[gonzo]

Got to mention this for sure


A Visa spokesman declined to elaborate when contacted today by TheWrap. Officials of the Caribbean bank didn’t respond to messages.

As Mallick’s company comes under scrutiny, so, too, does his fresh Hollywood face.

Thanks to “Middle Man,” Hollywood’s familiarity with Mallick's background apparently extends no further than his central role in porn. But the filmed account omitted several colorful footnotes.

A Texas native, Mallick is the son of George A. Mallick, a Fort Worth oilman whose undisclosed financial ties factored into the downfall of Jim Wright, the former U.S. Speaker of the House.

In the mid-1990s, SAM Group, a health financing company which Mallick founded, filed for bankruptcy. A related lawsuit revealed a checkered history of personal tax liens, judgements and lawsuits involving Mallick.

Next, he helped found PayCom, one of the earliest porn-billing systems and a pioneer in online-purchasing technology. Several years ago, the company clashed in court with MasterCard and lost in a case involving the billing of porn sites.

He launched ePassporte after splitting from PayCom. But his new company drew the attention of the U.S. attorney for Manhattan during a sweeping investigation of internet gambling.

After the company was advised of the probe, two years ago ePassporte ended business with poker sites. “Although we do not believe we have done anything illegal, we do not wish to be associated with anything that might be considered illegal by the United States government,” ePassporte wrote to one off-shore operator of one site.

Finally, last year, the U.S. Tax Court ordered him to pay more than $280,000 in taxes, plus almost $40,000 in penalties, after concluding he under-reported income in 2005 by hundreds of thousands of dollars.