How Steve Morris Defrauds Creditors Using Florida Corporations

One of the techniques Steve Morris uses to perpetrate his frauds and avoid paying his bills is by opening up a new corporation once he's run up a large number of bills under an old corporation.

For example, Steve Morris was a marketing room manager working for a small company in Tampa, Florida (which shall remain un-named) and after leaving that job, he started his first marketing room on his own. The new corporation was:

The above location was in a shopping center in Carrollwood, a subdivision of Tampa, Florida. Click here to see a copy of the online incorporation record for Slap Happy Enterprises. Steve had partnered with a guy named John Cooper. In fact, Steve Morris and John Cooper had formed a corporation together for another business venture:

FREE-GREETINGCARDS.COM, INC.

Click Here to see a copy of the Florida online incorporation record. I don't think these guys did anything with this corporation or made anything happen with it. Anyway, back at Slap Happy Enterprises, Steve Morris had partnered up with John Cooper. But after a while, Steve got tired of John for some reason or another and he decided to bail out on his partner (There will be many more instances of this in the years to come). What Steve had told me was that he had originally hired John as a manager. Steve wanted to free himself from running the marketing room as the manager (All Steve really wants to do is sit behind a desk, this makes him feel important) so he offered Cooper a partnership. John was supposed to run the room and leave Steve free to sit behind the desk. Well, I think everything went well for a little while (maybe a 3 or 4 months) but then Cooper realized that he liked sitting behind the desk and feeling important  too, which he would do when Steve wasn't there. So instead of running the room, Cooper would sit behind the desk and have one of his reps run the room. Of course, this resulted in lower sales.

I'm sure that Steve Morris had this all planned out. He knew he was going to skip out on the bills and his partner from his 'business' at Slap Happy enterprises. Especially the phone and Internet bills.

At his new location at 13137 North Dale Mabry Hwy and his new corporation, Oasis Travel, Steve got started right away with running up his bills and then ditching them. One such company is Transnational Communications (TNCI). Steve had signed up for service with TNCI around April of 2002 and before the end of the year he had run up a HUGE phone bill and didn't want to pay it. (Click Here for info and court documents) So, what does he do? He opens up another corporation! Again, less then a year later in December of 2002, in the same location Steve creates:

MODERN MARKETING SOLUTIONS, INC.

Same location...Same business...same company assets...different company name and one less phone bill. Click here for a copy of the online incorporation record. Most times the phone companies don't pursue you legally for not paying your bills, and Steve banks on this. This time however, Steve got sued by TNCI and now there is a default judgment against him for $311,371 PLUS Interest. The judgment doesn't state what the interest rate is specifically, but rather 'Post judgment interest at the applicable statutory rate'. Well, in the judgment above the interest rate was set at 9%. If the interest rate for the $311,371 is 5%, and the judgment was finalized in December of 2004...That's two years ago...the new balance that Steve owes TNCI is approximately $343,287 (as of March 2007).

 In addition to another phone bill that Steve Morris has dumped, He's also obligated for the lease he signed at 13137 N. Dale Mabry. Steve Morris was sued by the Palms of Carrollwood Shopping Center and KJR Carrollwood. In April of 2005, a default judgment of $171,165.38 was issued against Steve Morris...plus interest. Here is a link to the pdf of the default judgment. In true Steve Morris fashion, he never showed up in court. Steve thinks he can hide from his years of ripping people off and just merrily keep on truckin. Well, sooner or later fate has a way of catching up with you, and sooner or later, fate is going to catch up with Steve Morris.

So, after almost exactly 5 years, from the time Steve Morris started SNS Marketing to the time he shut down at 13137 North Dale Mabry, Steve has run up a debt of NO LESS THAN $564,023!!  Not including unpaid taxes and unpaid child support. That is an incredible amount of debt! Of course, Steve Morris has no intention of paying off this debt. Instead, the costs are passed on to the rest of us through higher prices and higher taxes.

Now, after a brief lull, Steve is back at it today. In March of 2006, he started ANOTHER corporation:

TIME TRAVEL OF TAMPA, INC

Judging by the name, I'd guess that this is another vacation telemarketing room. If anyone has any information on this company or the activities associated with this company, please share your information below. Most likely Steve Morris ran up some more long distance phone bills and instead of paying them like an honest business man, he ditches the corporation and starts a new one. Then he simply gets service under the new corporate name. In the mean time, Morris transfers all of the assets from his previous businesses to his new business with no more than the wave of a hand.

In fact, some of the assets that Steve Morris is using right now probably should be sold and the funds distributed to his creditors. This would keep him from defrauding more people and would begin to pay down his debt. Steve Morris has a predictive dialer, 24 Dell computers and monitors, desks, and chairs and more that he has been using for several years. The dialer itself is probably worth close to $20,000. Additionally, Steve Morris may have entered into a contract (Click here for the MS Word version or here for the HTML version) with the dialer company (valued at over $7000)- Data-Tel - to re-license the software to his new company created in in August of 2006 (where did he get the money for that?):

Notice the address is the same, but the suite number is different...odd. This may have been a way for Steve to get around any negative credit information associated with that address when he was running Time Travel of Tampa, Inc. At any rate, Steve has the dialer installed at this location and is currently hiring and running shifts. In fact, some of his employees are being paid in CASH. Legal offices pursuing Steve Morris can contact me privately for more information. Apparently Steve Morris is working with Discovery Cruise lines (See Steve's sample ad here) as well. Again, I would strongly recommend that any company currently doing business with Steve Morris and Semantics, Inc. Immediately examine your business relationship and determine if your long term business goals might be in jeopardy by associating your business and company with someone like Steve Morris. Click here to read more about what Steve Morris is doing now.

Here is a link to Steve Morris's new company website: http://www.semanticsinc.net/

Over Steve Morris's relatively short career, I would estimate he's shrugged off over half a million dollars in un paid phone bills.

Who does Steve owe that hasn't sued? I know for a fact that there are more phone and Internet and lead companies out there that Steve Morris hasn't paid. These companies simply write off the expense rather then spend the time and money on lawyers and such to try to collect money that will be difficult to impossible to collect on.