One of the key figures in last year?s ?pay-to-play? controversy has applied to incorporate a new company in partnership with a New York publisher who has been dubbed ?the invisible man? of porn. Calvin C.C. White Sr. has applied with James Kerman and Carl Ruderman to incorporate a local company with limited liability to be called Rock Media Limited.

Mr. White, who was removed as chairman of the Public Funds Investment Committee last year after revelations that he organised a fundraising golf day for the PLP and invited 47 US money managers who were potentially vying for Government business or already had it, said he was reluctant to talk about the company until it was incorporated.

However when asked he said ?he believed? that business partner Carl Ruderman was in fact chairman of Universal Media, a global consumer communications and publishing firm in the US. When pressed further, he again said he did not want to talk about the company until it was incorporated.

While Universal Media publishes Elite Traveller Magazine which is targeted at audiences with a median household income upwards of $1 million, MSNBC reported last year that publisher and philanthropist Carl Ruderman was also reportedly the secret owner of Crescent Publishing, a company implicated in what MSNBC described last year as ?one of the biggest consumer fraud cases ever prosecuted?.

That case ended last year after alleged members of New York?s notorious Gambino crime family pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraud charges stemming from an Internet and phone billing caper which scammed people surfing adult content on the web or who called 1-800 phone numbers which advertised free samples of phone sex, psychic lines and dating services.

Prosecutors charged that the websites used in the Internet scam were part of a joint venture formed in 1996 involving Crescent Publishing, a Manhattan company that published such high-profile magazines as Playgirl and High Society.

MSNBC reported that Mr. Ruderman, who was dubbed ?the invisible man? of porn by fellow skin magazine publisher Al Goldstein in 1989 for his low profile, was never charged with any crime related to the fraud case, reportedly because he told authorities that he had delegated responsibility for day-to-day operations of Crescent.

?We used to call him the Wizard of Oz, because you never saw the guy,? one former Crescent employee told MSNBC.com on condition of anonymity. ?I saw him twice the whole time I worked for him.?

In November 2001, the Federal Trade Commission announced that Crescent Publishing and the company?s principal officers Bruce Chew and David Bernstein had agreed to pay $30 million to settle the suit. Mr. Ruderman has not returned messages left by this newspaper.