Monday, Oct 30, 2006    Text size: 

On Monday, XBIZ was unable to reach parent company Interactive Brand Development officials — President Gary Spaniak and CEO Steve Markham — for comment.

Once-accessible phone numbers of the company are now disconnected, and the law firm, Adorno & Yoss, that had been contracted to settle legal matters for the company could not confirm that it actually represents the company.

Deerfield Beach, Fla.-based iBill ceased providing processing services earlier this year, transferring those services to Arizona-based Etelegate, which could not be reached Monday. Etelegate partnered with iBill and received commissions from contracts to resell third-party processing services.

Interactive Brand last year unveiled GSpotNews.com, stating it was a blog aimed at increasing traffic for adult webmaster clients.

Spaniak at the time told XBiz that the blog used iBill’s double opt-in email database of 30 million addresses to deliver G-Spot, increasing traffic to those companies featured on the blog and giving clients an added bonus.

But now iBill.com goes straight to G-Spot. The company apparently is attempting to monetize the ibill.com domain name from outdated links.

The past several years have been problematic for the public company.

Interactive Brand has been scrambling to quell legal action by unpaid webmasters in the past year. In August the company said it had a client payout balance of nearly $17 million. It also said it had court judgments totaling $2.3 million.

The company also is disputing a default on a loan from investment bankers IIG Trade Opportunities Fund.

In an August filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company reported slightly more than $47 million in total assets set against more than $53 million in liabilities.

In the SEC filing, iBill’s parent issued 1.4 million shares of common stock to Adorno & Yoss for legal services during 2005 and 2006. The services are valued at $168,000.

Earlier this year, Interactive Brand struck a deal with LitFunding Corp. to provide marketing to its large customer base, directing potential customers to payday loan company Easy Money Express, which LitFunding recently acquired.

In previous deals, the company broadened its stakehold. Interactive Brand owns a 35 percent stake in Penthouse and an 18 percent share in ITVN, which markets XTV, an adult Internet-protocol network.