Business

Food truck (stock) offerings little cheesy

A Lexington Avenue firm is trying to capitalize on the food-truck craze sweeping American downtowns by backing the Grilled Cheese Truck Inc., a restaurant concept on wheels peddling — you guessed it — homemade grilled cheese sandwiches to lunchtime and late-night crowds.

When it’s built out, according to its blizzard of press releases, Grilled Cheese Truck plans to have trucks slinging high-end comfort food to the masses on the street, and kiosks in airports and malls, with the first 100 franchisees slated to be veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thinking big, the company is filing financials in advance of a market being made in its common stock on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board.

If careful investors open Grilled Cheese Truck’s corporate filings, however, they might feel a little heartburn coming on.

It turns out that the man who helped put the company together, Trilogy Capital Partners chief A.J. Cervantes (he owns almost 20 percent of the stock), is a veteran penny-stock promoter.

Cervantes has an investor-relations contract with the company paying him $10,000 a month and a warrant to buy 1.8 million more shares, there’s little chance he won’t make out.

But investors in controversial Chinese reverse-merger copper marketer Lihua International can’t say the same. Cervantes is part-owner of a due-diligence company that gave it a clean bill of health in 2011. (The shares didn’t budge.)

The head of the due-diligence firm doing the investigation was Alan Refkin, a former retail broker with a lengthy FINRA disciplinary record.

Then there is the $200,000-per-year consulting deal given former presidential candidate Wesley Clark to help bring in military veterans to franchise the Grilled Cheese Trucks.

Clark was the chairman of Rodman Renshaw when it became one of the most active underwriters of frequently doomed Chinese reverse mergers. The firm ceased brokerage operations last September.

A call to Cervantes at his office was not returned.