Celebrities fronting startups again? Now we're interested!

Carrying the ball

Why would a security company want its public face to be someone best known for kicking a pigskin, rather than securing systems?

Some of its history and connections might provide pointers for interested parties.

A good starting point is a business called Supersonic Payments, which was incorporated in 2011 and operates as an agent for another payments company, Ezybonds. The Australian Financial Review and other sources report Akermanis as a director of Ezybonds, a claim he has not contested even if his own LinkedIn profile lists him as a "corporate manager" in an engagement that ended in 2011.

The Australian Financial Review suggests Akermanis noticed Splitlock when Ezybonds acquired the rights to the Splitlock patent (in 2013, according to the patent's legal history notes) for $18 million.

In its roughly 20-year history, Ezybonds and one of its founders, Allan Endresz, have accumulated a collection of enemies.

While Splitlock doesn't mention Endresz's name, he appears to be the business's domain registrant, as this whois query shows.

One such enemy is the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC), which in 2013 successfully defended a lawsuit brought by Endresz seeking AU$4.3 billion from the government.

The government had originally sued Endresz to recover $8 million it claimed was misappropriated, as this Sydney Morning Herald article from 2008 describes.

Endresz's litigation continued into 2015, when the Federal Court handed another win to ASIC.

In 2015, Ezybonds' UK affiliate cut ties with the operation. It changed its name to FT8 Plc, and is developing a payments technology called “SplitPay” in partnership with American company i2c.

There's also a long-running dispute between Ezybonds and American company Ad Hit Profits.

Splitlock might have a hot technology for payments processing, but it looks not to have implemented HTTPS correctly on its Wordpress Website. Qualys' SSL Labs also reckons it's presenting the wrong certificate for its identity. Coxtech.com, which presents the site certificate, is an app-maker whose domain was registered by Ontrak Diesel Repairs.

Vulture South notes that Ezybonds' Terms and Conditions are subject to the laws of the Cook Islands, while Splitlock says its business is incorporated in the Virgin Islands.

Given that Splitlock has an apparently-workable idea, The Register will watch Jason Akermanis' efforts to pitch Splitlock with interest, to see how he parlays his personality and understanding of the complex business of Internet security into appeasing investment-regulation umpires and enterprises seeking better security. ®