 Million Judgment, Largest Shareholder Arrested

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Oh Baltia, oh Baltia, oh Baltia…

Could America’s oldest “startup airline” finally be coming to an end?

As with any post about Baltia, it probably makes sense to start with some background information.

The basics of Baltia & USGlobal Airways

For those of you not familiar with Baltia & USGlobal Airways, I’ve been writing about them for years. They’ve been taking money from investors for about 30 years, though they’ve never operated a commercial flight, despite the fact that they had a 747-200 for over 20 years (which they finally dumped in 2016, after hiring a consultant who told them it might not be the ideal plane with which to launch an airline).

Their business plan was initially to fly between New York and St. Petersburg, Russia, with plans to later expand to other European capitals. For years Baltia had been pretending that they were actually going to start flying some day soon. Bizarrely enough, some people actually believed it, as the airline had a market cap of $70 million in 2014.

Finally in early 2016, the SEC filed charges against one of Baltia’s executives, who was accused of misleading investors.

After this shakeup, the airline came up with a new business plan. Rather than flying a 747 between New York and Eastern Europe, they’d instead become a regional airline within the United States, and fly between BALtimore, Trenton, Islip, and Albany. This isn’t a joke, folks (I mean, other than the fact that the whole thing clearly is).

But then they changed their mind again, and in late 2016 Baltia signed a letter of intent with Kalitta to lease a 767-300. Then last February they announced that they planned to change their name, execute a reverse stock split, and trade under a new ticker symbol. Baltia’s new name was USGlobal Airways.

Late last year USGlobal Airways announced that they planned to acquire Songbird Airways, a charter airline based in Florida with one 737-400. The plan was to buy the airline for $6.2 million, and the logic was that it would be easier and faster to take over Songbird’s operating certificate than to actually get their own.

They said that they would then be able to immediately begin revenue flying with a 737-400, and planned to start service to Caribbean Islands, and also start charter operations both domestically and internationally. Their goal continued to be to fly 767s across the Atlantic, so eventually they wanted to retire the 737 and start 767 operations. At least that was the claim.

Late last year they announced this wasn’t happening anymore. Then in June, the SEC revoked Baltia’s registration, meaning they no longer have the ability to sell stock… and now there’s more!

Baltia’s biggest investor is arrested, and company hit with $22 million judgment

It has just been announced that Baltia has been hit with a $22 million default judgment, and the company’s largest shareholder has been arrested on charges of financial fraud.

This judgment was obtained by Logistics Air Inc., for “the alleged breach of a lease for four Boeing 747 jet engines, plus charges, fees and interest.”

Back in 2009 Baltia had purchased a Boeing 747-200 for $450,000, which didn’t have any engines. They then leased four engines in 2010, in hopes of getting approval to operate flights (or convince investors of that, or something).

This was an $8.9 million lease, and now with charges, fees, and interest, the total is over $22 million. So yeah, that’ll be fun…

Then Baltia’s biggest shareholder, John Drago, was arrested over fraud charges. He’s on a $500,000 bond, and faces up to 10 years in prison. Here’s what he allegedly did:

The federal indictment alleges Drago, the owner of six check-cashing businesses in Nassau and Suffolk counties, failed to “develop, implement and maintain an effective anti-money laundering program.”

For example, he purportedly instructed employees to cash multiple checks in excess of $10,000 in a single day for certain customers without filing the required currency-transaction reports.

He is also accused of failing to report some employees’ wages and pay the proper taxes on them.

Bottom line

Is this finally the end for Baltia? I’d love to think it is (for the sake of the poor/stupid investors who have kept pouring money into the company), but something tells me this won’t be the end…

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  1. rich Gold

    This is a forum that is amusing to read. It starts back in 2009.
    https://www.indeed.com/forum/job/flight-attendant/Baltia-Air-Lines-hottest-United-Sates-startup-Airline/t60823

    Also another story about them in 2009.
    http://theairlineblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/baltia-air-lines-20-year-old-startup.html

    From the latter story their VP of finance at that time stated -
    "As for finances, Clare claims that one 747 will generate $40 million in profit off of $100 million in revenue annually, even with a 64% load factor. Voyager tickets will be between $800 and $1,200; Super...

    This is a forum that is amusing to read. It starts back in 2009.
    https://www.indeed.com/forum/job/flight-attendant/Baltia-Air-Lines-hottest-United-Sates-startup-Airline/t60823

    Also another story about them in 2009.
    http://theairlineblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/baltia-air-lines-20-year-old-startup.html

    From the latter story their VP of finance at that time stated -
    "As for finances, Clare claims that one 747 will generate $40 million in profit off of $100 million in revenue annually, even with a 64% load factor. Voyager tickets will be between $800 and $1,200; Super Voyager seats will be around $2,000 apiece. Business class seats will go in the range of $4,000 to $5,000, while first class seats will set you back a slick $16,000. "First class has only twelve seats," "

    I know nothing of the airline business but I can't imagine any airline making 40% of profit of that revenue, if that was true, none of them would ever go bankrupt.

    A number of the comments are pretty funny. Comments suggesting the write had no clue what he was talking about (the writer didn't believe Baltia would succeed).

  2. Callum Guest

    This may be a stupid question, but how would it be used for money laundering? I always thought the front company had to be seemingly profitable?

  3. Debit Guest

    Lucky, you should review which are the best ff programs in each alliance.

  4. Dave Guest

    I’m surprised this is filed under “other airlines”, I though for sure that Baltia would have its own seperate category by now.

  5. Nick New Member

    John Drago has a GoFundMe titled Drain The Swamp. I’m not joking

  6. Nick New Member

    The Lieutenant is accepting donations: https://www.gofundme.com/nqu4ad-drain-the-swamp

  7. Mark B New Member

    Does this mean the Baltia Charge Card I signed up for and the 100,000 mile welcome bonus is worthless? I was hoping to use it to upgrade from proletariat to bourgeoisis class on their planned Palm Springs - Murmansk SunSeeker direct service next year. Oh well, win some lose some. Luckily I hung onto my Braniff Metroplex Club points for a rainy day although I have to say their colourful 727s are a rare sight at LAX these days.

  8. Matt Guest

    Crazy. Drago posted all the time on the Baltia message board on investors hub (I think he was “The Lieutenant”). Seemed like a true believer in Baltia.

  9. 2paxfly Member

    From the evidence you present, I doubt investors are 'poor/stupid'. I think they have just paid the price for money laundering.

  10. Fonzi Guest

    Fascinating reading Lucky. What a story. It could make a movie at the and. The airline which never flew.

  11. Alan Diamond

    Now that the chief is out of the way it's nothing but blue skies ahead!

  12. Alpha Guest

    Just about any ‘airline startup’ with Russian connections and shady management is a money laundering operation.

    See: Air Belgium.

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The comments on this page have not been provided, reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any advertiser, and it is not an advertiser's responsibility to ensure posts and/or questions are answered.

rich Gold

This is a forum that is amusing to read. It starts back in 2009. https://www.indeed.com/forum/job/flight-attendant/Baltia-Air-Lines-hottest-United-Sates-startup-Airline/t60823 Also another story about them in 2009. http://theairlineblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/baltia-air-lines-20-year-old-startup.html From the latter story their VP of finance at that time stated - "As for finances, Clare claims that one 747 will generate $40 million in profit off of $100 million in revenue annually, even with a 64% load factor. Voyager tickets will be between $800 and $1,200; Super Voyager seats will be around $2,000 apiece. Business class seats will go in the range of $4,000 to $5,000, while first class seats will set you back a slick $16,000. "First class has only twelve seats," " I know nothing of the airline business but I can't imagine any airline making 40% of profit of that revenue, if that was true, none of them would ever go bankrupt. A number of the comments are pretty funny. Comments suggesting the write had no clue what he was talking about (the writer didn't believe Baltia would succeed).

0
Callum Guest

This may be a stupid question, but how would it be used for money laundering? I always thought the front company had to be seemingly profitable?

0
Debit Guest

Lucky, you should review which are the best ff programs in each alliance.

0
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