The New Age composer, rock music producer, entrepreneur and filmmaker Paul Gilman, who produced a film about using music to communicate with ocean mammals, is being sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly defrauding 40 investors of $3.3 million over the course of three years.
Filed Monday in Texas federal court, the SEC’s suit against Paul Gilman, who it says refers to himself as a “whale whisperer,” accuses him of misleading investors in his three companies, GilmanSound, WaveTech and Oil Migration Group (OMG). GIlman claimed that OMG had developed “revolutionary technology based on ‘sonication’ that would transform the oil and gas industry by using soundwaves to cheaply and effectively lower the viscosity of oil,” according to the complaint, which would presumably lower the cost of oil distribution and processing. With WaveTech, Gilman claimed to have developed a separate sound-based technology for water separation and purification of oil, the SEC alleges.
Multiple attempts to contact Gilman’s representation, Dallas-based attorney John Teakell, were not returned. Teakell did give a statement to USA Today on Tuesday however, saying his client “believes that the evidence will show that the subject technology was being developed and continued to be developed. Therefore, he had no intent to defraud anyone.” Multiple attempts to contact WaveTech were not returned. Calls to Raymond McGlamery, the registered agent of Oil Migration Group, were also not returned.
The SEC claims Gilman misled several individuals about what their investments would be used for, and that he instead spent the funding on travel, designer clothes and cash withdrawals at casinos. Those investors included a nurse in Dallas, from whom he is said to have taken $540,000, a psychology professor in Parker, Texas,. from whom he received $60,000 and a church minister in Franklin, Tenn., who gave him $100,000. The latter received a repayment of $100,000 after he became “disillusioned with Gilman” and asked for his money back, which the SEC refers to as a “Ponzi payment” — besides that Ponzi payment and a separate legal settlement, the government claims no money raised by Gilman was ever returned to investors.
The companies were the most recent in a long line of projects related to sound and music from Gilman.