A Forensic Analysis of the Collapse of Pacific Coast Oil Trust (ROYT): An Investigative Report for Aggrieved Unitholders

Executive Summary

This report provides a comprehensive forensic analysis of the collapse of Pacific Coast Oil Trust (ROYT). It validates the experience of unitholders who suffered a near-total loss of their investment. The investigation concludes that the trust’s demise was not a result of market forces. Instead, it was a systemic, multi-stage failure.

The core findings are as follows:

Inherent Structural Flaws: The trust was established with a severe power imbalance. This structure granted its operator, Pacific Coast Energy Company LP (PCEC), complete operational control. It left unitholders passive and powerless.
Gross Operational Mismanagement: PCEC had a long, documented history of environmental non-compliance and operational failures. These included over 100 oil spills and multiple regulatory violations. These failures generated the very liabilities that PCEC would later exploit to halt investor payments.
Weaponization of Accounting: The pivotal event was PCEC’s unilateral decision in 2020. The company recognized a massive $45.7 million Asset Retirement Obligation (ARO) for future well cleanup.¹ A whistleblower alleged this maneuver was based on “purposefully false data.”² PCEC used it as a pretext to immediately and permanently suspend all cash distributions to unitholders.
Fiduciary and Legal Failure: The Trustee, BNY Mellon, failed to take meaningful action to protect investors. Furthermore, the trust’s legal structure created a paradox. Unitholders lacked the legal standing to sue the operator, leaving them with no effective recourse.

This sequence of events systematically deconstructed the investment. It transformed a high-yield income vehicle into a worthless asset. The trust’s market capitalization collapsed from over $88 million in mid-2018³ to under $10 million.⁴ This culminated in its delisting from the NYSE and triggered a dissolution process that ensures investors will recover nothing.

Introduction: Validating the Investor’s Experience

The substantial financial loss incurred by investors in Pacific Coast Oil Trust (ticker: ROYT) was not the result of a simple market downturn. Nor was it due to the inherent volatility of the energy sector.

This report aims to validate the sentiment of having been “jipped.” It provides a comprehensive, evidence-based explanation of the multi-stage failure that eroded the investment from within. This document provides the “full lowdown” requested by aggrieved unitholders. It details the events that led to the trust’s demise and the total loss of investor capital. The trust’s market value plummeted from over $88 million in June 2018³ to less than $10 million after its delisting.⁴

This investigation finds that ROYT’s downfall was a sequential catastrophe. It was rooted first in the trust’s inherent structural vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities created a severe power imbalance that PCEC, the operator, then exploited. PCEC has a documented history of operational mismanagement and environmental non-compliance.

The final, decisive blow was a controversial accounting maneuver. PCEC suddenly recognized a massive liability for future well cleanup. A whistleblower and major investors allege this was a deliberate scheme. The goal was to permanently cut off cash flow to unitholders and seize the trust’s value.

This report will meticulously deconstruct this sequence of events. It will demonstrate how a promising income-focused investment was systematically rendered worthless. To understand the progression of these events, consider the following chronological timeline:

Table 1: Chronological Timeline of ROYT’s Decline

Date	Event	Significance
May 2012	Initial Public Offering (IPO)	Pacific Coast Oil Trust begins public trading on the NYSE, offering investors a high-yield income stream based on California oil assets.⁵
July 2014	Early Investor Lawsuit Filed	A class-action lawsuit alleges omissions and deceptions in offering documents, signaling early investor distrust and concerns about transparency.⁶
April 2018	EDC Clean Water Act Lawsuit	The Environmental Defense Center (EDC) sues PCEC over more than 100 documented oil spills and seeps, publicly exposing a long history of operational and environmental mismanagement at the Trust’s core assets.⁷
July 2019	Final Cash Distribution	The Trust makes its last-ever cash distribution to unitholders. All subsequent payments are suspended, permanently halting all cash flow to investors.⁸
February 2020	ARO Liability Announced	PCEC informs the Trust it has calculated a massive $45.7 million Asset Retirement Obligation (ARO) and will withhold all net profits to fund it, providing the justification for the distribution halt.¹
August 2020	Delisting from NYSE	ROYT is delisted from the New York Stock Exchange for failing to maintain a stock price above $1.00 and moves to the OTC Pink Market, destroying liquidity and investor confidence.⁹
October 2024	Whistleblower Lawsuit Filed	A former PCEC employee, Brendan Potyondy, files a lawsuit alleging PCEC purposefully provided false data to the Trustee regarding the calculation of the ARO.¹⁰
October 2022	Shipyard/Eriksen Letter	Major investors publicly release a letter accusing PCEC of a fraudulent scheme to appropriate Trust assets and the Trustee, BNY Mellon, of gross negligence for failing to act.⁸
2020-2021	Dissolution Trigger Met	The Trust’s annual cash proceeds fall below $2.0 million for two consecutive years, a direct result of the ARO withholdings, triggering the formal dissolution process outlined in the Trust Agreement.¹¹

Section 1: The Structure of the Trust: A Foundation of Inherent Risk

The design of Pacific Coast Oil Trust contained the seeds of its own destruction, despite being marketed as an attractive vehicle for passive income. The legal and operational framework created a severe power imbalance. This imbalance left unitholders completely dependent on the competence and integrity of an operator over whom they had no control.

1.1 The Royalty Trust Model: A Promise of Passive Income

A royalty trust is a financing vehicle, not an operating company. It typically has no physical operations, management, or employees.¹² It exists solely to acquire and hold an interest in income-producing assets and “pass through” the cash flow to investors.

Pacific Coast Oil Trust was a Delaware statutory trust formed by PCEC.⁵, ¹³ It was designed to hold net profits and royalty interests in a portfolio of California oil and gas properties. The structure was simple. The trust would receive payments from PCEC based on the oil produced. After deducting administrative fees, it would distribute all remaining cash to unitholders monthly.

The appeal for investors was a high-yield, pure-play investment in oil production without the complexities of direct operational involvement. However, this structure is inherently a “wasting asset.”¹⁴ The underlying oil and gas reserves are finite and deplete over time. Consequently, production, revenues, and distributions decline and eventually cease, at which point the trust dissolves. This finite lifespan is a critical risk often underappreciated by retail investors.

1.2 The Critical Triad: Unitholder, Operator, and Trustee

The trust’s governance was defined by the distinct and unequal roles of its three main parties:

Unitholders: Passive beneficiaries with no ability to influence PCEC or control operations; their role was solely to receive distributions.⁵
Operator (PCEC): The trust’s creator, asset contributor, and sole operator. PCEC retained full operational control and was responsible for calculating all costs deducted from revenues before payment to the trust.⁵, ¹⁵
Trustee (The Bank of New York Mellon Trust Company, N.A.): A fiduciary administrator responsible for collecting payments from PCEC, paying trust expenses, and distributing net proceeds to unitholders.¹³, ¹⁶

This structure created a profound information and power asymmetry. Unitholders were entirely reliant on the accuracy and honesty of PCEC’s calculations for their income. The Trustee’s administrative role meant that if PCEC acted improperly, the unitholders’ only defense was a financial institution that might be slow or unwilling to engage in a costly legal battle with the operator.

1.3 The Underlying Assets: Mature Fields and Complex Extraction

The assets underpinning the trust were in California’s Santa Maria and Los Angeles Basins.¹³, ¹⁷ They were divided into two categories: “Developed Properties” were existing, producing wells, while “Remaining Properties” represented future development potential.⁵, ¹³

A core asset was the Orcutt oilfield, a historic field discovered in 1901 with mature geological formations.¹⁸ The field’s age implied a long history of production but also suggested aging infrastructure and high maintenance needs.

A significant portion of the reserves, located in the Orcutt Diatomite formation, could not be extracted through conventional drilling. This rock has very high oil content but very low permeability. It required “enhanced recovery techniques”—specifically, cyclic steam injection—to heat the oil and allow it to flow.⁷, ¹⁸

The combination of the trust’s passive legal structure and its complex assets created a latent risk multiplier. Unitholders were contractually bound to a passive role. Their investment returns were directly tied to a high-risk industrial operation. Any operational failure, environmental accident, or regulatory crackdown on PCEC’s methods would directly impact distributions.¹⁸, ¹⁹ Investors were contractually powerless to do anything but watch. The structure didn’t just contain risk; it amplified it by removing all investor agency.

Key Takeaway: The trust was designed with a fundamental flaw: it gave unitholders no power or influence over the operator, PCEC, making their investment entirely dependent on PCEC’s competence and integrity.

Section 2: Early Tremors: Operational Mismanagement and Regulatory Scrutiny

Long before the final accounting maneuver, PCEC had established a poor track record as an operator. Its “unintelligent moves” were not isolated incidents. A pattern of environmental issues, regulatory violations, and early investor lawsuits revealed a systemic failure of management that foreshadowed the trust’s demise.

2.1 A Pattern of Environmental Non-Compliance: The EDC Lawsuit

In April 2018, the Environmental Defense Center (EDC) sued PCEC for violations of the federal Clean Water Act at its Orcutt Hill operations.⁷ The lawsuit alleged that PCEC was illegally discharging polluted storm water into local creeks that flowed to the Pacific Ocean.

This legal action was not based on a single incident. It was prompted by what the EDC described as PCEC’s “egregious history of oil spills.” This history included over 100 documented spills and seeps at the Orcutt Hill operation.⁷ This record of “risky operations” was so well-known that in 2016, Santa Barbara County had already denied a PCEC application to expand its drilling operations.⁷, ²⁰

The case was settled in March 2020. PCEC did not admit guilt but agreed to improve its storm water management practices. In lieu of a penalty, it also agreed to fund a $115,000 watershed restoration project.²¹ This lawsuit independently documents a long-standing pattern of operational failure and environmental harm. The spills and seeps were a direct financial indicator of poor management, which inevitably leads to higher future cleanup costs.

2.2 Enforcement and Violations: A Record of Non-Compliance with CalGEM

California’s Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM), the state’s primary oil and gas regulator, also officially documented PCEC’s operational deficiencies.²² PCEC received multiple Notices of Violation (NOVs) and civil penalties for its conduct.

A telling incident occurred in December 2021 at the West Pico Drill Site. Following a pipeline leak, CalGEM issued an NOV to PCEC citing multiple code violations. These included the improper use of certain equipment and the failure to properly abandon an out-of-service pipeline.²³ The regulator noted that PCEC was slow to respond and failed to promptly provide a root cause analysis.²³ Public records also show CalGEM issued other civil penalties to PCEC, including one for $425 in November 2024²⁴ and another for $750 in June 2025.²⁵

While the fines were minor, the violations provided official proof of systemic issues. The West Pico leak demonstrated a disregard for procedure, use of improper equipment, and failure to maintain infrastructure. Each operational failure actively generated the liabilities for future cleanup. PCEC would later use these liabilities to justify halting distributions to investors.

2.3 Initial Investor Litigation: Allegations from the Start

Concerns about the trust’s management were present almost from its inception. In July 2014, less than two years after the IPO, investor Thomas Welch filed a class-action lawsuit. The suit alleged that the trust’s market value had already declined by more than a third due to “omissions and deceptions in registration statements and prospectuses”.⁶

A separate lawsuit followed. It alleged that PCEC and the trust had issued misleading statements regarding capital expenditures and hedge contracts in a 2013 secondary offering. Investors claimed they were blindsided when cash distributions declined significantly due to increased capital spending that had not been disclosed.²⁶ These early legal challenges suggest the trust’s problems were not a late-stage development. They laid a groundwork of investor distrust that would prove well-founded.

Key Takeaway: Years before the final collapse, PCEC demonstrated a clear pattern of operational incompetence, marked by over 100 oil spills, multiple regulatory violations, and early lawsuits from investors alleging deception.

Section 3: The Decisive Blow: Weaponizing the Asset Retirement Obligation (ARO)

This section addresses the central maneuver that destroyed the investment. PCEC used an obscure accounting liability, the Asset Retirement Obligation (ARO), as the mechanism to permanently cut off all cash flow to unitholders. This move, which a whistleblower later alleged was fraudulent, was the pivotal event in the trust’s collapse.

3.1 The Accounting Gambit: A Sudden and Massive Liability

In February 2020, PCEC informed the Trustee of a seismic shift in its accounting. PCEC declared that its estimated ARO—the liability for the future cost of plugging wells and restoring the land—was a staggering $45.7 million as of December 31, 2019.¹

PCEC announced it would immediately begin withholding funds from the trust’s net profits to cover this newly calculated obligation.⁸ The company’s public justification was that this was a necessary adjustment reflecting “current market conditions and changes in California law”.¹

Investors immediately cried foul. A subsequent lawsuit filed on behalf of unitholders made several allegations. It claimed the calculation was improper and based on speculative future costs. This violated Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), the standard framework for financial accounting. The lawsuit further alleged the calculation was a pretext designed solely to deprive the trust of its rightful revenue.²⁷

A California judge presiding over the case later echoed this view, commenting that the trust agreement “doesn’t say you can do it all in one year,” questioning PCEC’s right to withhold for the entire liability at once.⁸

While an ARO is a legitimate accounting entry, PCEC’s sudden, massive, and retroactive application was a highly aggressive maneuver. To put its scale into perspective, the new liability was more than three times the total cash distributed to unitholders in all of 2018. It effectively transformed a profit-generating asset into a liability overnight.

Metric	Amount
Total 2018 Cash Distributions	~$13.2 Million
ARO Liability Announced in 2020	$45.7 Million

3.2 The Whistleblower’s Allegations: A View from the Inside

An explosive lawsuit filed on October 23, 2024, gave significant weight to the investors’ suspicions.¹⁰ Brendan Potyondy, a terminated employee of PCEC, filed a whistleblower retaliation suit against the company. He claimed he was fired for reporting misconduct to federal and state agencies, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

In his complaint to the SEC, Potyondy made a critical allegation:

PCEC had “purposefully provided false data to the Trustee and to the Trust’s independent registered public accounting firm regarding PCEC’s operations, including the calculation of its asset retirement obligations”.²

This allegation moved the narrative from a mere accounting dispute to a credible allegation of deliberate fraud. The claim that PCEC knowingly fed “false data” to its own auditors and the Trustee is the most serious accusation possible. It directly corroborates the investors’ theory that the ARO was artificially inflated. In April 2025, a federal judge denied PCEC’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, allowing the case to proceed.², ¹⁰

The trust’s structure created the ideal conditions for this alleged scheme. The trust agreement gave PCEC sole power to calculate costs and withhold funds. The information asymmetry made it nearly impossible for outsiders to challenge the calculation. Only PCEC had access to the underlying operational data. Challenging the numbers required inside information, which is precisely what the whistleblower provided.

3.3 The Immediate Consequence: Distributions Cease Permanently

The impact of the ARO decision was immediate and absolute. The last cash distribution to ROYT unitholders was in July 2019.⁸ From that point forward, every monthly press release carried the same grim message: “There Will Be No… Cash Distribution”.²⁸

The official reason given was that there were no “net profits” to distribute.¹, ¹¹ This created a financial death spiral. With no distributions, the trust’s reason for existence vanished, and its stock price plummeted.

Key Takeaway: PCEC used a sudden, massive, and allegedly fraudulent $45.7 million accounting liability (ARO) as the weapon to permanently halt all cash distributions, starving the trust of its revenue.

Section 4: The Downward Spiral: Financial Ruin and Legal Impotence

The decision to weaponize the ARO triggered a cascade of consequences that sealed the trust’s ruin. It led directly to the trust’s financial insolvency, the destruction of its stock value, and the failure of investors to find any meaningful legal recourse.

4.1 From Profit to Debt: The Ultimate Irony

The trust agreement included a $1 million letter of credit from PCEC to cover temporary administrative expense shortfalls. As ARO withholdings continued, the trust was forced to draw on this credit. By March 2021, it was fully depleted.¹, ²⁹

At this point, the financial relationship inverted completely. With no income, the trust began borrowing funds directly from PCEC just to pay its monthly administrative bills.²⁹ The debt mounted rapidly. By late 2024, the trust owed PCEC approximately $7.1 million; by mid-2025, that figure had grown to $11.8 million.¹, ²⁹

This development was the final nail in the coffin. The trust agreement stipulated that any loans from PCEC must be repaid in full before any distributions could resume.²⁹ PCEC had allegedly engineered the cash shortage. Now, the operator transformed itself into the trust’s primary creditor. This move financially colonized the trust from the inside out.

4.2 The Fall from the NYSE: From Blue Chip to Pink Sheet

With distributions halted indefinitely due to the ARO decision, the trust’s stock price collapsed. The trust had already received a non-compliance notice from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) as far back as February 2016.³⁰ On August 5, 2020, the NYSE formally suspended trading in ROYT and commenced delisting proceedings. The exchange cited the failure to maintain an average closing price of at least $1.00.⁹

The stock immediately began trading on the OTC Pink Market under the new symbol “ROYTL”.⁹ For investors, this was a catastrophic event. The delisting moved the stock from a highly regulated, liquid exchange to a far more limited and speculative service.⁹ This move destroyed the stock’s credibility with institutional investors. It drastically reduced trading volume. It also trapped remaining retail investors with shares that were nearly impossible to sell at a reasonable price. The stock’s value, which had been $2.30 per unit in mid-2018, was reduced to mere pennies.³

4.3 The Unitholder’s Dilemma: Lawsuits and the “Standing” Doctrine

Unitholders filed multiple lawsuits to challenge PCEC’s actions. The most significant was a class-action suit by Evergreen Capital Management, which accused PCEC of breach of contract and the Trustee, BNY Mellon, of gross negligence.²⁷

However, the legal battle exposed the trust’s deepest structural flaw. PCEC’s lawyers successfully argued that the harm—the improper withholding of funds—was legally done to the Trust as an entity, not directly to individual unitholders. This meant investors lacked the legal right, or “standing,” to sue PCEC directly.³¹

This created a devastating legal Catch-22. The claim was deemed “derivative” (a suit that must be brought on behalf of the trust), but the Trust Agreement itself contained clauses that barred unitholders from bringing such derivative lawsuits.⁸, ³¹

This legal paradox left investors powerless. The only entity with the legal standing to sue PCEC was the Trustee, BNY Mellon. Yet, major investors alleged the Trustee was “grossly negligent” and “refuse[d] to join a class action lawsuit against the Trust’s operator”.⁸, ²⁷ Unitholders were trapped: they were clearly being harmed, but the legal framework of their own investment prevented them from seeking recourse in court.

Table 2: Summary of Major Legal and Regulatory Actions

Action/Case	Parties Involved	Core Allegations/Violations	Outcome/Status
EDC v. PCEC	Environmental Defense Center vs. PCEC	Violations of the Clean Water Act; over 100 oil spills and seeps; illegal discharge of polluted storm water.	Settled (March 2020). PCEC agreed to improve practices and fund a $115,000 restoration project.²¹
CalGEM NOVs	CA State Regulator vs. PCEC	Multiple code violations, including improper equipment use and failure to properly abandon a pipeline after a leak.	Multiple Notices of Violation issued and small civil penalties paid.²³, ²⁴, ²⁵
Welch v. PCOT	Investors vs. PCOT/PCEC	Misleading statements and omissions in the 2012 IPO and 2013 secondary offering documents.	Signaled early investor distrust but did not halt the trust’s decline.⁶, ²⁶
Evergreen v. PCEC	Investors vs. PCEC & BNY Mellon	Breach of contract by PCEC via improper ARO inflation; gross negligence by the Trustee.	Dismissed with prejudice. Court ruled investors lacked legal standing to sue the operator directly or derivatively.²⁷, ³¹
Potyondy v. PCEC	Whistleblower vs. PCEC	Retaliation for reporting that PCEC purposefully provided false data to auditors and the Trustee regarding the ARO.	PCEC’s motion to dismiss was denied; the federal lawsuit was allowed to proceed.², ¹⁰

Key Takeaway: The ARO maneuver created a financial death spiral: the trust became insolvent, its stock was delisted from the NYSE, and a fatal flaw in the trust agreement left unitholders legally powerless to sue the operator for damages.

Section 5: Conclusion: A Synthesis of Failure and the Impossibility of Recovery

The total loss of the investment in Pacific Coast Oil Trust was not a single event but a systemic collapse. The evidence indicates that a flawed structure was exploited by a mismanaged operator through an alleged act of deliberate financial engineering. A passive fiduciary and a restrictive legal agreement left investors with no defense and no recourse.

5.1 The Allegations of Fraud: The Shipyard Letter

The case against PCEC and the Trustee was consolidated in a scathing public letter issued in October 2022 by Shipyard Capital and Eriksen Capital. These investors collectively owned 11.4% of the trust.⁸ This letter serves as the capstone of the investigation, alleging a coordinated and fraudulent takeover of the trust’s assets.

Its key accusations included:

A “Scheme to Appropriate Trust Assets”: The letter explicitly accused PCEC of executing a plan to seize the trust’s value by using “inflated environmental liabilities as a pretext for withholding 100% of Trust distributions.”⁸
A “Second Set of Books”: It claimed that discovery in the investor lawsuit had produced an alleged “second set of books.” This term implies a deliberate misrepresentation of financial health, showing much smaller environmental liabilities than what PCEC had reported in SEC filings.⁸
Questionable Management: The letter pointed out that PCEC’s new owners had questionable histories, including one principal investigated for insider trading and another accused of misappropriating funds.⁸
Auditor Resignation: It highlighted that the trust’s own auditor, PwC, had resigned. PwC stated it was “unwilling to be associated with the Trust’s financial statements in the future.” Such a move by a major accounting firm is highly unusual and signals severe concerns about the integrity of the trust’s financial reporting.⁸
Fiduciary Failure: The letter lambasted the Trustee, BNY Mellon, as being “nowhere to be found.” It accused the Trustee of failing in its duty to obtain audits, file required reports, or sue PCEC to protect unitholders.⁸

5.2 The Path to Dissolution: The Final Clause

The Trust Agreement contained its own self-destruct mechanism. A dissolution clause stated that if the trust’s annual cash proceeds fell below $2.0 million for two consecutive years, it would be terminated.¹, ¹¹

PCEC’s decision to withhold all revenue to fund the ARO directly and intentionally caused this condition to be met. This occurred for the years 2020 and 2021, triggering the formal dissolution process.¹, ¹¹

Although a court order temporarily halted the process, dissolution was the trust’s inevitable end game.¹¹, ³¹ Upon liquidation, the trust’s assets would first be used to pay off its creditors. As established, the primary creditor was now PCEC itself, owed millions in loans and interest. This ensured that nothing would be left for a final distribution to unitholders.²⁹

5.3 Final Assessment: A Systemic Breakdown

The loss suffered by unitholders was the result of a systemic breakdown on every level. This confirms that the feeling of being “jipped” is not an emotional overreaction but a rational conclusion based on a mountain of evidence. The failure occurred across five distinct domains:

Structural: The royalty trust model, with its complete separation of ownership from control, proved dangerously vulnerable to an operator acting in bad faith.
Operational: PCEC’s long and documented track record of environmental non-compliance and poor maintenance generated the underlying liabilities that were later weaponized against investors.
Managerial/Ethical: Credible allegations from a whistleblower and major investors point toward a deliberate scheme by PCEC’s management to manipulate accounting liabilities to defraud the trust and its unitholders.
Fiduciary: The Trustee, The Bank of New York Mellon, allegedly failed to act as an effective check on the operator’s power, leaving investors unprotected.
Legal: The trust’s own governing document was ultimately used as a shield by the operator. The “standing” doctrine created a legal paradox that provided no viable recourse for unitholders to defend their interests in court.

5.4 Lessons for Future Investors

The collapse of ROYT offers critical, albeit painful, lessons for investors considering similar high-yield vehicles, particularly royalty trusts:

Scrutinize the Structure: Understand that the separation of ownership from control is a key feature of royalty trusts. Investors must assess the operator’s trustworthiness and track record, as they will have no power to influence decisions post-investment.
Investigate the Operator: An operator’s history of regulatory compliance, environmental stewardship, and prior litigation is a direct indicator of future risk. PCEC’s operational issues were public knowledge long before the trust’s collapse.
Read the Fine Print: The governing trust agreement is paramount. Investors must understand clauses related to dissolution, cost calculations, and the rights of unitholders to take legal action. ROYT investors were trapped by clauses that prevented them from suing the operator.
Yield is Not a Substitute for Due Diligence: The allure of a high monthly distribution can mask fundamental risks. A royalty trust is a “wasting asset” by design. Its value is tied to both volatile commodity prices and the integrity of the operator.

In conclusion, the investment in Pacific Coast Oil Trust was not lost to the volatility of oil prices or the risks of exploration. It was systematically deconstructed from within through a series of actions that capitalized on the trust’s structural weaknesses. This culminated in an accounting decision that, according to serious allegations, was designed to seize the asset’s entire value stream for the benefit of the operator at the total expense of investors.

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