BOCA RATON, FL — While asserting that “investors in the coal and energy markets have committed $2.5 billion” to his coal refinery project, Baard Energy CEO John Baardson has only named one of them, Planck Trading LLC of Boca Raton, Florida. According to Tracy Drake, CEO of the Columbiana County Port Authority, “Planck is a company formed in 2009 by ‘a group of heavy hitters in the investment community to look at opportunities in the energy industry’ . . . Planck told the port authority it has acquired metallurgical coal reserves in excess of 100 million short tons and owns a high wall mining company in Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia.”

To learn more, last Friday Ohio Citizen Action’s Alison Auciello and Mike Koscielak, visited Planck’s office address, 595 S. Federal Highway, Suite 600, in Boca Raton. They learned that Planck’s corporate headquarters is a “virtual office,” provided by Cloud Virtual Office. For $79 a month and up, they get a “professional mailing address,” a telephone line, a shared receptionist, and use of a meeting room. According to the Cloud Virtual Office brochure, the meeting room means you can “meet outside of your home . . . Trying to close a deal while the barista at Starbucks is yelling out drink orders is only one step above asking the decision maker for a big account to ‘please excuse the mess’ in your living room.”

Many other outfits share the same mailing address and suite number; some of these are Dollars4Gold, Amerivest Gold, Inc., Brilliant Jewelry, Inc., Metal Plastic Molding, Inc., Cambridge Investment Research, Scolaro, Shulman, Cohen, Fetter & Burstein law firm, interCLICK, Inc., Danieli Realty, Inc., Daniel Law Offices, J. Beck and Associates, Michael Elon Zaidel, attorney, Dynamics Edge, Inc., and Intellect Neurosciences, Inc.

— Paul Ryder, Organizing Director, Ohio Citizen Action