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Hartford City Treasurer Repeatedly Used City Email to Promote Back9Network

Back9Network flickr.com/back9network
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Creative Commons
The emails again raise the question of the nature of Adam Cloud's involvement with a private company with which his family did business.

Hartford’s Ethics Commission has begun a search for disparities between state and city rules that restrict the use of public office for personal gain.

 

The commission ordered up the review in response to WNPR stories about Hartford city Treasurer Adam Cloud’s apology for using his public email in 2011 to steer an investor to the Back9Network -- a broadcast startup with which Cloud’s family did business. Cloud has said his advocacy for Back9 didn’t violate the city’s ethics code. He also said he couldn’t “recall ever contacting any other investors” about the Back9Network.

 

WNPR requested the Treasurer’s official emails, receiving a new batch last week. The newly-obtained emails show that Cloud repeatedly used his city email to promote Back9. Cloud’s contact with the company and with others on its behalf began in 2011, shortly after his brother became the company’s state lobbyist and shortly before his father would become its landlord. His advocacy continued through 2014 -- months before the company would run out of money and all but evaporate.

Presented with the emails, Cloud’s attorney, John Droney, wrote WNPR that the treasurer simply forgot about one of the contacts he made on Back9’s behalf.

 

“He does not apologize for promoting Hartford businesses,” Droney wrote. “There is no connection between investments in the Back9Network and doing business with the City of Hartford.”

 

One email Cloud wrote was in July 2012 to Thad Fletcher of the investment management firm Cooke and Bieler.

 

“Just wanted to say it was a real pleasure to meet you in Miami and I hope that in time I will have a chance to lose some money to you on the golf course,” Cloud, whose office manages $1 billion in retiree pensions, wrote. “As promised, please check out the Back 9 Network at: www.back9network.com.”

 

In November 2012, Cloud was in contact with Harold Lindenthal of Cato Capital, LLC. Lindenthal was looking to set up a meeting with the city and a firm called True Green Capital.

 

“Also, do you have a digital version of the backnine presentation,” Lindenthal wrote. “I may have a few people to show it to.”

 

Cloud responded that he could get him the Back9 information in “a day or so.”

 

“He was trying to boost Hartford,” Lindenthal told WNPR in an interview. “He was enthusiastic to promote Hartford.”

 

In June 2013, Back9 invited Cloud to a “US [Golf] Open After Party” in downtown Hartford.

 

Yes I will attend and will be bringing two prospects with me,” Cloud wrote Back9. One of the prospects was ESPN’s celebrity Trey Wingo; the other was lawyer David Panico, whose firm Robinson and Cole is the city’s paid bond counsel.

 

Efforts to reach Fletcher, Wingo, and Panico were unsuccessful.

These emails and others again raise the question of the nature of the city treasurer’s involvement with a private company with which his family did business.

WNPR first wrote about the link between Cloud and Back9 last month after reviewing emails Hartford officials turned over to federal investigators from the Securities and Exchange Commission in response to a subpoena. One of those emails was to Robert Smith of Vista Equity Partners. Cloud encouraged Smith to invest in Back9, saying he could expect a 60 percent profit.

“I share it with you only because I get the sense that you are a man that likes to be on the ground floor of great ideas!” Cloud wrote in December 2011.

Credit Back9Network flickr.com/back9network / Creative Commons
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Creative Commons
James Bosworth, Hartford Treasurer Adam Cloud, Flavor Flav, Chris Cloud and others at a 2012 Back9Network party in Orlando.
Hartford's Ethics Commission is using the case to take a closer look at the city's rules for public officials.

The new emails provided by the city give a more detailed picture of the treasurer’s involvement with the company.

In 2011, shortly after his brother, Chris Cloud, started lobbying for the company, Adam Cloud got an email from Back9 CEO James Bosworth. In it, Bosworth asked his chief sales officer Reid Gorman to send Cloud electronic information on Back9. Gorman did so -- forwarding along an investor presentation and saying that he’d send more.

 

A month later, as Cloud was nearing election day in his first run for city treasurer, Gorman wrote Cloud again.

 

“Enjoyed seeing you yesterday and thanks for all of your support for Back9!” Gorman wrote. “Let me know when your website is back up.”

 

It’s unclear which website he was referring to. But a few hours later, Cloud wrote back.

 

“The site is back up!” Cloud said.

 

“Great,” Gorman responded. “I’ll be on it this weekend!”

 

That Sunday, two days after the email, Gorman contributed $250 to Cloud’s campaign, according to campaign finance records.

 

In December 2011, Gorman emailed the treasurer again to ask his help in identifying people who could help raise $500,000 for Back9.

 

“If you have any suggestions on how/who to meet with to knock off a portion of this we would greatly appreciate it,” Gorman wrote. He then mentioned Robert Smith -- an investor from Vista Equity Partners.

 

“As it relates to Robert Smith, many thanks in advance for making the introduction,” Gorman wrote. “Although we may be outside of his bailiwick, as you know Back9 is still a very intriguing ground floor opportunity with a strong cash flow story within just a few years of launch.”

 

With that information, Cloud emailed Smith about Back9 the next day. It’s that email for which he later apologized -- saying he was sorry for “the manner and way in which I communicated” with Smith.

 

Presented with these new emails -- including one that appears to contradict Cloud’s earlier statement that he couldn’t recall reaching out to other investors regarding Back9 -- Cloud’s city-paid attorney pushed back.

 

“Adam is human, like anyone else, and simply forgot about sending a Back9Network Prospectus to some people at Cato Capital,” John Droney wrote WNPR. As he has in the past, Droney defended Cloud’s outreach regarding Back9. And he noted that none of the people Cloud contacted ended up investing with the company.

 

Droney wouldn’t respond to other questions. He declined to explain what Cloud meant when he called Panico and Wingo “prospects.” He wouldn’t provide examples of other businesses for which Cloud advocated, and he wouldn’t grant an interview with Cloud.

 

Droney did, though, answer a question about whether Cloud got free gear from a golf merchandiser. In an email from 2014, a representative of the company G/FORE congratulated Cloud on the progress of Back9 and offered the treasurer some free gear -- all he had to do was send his glove and shoe size, which he apparently did.

 

“He did receive a golf glove and a pair of golf shoes, both as gifts (by the way, the golf shoes did not fit),” Droney wrote. “[T]hey were from people who had absolutely nothing to do with the City of Hartford and, as such, could not be an Ethics violation.”

 

Meanwhile, the city’s Ethics Commission is using the case to take a closer look at Hartford’s rules for public officials.

 

“We should probably physically be comparing our codes to the state’s,” said Vice Chair Chuck Culliton at Tuesday’s commission meeting. “There’s no reason why there should be a significant difference between the two.”

 

As for Back9, Bosworth is no longer with the company. In court filings, he said he was pushed out in 2014 by the treasurer’s father, Sanford Cloud, Jr. -- who went from Back9’s landlord to serving on the company’s board. Gorman is one of the company’s two remaining executives, and he said he appreciated Adam Cloud’s help over time.

 

“Mr. Cloud was a friend of the company and was excited about a new media network being located in Hartford,” Gorman said. “He was never employed or compensated by Back9Network, and none of the company’s 140+ investors were introduced by Mr. Cloud.”

 

The company is in the process of raising funds to get back on the air. At the same time, it is fighting investors and at least one former employee in court.

Jeff Cohen started in newspapers in 2001 and joined Connecticut Public in 2010, where he worked as a reporter and fill-in host. In 2017, he was named news director. Then, in 2022, he became a senior enterprise reporter.

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