KITCHENER - With obesity and diabetes reaching epidemic levels, PureSnax International offered an appealing solution - promoting snacks made from a natural sugar alternative that promised everything from weight loss to anti-aging properties to improved respiratory health.

But the allure of PureSnax, the corporate offspring of a self-described serial entrepreneur from Kitchener named Mark Stanley Stever, turned out to be too sweet to be true.

The share price, fuelled by puffy news releases and internet hype, levitated briefly in the spring of 2016, then crashed as the company failed to generate a single cent of revenues.

For early investors who owned shares they'd paid next to nothing for, it was a lucrative few months as the penny stock's value rose to 82 cents.

But for most investors, getting involved in PureSnax was a losing proposition.

For Stever, whose long list of ventures have been plagued by deception, bankruptcy, tax problems and angry partners, it was just business as usual.

Mark Stanley Stever, 54, says he's worked in industries ranging from the sign business to investments, late-night TV infomercials, chocolate making, payday loans, custom bed manufacturing, waste removal and vacation resort sales.

The Kitchener-raised entrepreneur, who has no relation to the Breslau-based owner of a carpet cleaning business named Mark Clayton Stever, likes to fashion himself as an "international businessperson" behind "many overseas opportunities."

But his extensive network of ventures have not been without financial troubles.

In 1996, he declared bankruptcy, claiming $262,000 in liabilities. In 2010, Stever was fined for failing to file corporate taxes for three of his companies.

Some of Stever's accomplishments in the business world are questionable. In the past, he's claimed to be the founder and president of a Florida company called Healthy Chocolate Florida LLC - which is flat-out untrue.

"He's not our founder, he's an impostor," said Healthy Chocolate's real founder, Guy Lopez. "He's never had anything to do with our company."

In 2005, Stever was in a legal spat over one of his other companies, Free Space Image Consultants. American insurance giant AIG accused him of infringing on their trademark by using a similar-sounding name for one of his pornographic websites - a dispute he ultimately lost.

Stever also doesn't like to talk about his past in the pornography business. But that seedy side was revealed in 2015 when he proposed an ill-starred project seeking $10 million in public money to turn Kitchener's Boehmer Box factory into a mainstream film studio.

What he didn't admit until later is that he was secretly filming hardcore sex-scenes in the building's basement. That production ended bitterly over actors' claims they were never paid for their work.

The Kitchener businessman did not respond to repeated interview requests for this story. Calls and emails to PureSnax International were also not returned.

When approached by a reporter at his Kitchener home, Stever slammed the door. After learning the Record was working on a story about his involvement in PureSnax, he removed all references to the company on his LinkedIn page.

Stever started a company called Healthy Products International in 2005, which was the early precursor to PureSnax.

The company said it sold healthy snacks made with xylitol, a natural sugar alcohol made from birch trees. It boasted a healthier, candy-coated popcorn called Krazeecorn, FunkyMonkey fruit crisps and hemp oil candy.

By 2013, Stever's recipes for healthy snacks were being used by a new company, which he called PureSnax.

He's described himself online as the company's founder, general manager and a consultant, and his wife Joanne Stever was listed as a director in corporate registry records.

PureSnax International's president and CEO is Pat Gosselin, a close friend of Stever's and a former baseball player who briefly played in the Pittsburgh Pirates' minor league system in 1993.

Gosselin, born in Quebec but until recently living in Kitchener, did not respond to interview requests for this story.

Gosselin's home on Cray Crescent in Kitchener, which was recently sold, is registered as the address for Pure Snax Company Inc., PureSnax's Canadian parent company.

The company's U.S. office is listed at a New Jersey commercial plaza, sharing the same mailing address as a Mongolian consular office run by an American businessman named Carmen Cabell.

The Mongolian connection is important, since in the summer of 2016 Stever was bringing investors to the Asian country for business opportunities.

Stever said he had big plans to set up a sugar refining operation to process xylitol from Mongolian birch trees, to supply his healthy snacks business.

That plan fell apart, right around the time PureSnax's stock value plummeted, but not before Stever convinced others the company was on the verge of big things.

"I went with him to Mongolia, and that's where I got burned," said Ottawa's Steph Gagnon, a former business partner who bought a 10 per cent share in Pure Snax Company.

Gagnon, who says his $50,000 investment is now worthless, said he became suspicious when the company continued to trumpet distribution deals that never seemed to materialize.

"I saw it was a sort of a scam when I started having disagreements with them, and saying I'd like to have my money back. Basically I was dropped like a hot potato," he said.

Gagnon put a lien on Stever's house, but says he eventually gave up hope of getting his money back when Stever gave him complete control of a payday loan company they had partnered on.

While they were partners, Gagnon said people were constantly calling their loan company, complaining that Stever owed them money.

"There (were) quite a few of them," he said.

While in Mongolia, Stever promoted opportunities far beyond sugar refining. He made presentations to local businessman proposing to bring call centres and rock concerts to the country, ventures that didn't get off the ground.

Stever was also involved in project to create a new arts school called the University of Film, or KUDS, in Mongolia. The school has drawn complaints from foreign teachers who say their job offers fell apart over bizarre contract demands and wage penalties that raised alarm bells.

Cabell declined to talk about Stever when reached by phone. He said he'd severed ties with the Kitchener man a long time ago, and had no idea why PureSnax listed its address at his office.

The groundwork for PureSnax's brief spike on the stock market was laid with the creation of a shell company based in San Diego, five years before Stever and Gosselin entered the picture.

According to disclosure documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a company called B-Maven Inc. was created in 2011 - going public on the loosely regulated OTC Bulletin Board in the United States as a proposed skin care business.

The company's creator, who could not be reached for this story, was listed as a 36-year-old self-taught herbologist with no experience in public companies. She was paid 7.5 million shares at one-tenth of a cent each for organizing the company and creating its skin-care formulas.

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Here's where things get complicated. She then sold another 2.5 million shares to 17 unidentified investors for $0.01 per share, creating a tightly-held shell company that reported almost zero sales but was perfectly suited to be manipulated as a stock down the road.

Although the herbologist was named as the sole executive and director, it is highly unlikely she was the driving force behind the company, says David Baines, a retired Vancouver Sun journalist who tracked the penny stock market for 27 years.

B-Maven's creation follows a common formula that was open to abuse in over-the-counter stock markets, using loopholes that have since been cracked down on by regulators, he said. Promoters used exemptions in securities laws and a lack of oversight to directly sell stocks to close family and friends without scrutiny, giving them complete control over the share price.

There was an epidemic of these kind of shell companies created on the over-the-counter markets in the late 1990s and early 2000s. These paper corporations were often sold for hundreds of thousand of dollars, and used as vehicles for pump-and-dump penny stock deals, Baines said.

B-Maven used lawyer Gary B. Wolff to certify the deal to create the public company, even though his lawyer's licence was suspended at the time. In July 2015, Wolff was barred by the SEC for unethical behaviour.

By all appearances, B-Maven's skin-care business never sold a thing. It had no track record and negligible assets. It was much more likely that the company was being set up for sale to somebody with a more promotable business.

Sure enough, in April 2015, Gosselin bought control of B-Maven and became its chief executive.

In June that year, the company announced it would pay a 10 per cent royalty to Stever's Pure Snax Canada for all net sales of licensed products. Consistent with its new business, the company was renamed PureSnax International Inc.

"The development of PureSnax follows a familiar pattern. A company that really has no prospect of commercial success goes public on the OTC Bulletin Board, a loosely regulated quotation system in the United States. The promoter, often through nominees, carefully places all the shares in friendly hands. Then the company abandons its business, leaving a tightly held, publicly listed shell company that can be easily manipulated," Baines said.

"Although we don't know exactly what went on behind the scenes here, B-Maven and its successor PureSnax appear to have followed that same pattern, giving insiders the opportunity to cash out with hefty profits and leaving public investors counting their losses," Baines said.

Stever likes to boast he took PureSnax public but his name doesn't appear anywhere in the company's filings. This is a conspicuous omission: According to U.S. securities rules, anyone who organizes a public company is considered a promoter and must be disclosed in official filings.

In late 2015, the company began promoting supposed expansion deals and an ambitious growth strategy. The company claimed it was placing products in hospitals and was aiming to be "one of the most trusted names in the healthy food and snack industry."

At that time, Stever's personal finances appeared to be a mess. With creditors circling, his wife filed a consumer proposal to tackle their mounting debt, blaming her husband's reduced income for the problem.

PureSnax, meanwhile, was already ratcheting up the hype. It trumpeted an "initial purchase order" with a company that was reputed to be largest distributor of nutritional products in North America, but was not named.

Oddly enough, despite claims it had delivered on the deal with the mystery distributor, PureSnax still reported no revenue during this period.

Paid internet promoters, meanwhile, hyped the stock as a hot investment, claiming it was "on fire," and a must-buy for savvy investors.

"They created a company that had a nice story to tell," Gagnon said.

"They got all these people to buy the stock, and when it goes up, the people behind the operation sell off their shares and make the stock crash. Then the innocent people who bought the stock are left with something that's basically worthless."

The stock, which by this time had been split into 40 new shares for each old share, peaked at 82 cents in May 2016. As the stock's value rose, the volume of trading spiked, providing early investors with the opportunity to make huge profits.

But since PureSnax is registered as something called a foreign portfolio investment, it's exempt from filing insider holdings with the SEC - meaning there's no way of knowing who profited from all of this trading.

Later investors who bought into the company weren't so lucky. Despite all the promising press releases, PureSnax never reported any revenues and the stock eventually plummeted to a fraction of a cent.

Throughout all the heavy trading of 2016, the company's financial statements were being approved by an auditing firm called Anton & Chia, LLP. Last December, the SEC issued cease-and-desists orders to the firm for what it called serial violations of federal securities laws.

The regulator also fined and banned the firm's auditor Richard J. Koch for failing to adhere to basic accounting standards - penalties that came after he signed off on the financials for a hemp oil company charged with fraud.

Today, PureSnax's operations have all but vanished, and all the hype about it being the next big thing in healthy snacking has evaporated.

"I don't think they'll ever make a profit. I really think this was just built up to get rid of some stocks they had in an empty company, make their money and run, and let everybody else deal with the consequences," Gagnon said.

But for the lucky few who paid next to nothing for their shares in the company, PureSnax was a pretty sweet deal.