Mike Frost

The civil action filed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts against GPB Capital made the point that Capital Holdings, Ascendant Alternative Strategies, and Ascendant Capital are, for all intents and purposes, the same company. The complaint states:

Publicly, GPB Capital and Ascendant Capital sought to appear as two distinct companies, but in reality, they were one-and-the-same. Schneider was intimately involved in GPB Capital’s strategy and direction, and served as Gentile’s top confidant. The line between Gentile, Schneider, GPB Capital, and Ascendant Alternative Strategies and Ascendant Capital is blurred beyond recognition. The firms even share office space in Austin, Texas. The only difference between GPB Capital and the Ascendant entities is the e-mail addresses used. Gentile profited directly whenever GPB Capital paid Ascendant Alternative Strategies selling commissions.

This allegation raises questions for us about GPB Capital Holdings and Mike Frost’s Austin Lake Technologies which he started in May 2019. What is the nature of the relationship between GPB Capital Holdings and Austin Lake Technologies?

As we previously noted, the two firms share the same address: 5000 Plaza on the Lake #300, Austin, Texas. So what is Austin Lake Technologies? Is it merely some legal paperwork located in a file cabinet in a broom closet at GPB Capital’s Austin office? Or is an important moving part in the maze that is GPB Capital Holdings?

We also find it curious that more than a few former GPB Capital Holdings employees are now working at Mike Frost’s Austin Lake Technologies. We have even seen one of Jeffry Schneider’s employees from Ascendant Capital move over to Austin Lake Technologies. These people can be found online for those who are curious. We elect not to name them here.

According to Mike Frost’s LinkedIn page, he is simultaneously working for both GPB Capital Holdings and his own company Austin Lake Technologies (ALT):

Mike Frost started Austin Lake Technologies (ALT), his own private equity firm, on May 3, 2019 according to corporate filing. The firm is based in Frost’s hometown of Austin, Texas.

We find it suspect that Frost does not disclose his employment at GPB Capital at his Austin Lake Technologies website. Rather, his background is stated in the third person in generic terms. Curiously, the past tense is used to speak of his past employment at a “middle market private equity firm with over $1.5 billion in assets under management.”

Michael Frost is the Chief Executive Officer of Austin Lake Technologies and a member of ALT’s Board of Directors. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Frost was Managing Partner at a middle market private equity firm with over $1.5 billion in assets under management, where he established the firm’s holdings in tech-enabled services and healthcare technology companies.

What are we to make of this discrepancy? Does Mike Frost work at GPB Capital Holdings or does he not?

The Austin Lake Technologies website says of Mike Frost:

Mr. Frost is board chairman for Health Prime, DeepBlue Communications, Cantata Health, Hotel Internet Services, MDS Medical, and ITelagen.

With the exception of DeepBlue Communications which GPB Capital sold to Comcast last year for a large profit, all of the other companies are majority-owned by GPB Capital. On a related note, none of the profit from the sale of DeepBlue went to GPB’s unfortunate investors. We found no evidence that Mr. Frost currently serves on the board of DeepBlue Communications. He did so when GPB Capital owned the company. Hence, this appears to be a former position before the sale to Comcast.

We now turn now to examine the other GPB Capital companies of which Mike Frost claims to be Board Chairman:

Health Prime
Cantata Health
Hotel Internet Services
ITelagen
MDS Medical

Given that Mike Frost’s resume at Austin Lake shows him as having previously worked for an unnamed middle market private equity firm, how is it that he is currently the Board Chairman of companies owned by GPB Capital?

HEALTH PRIME

GPB Capital purchased Health Prime International in 2018.  GPB’s announcement of its acquisition of Health Prime was announced on its formerly-functioning website. Mike Frost’s name is prominently mentioned:

However, a press release of November 21, 2019 states that Health Prime International is a “portfolio company” of Austin Lake Technologies:

WAYNE, PENNSYLVANIA – November 21, 2019: Falcon Capital Partners, LLC, a leading middle-market investment bank, is pleased to announce the sale of Kareo Managed Billing LLC (“KMB”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kareo, Inc., to Health Prime International, LLC (“HPI”), a portfolio company of Austin Lake Technologies.

How did this happen? Where is the press release from GPB Capital Holdings announcing the sale of its Health Prime unit to Austin Lake Technologies? Such announcements are normally posted on a firm’s website. However, as GPB has stripped its website of everything (scroll to the bottom of this article) there is no possibility of finding any information of the purported sale there.

CANTATA HEALTH

GPB Capital Holdings purchased NTT Data Inc. in 2017 and renamed it Cantata Health. The press release:

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that we recently advised NTT DATA, Inc. on the sale of one of its subsidiaries and its healthcare software assets to GPB Capital Holdings, LLC (GPB), with the company being renamed Cantata Health, LLC. The acquired software assets include intellectual property, customer contracts, and human resources. All other aspects of NTT DATA’s industry-leading healthcare practice remain with NTT DATA, allowing NTT DATA to focus on the IT services market, which is the core of its business. The transaction closed on March 31, 2017.

The LinkedIn page shown below for Mike Gainer shows him to have been the VP & Operating Executive of Austin Lake Technologies from July 2017 – May 2020. As previously noted, Austin Lake Technologies was not legally formed until May 2019. How does Mr. Gainer account for this discrepancy?

The LinkedIn page also shows Gainer as having served from August 2019 – May 2020 in the “Office of the CEO” and as CFO at Cantata Health:

Kirsta Endsley’s LinkedIn page shows she worked as a private portfolio adviser for GPB Capital Holdings in early 2018 after which she was appointed as President and then CEO at Cantata Health. Her employment at Cantata lasted 18 months and ended in October 2019. Endsley was replaced as CEO by long-time NTT/Cantata veteran and CTO Richard Zegel in November 2019.

Mike Gainer entered the CEO’s office at Cantata in August 2019. He did so from his position at Austin Lake Technologies and not GPB Capital. Why did Gainer have such authority given that he worked for Mike Frost’s company? Austin Lake does not own Cantata. Does Austin Lake Technologies charge GPB Capital a fee to manage Cantata? We ask because someone was paying Gainer’s salary.

We further note for the record that Mike Gainer was a VP at GPB Capital Holdings in 2017. While he no longer shows this on his LinkedIn page, it is discoverable online. Below we see Gainer listed with other current and former GPB employees on Comparably:

What is the actual story here with Mike Gainer? How was he simultaneously employed by GPB Capital Holdings, the then legally non-existent Austin Lake Technologies, and Cantata Health? As of this writing, we are unable to locate the names of the Board of Directors for Cantata Health. However, we understand from online postings that Cantata Health is run by people from Austin Lake Technologies. Therefore, we assume that Mike Frost is the Board Chairman and that CEO Rich Zegel reports to Frost. We ask again: Who is paying the salary of Mike Frost as Board Chairman given the fact that Austin Lake Technologies does not own Cantata? What is going on?

The mounting discrepancies bring to mind an excerpt from the complaint in Massachusetts:

By its nature, GPB Capital is structurally complex. Its funds have a number of sub-funds, and those sub-funds have various ownership interests in portfolio companies. Some of GPB Capital’s funds jointly own portfolio companies, like the Prime Automotive Group. Moreover, the property on which many dealerships sit is owned by separate companies under the GPB Capital umbrella. GPB Capital has many hundreds of bank accounts under its purview. GPB Capital-related individuals like Gentile, Lash, Car Executive 1, and Schneider all have various ownership interests related to GPB Capital. Unbeknownst to investors, companies in which individuals like Gentile had ownership stakes engaged in transactions with GPB Capital-related entities. Only some of these relationships were disclosed, and typically after the fact. For example, while GPB Capital disclosed that Gentile is related to an entity called GPB Lender, LLC (which, despite carrying the “GPB” name, is not affiliated with GPB Capital), GPB Capital did not disclose that Gentile’s company would be making loans and collecting interest from GPB Capital funds.

HOTEL INTERNET SERVICES

Scientologists Gary Patrick and Steve Dobbe founded Hotel Internet Services (HIS) in 2003 in Simi Valley, California. GPB Capital made a $7.5 million investment in the firm in 2016. This allowed HIS to expand. As part of that expansion, HIS opened an office at 600 Cleveland Street in Clearwater, Florida. This building is owned by Daniels Ikajevs, the Lativan investor and non-Scientologist who owns a great deal of real estate in the hotly-contested Downtown Clearwater. See Tracey McManus’ Tampa Bay Times article on Scientology’s covert work to purchase real estate in Downtown Clearwater:

CLEAR TAKEOVER: How Scientology doubled its downtown Clearwater footprint in 3 years

Hotel Internet Services was a top competitor against DeepBlue Communications. GPB Capital’s acquisition of DeepBlue and its investment in HIS showed its strategy to dominate the market space in delivering WiFi to hotels. The press release announcing GPB’s $7.5 million investment in HIS contained a curious statement:

Some $125 million is said to be available through additional funding to help with an planned acquisition spree, with “three of four” deals in HIS’s sights.

This $125 million was presumably available from GPB Capital. Our thinking is that David Gentile’s grand strategy was to focus on using the Scientologist-owned Hotel Internet Services to buy up competitive companies and merge DeepBlue communications into HIS. This could have been Gentile’s plan to dominate the valuable market of providing WiFi to hotels, cruise ships, malls, and other public spaces. After GPB Capital sold DeepBlue to Comcast, any such plans fell apart. Further, the market for providing WiFi to hotels and other large public spaces has crashed along with everything else.

On its website, GPB Capital Holdings claims to be the majority owner of Hotel Internet Services and Mike Frost claims to be its Board Chairman on his website.

ITELAGEN HEALTHCARE

Although Mike Frost’s LinkedIn page does not show him working at GPB Capital Holdings, ITelagen’s website definitively shows Mike Frost serving as Chairman of the Board of ITelagen on behalf of GPB Capital Holdings:

GPB Capital Holding’s CEO David Gentile is listed as a Director of Itelagen:

Why is Mike Frost engaging in this duplicity? Why does he say one thing about his employment history on LinkedIn and another on his Austin Lake Technologies website? This leads us to ask our opening question: Are GPB Capital Holdings and Austin Lake Technologies also blurred beyond recognition? The firms do share office space in Austin, Texas.

Is it the case that GPB Capital Holdings, Ascendant Capital, Ascendant Alternative Strategies, and Austin Lake Technologies are all blurred beyond recognition? How deep down does the GPB Capital Holdings rabbit hole go? We already have a Scientologist CEO; a Russian mob connection; the FBI raid on GPB’s NYC waste management firm; numerous and acrimonious lawsuits; and even automotive manufacturers threatening to revoke licenses from certain of GPB’s marquee automotive dealerships. What is next? Just wait. It will come soon.

MDS MEDICAL

Nowhere on MDS Medical’s website or its LinkedIn page will one find any mention whatsoever of GPB Capital Holdings or its Board Chairman Mike Frost. Instead, there company describes itself as an independent business:

MDS Medical is a national healthcare information technology and medical billing services vendor dedicated to the success of outpatient provider organizations…

MDS Medical is an independent Healthcare I.T. firm serving the end-to-end revenue cycle, technology, and operational needs of outpatient physician organizations nationwide.

It is only when one goes to the Arizona Secretary of State business search portal that MDS Medical’s governing persons are named and we see Mike Frost and David Gentile:

A document filed with the Arizona Secretary of State in 2017 clarifies the actual corporate structure of MDS Medical:

THE LATEST ON GPB CAPITAL’S TRAIN WRECK OF A WEBSITE

GPB Capital Holdings Website Stripped of Details & Now Password Protected

We previously documented the on-again-off-again disappearance and reappearance of the C-Suite executives at GPB Capital’s website. GPB’s executive team couldn’t make up its mind if it wanted to be seen on its own website.

Then the Commonwealth of Massachusetts filed its civil action against GPB Capital Holdings. This action seems to have decided events in terms of GPB’s website. In a sudden change, GPB Capital’s website has been stripped of all links and only shows its usual stock photo of the Manhattan skyline. GPB Capital Holdings website is now password protected. Users must have an account number and password to logon.

GPB Capital’s website formerly showed links to:

Our Team
Portfolio
Our Strategies
Our Approach
Investment Criteria
Resource Center
About GPB Capital
News
Press Releases

Now these links have vanished. However, a right mouse click on GPB Capital’s home page allows anyone to view the page source. Here we find HTML. Line 9 reveals this coding: style=”display:none;visibility:hidden”>. This coding is deliberate and means that GPB Capital execs have ordered that the public not be allowed any access to its website.

A search of the Wayback Machine reveals that no captures of GPB Capital’s website have been made since 2017. It may be the case that code to disallow robots, crawlers, and spiders from archiving or scraping was inserted into the GPB website. Such coding typically looks like this:

# go away Googlebot
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

As we have continually pointed out to David Gentile and the other Scientologists within GPB Capital Holdings, hiding is very low on Scientology’s Tone Scale at -8.0.

In Scientology-speak we would say that GPB “pulled in” the Massachusetts civil action due to its hidden crimes and overts on its investors. In Ron Hubbard’s logic, SP’s and SP groups will eventually destroy themselves in order to preserve their basic goodness. This may be the case at GPB Capital Holdings: The SP’s can’t live with their guilt. Of course, Ron Hubbard was wrong about a lot of things. The top execs at GPB could all be sociopaths and criminals who could care less about the lives they have so wantonly destroyed.

GPB Capital Holdings is now at -30.0 on the Tone Scale: “Can’t Hide.”

GPB Capital Holdings can’t hide from anything. We predict further civil actions followed by a RICO criminal action.

Total failure (-40.0) looms on the horizon.