If you’re a fan of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” — and who isn’t, really? — you can’t help but be a little interested in “The Killer’s Game.”

In theaters this week, the action comedy stars Dave Bautista, but it also boasts Pom Klementieff. The two, of course, portray Drax and Mantis, respectively, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and are comedic gold in a couple of the big-screen “Guardians” adventures, as well as in the hilarious “Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special” from 2022.

That pairing, however, isn’t enough to lift “The Killer’s Game” above the level of mediocrity, the tonally challenged flick squandering a vaguely promising first act by devolving into a warmed-over “John Wick” wanna-be.

Helmed by JJ Perry, the director of the similarly uneven 2022 Netflix release “Day Shift,” “The Killer’s Game” plays like two separate movies for much of its roughly hour-and-45-minute runtime. When the beefy Bautista, cast as renowned assassin Joe Flood, shares the screen with veteran actor Ben Kingsley, who portrays his mentor, or co-star Sofia Boutella, who plays his love interest, it fits roughly within reality as we know it and even finds an emotional center; at all other times, it’s an over-the-top kill-fest, with skulls crushed, body parts severed and impalings to spare.

Were those action scenes topnotch — aka “Wick”-level — and not merely passable, that would be a bit more forgivable.

Written by Rand Ravich and James Coyne, who have adapted the 1997 book by Jay R. Bonansinga, “The Killer’s Game” introduces us to Joe in Budapest, where he’s on the job at a more-than-century-old opera house, which on this night is hosting a ballet. He does his job quietly, as usual; nonetheless, machine gun fire follows the “retirement of his target,” and he helps dancer Maize — with whom he’d locked eyes during the performance — out of the building safely.

On the street, she thanks him and worries about the headache he’s having, but when she turns her back, he vanishes.

However, when he returns something to her at a dance studio, she gives him her number and — after Joe workshops a few follow-up texts — they’re out to dinner, where, of course, they hit it off. Soon they’re dating. She continues to dance, and he continues to kill, worrying, increasingly, about how she’d feel if she knew how he makes his substantial living.

Dave Bautista’s hitman and Sofia Boutella’s ballet dancer fall in love in “The Killer’s Game.” (Courtesy of Lionsgate)

However, he’s also seen a doctor, who informs him the test results are dire. He will die in, perhaps, three months, and the best they can do is make him comfortable.

That is not how Joe — who’s always worked within a set of industry rules and has retired only those who’ve deserved it — wants to leave this world. He meets with his handler, Zvi (Kingsley), about directing some money to Maize and, more consequently, having himself assassinated. Zvi agrees to handle the former but not the latter, imploring his friend to fight to the end by visiting more doctors — even a shaman, if necessary.

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Enter Klementieff’s Marianna, whose business also is handling assassins. She is more than happy to take $2 million to have Joe killed, as she holds a huge grudge against him.

However, just before the killing window opens, Joe gets a call from his doctor, who says there was a mix-up with the tests and that Joe should be fine.

Unable to convince Marianna to cancel the contract, he soon is faced with a parade of killers — single operatives and groups, most with silly gimmicks and even sillier names. Most aren’t in Joe’s class, but Lovedahl (Terry Crews) proves to be a bit more of a problem.

Bautista (“Blade Runner 2049,” “Dune”) doesn’t have much range, and he isn’t called upon here to use his comedic gifts too often. That said, there’s simply something compelling about his performance, especially when he’s opposite “Gandhi” star Kinglsey or Boutella (“Atomic Blonde,” the “Rebel Moon” movies). It’s measured but not flat.

More time with Bautista and Klementieff would have helped “The Killer’s Game,” as, unsurprisingly, there’s a certain crackle to the limited time the two are in the frame together.

Pom Klementieff is a supporting player in “The Killer’s Game.” (Courtesy of Lionsgate)

A former professional wrestler, Bautista is, of course, imposing enough to be convincing in the myriad action sequences, most of which are, again, of the forgettable variety — even with all the gruesome deaths. Perry, who has a background in martial arts, hasn’t figured out how to deliver something special in this arena.

“The Killer’s Game” is afoot, but unless you’re looking for what’s only intermittently a pleasant distraction, one heavily seasoned with violence, you need not play.

‘The Killer’s Game’

Where: Theaters.

When: Sept. 13.

Rated: R for strong bloody violence throughout, language, some sexual material, brief drug use and nudity.

Runtime: 1 hour, 44 minutes.

Stars (of four): 2.

A crime occurs. The cops are stumped. If only they had the services of a colorful outside investigator to solve their case. A common subgenre of the police procedural, “High Potential” on ABC suggests the limits of this premise. Whether mildly theatrical or even absurd, the character needs to be more than their quirks. I wonder if Hollywood has taken the wrong lesson from these kinds of ungovernable fictional creations first embodied in the stories of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.

I’m desperate for the re-ascendance of old-school weekly broadcast shows — something, anything that distinguishes itself from the eight shows on offer from Dick Wolf across two networks — and “High Potential” (from Drew Goddard, whose credits include “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Alias” and “Lost”) starts off well enough.

Kaitlin Olson plays Morgan, a single mom who works the graveyard shift cleaning the offices of the Los Angeles Police Department. Dancing to music on her headphones, she accidentally knocks over a pile of crime scene photos and starts rifling through them. She’s transfixed. Then she looks over at the murder board. She walks up, grabs a marker, crosses out “suspect” under someone’s photo and writes “victim.”

Then she goes on with her night.

It’s such a tantalizing opening sequence (and a beat-for-beat recreation of the French series it’s adapted from) but strangely the show deflates from there. It’s quickly discovered that the cleaning woman — yes, that one, with the garish taste in fashion and loud mouth — has some helpful ideas about the case. She’s clever, with a good memory and a mind that sees patterns and makes connections, so she’s hired full-time, becoming the Erin Brockovich of police procedurals. The lieutenant (Judy Reyes, wasted in a nothing role) teams Morgan with a guy named Detective Karadec (Daniel Sunjata) who becomes her reluctant chaperone.

Olson is a good actor, but there’s not much versatility here; her line readings could just as easily come from the mouths of characters she plays on “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” or “Hacks.” Morgan is a handful, with a chip on her shoulder, often tipping over into obnoxious. That works on Olson’s other shows, but “High Potential” needs its lead to be at least somewhat likable. In the first episode, she berates a cashier at the grocery store; the moment doesn’t illustrate her ability to do math in her head, it just makes her look like a person who takes her frustrations out on an easy target, aka someone who is working class like herself.

The show’s obvious touchpoints are long-running series like “Castle,” “Monk,” “The Mentalist,” or, more recently, “Elsbeth” and “The Irrational.” The cops are incapable of doing their jobs without the help of a dogged oddball whose unwieldiness requires a certain amount of corralling from their police minders. That framework is a lackluster substitute for Poirot’s Hastings or Sherlock’s Watson, who weren’t professional acquaintances but actual friends and point-of-view characters who threaded the needle between admiration for their counterparts and pausing to note their more absurd or annoying personality tics. It’s one reason why CBS’s “Elementary” was a cut above the rest.

“High Potential” struggles to ground itself in solid storytelling and create fully realized characters, even when they are one-offs. A case-of-the-week structure requires a specific skill and I worry writers are out of practice: Establishing a new storyline and new characters each time, with enough detail and care to get buy-in from the audience, and then resolving the mystery 40-some minutes later. Episodes should be able to stand alone as crackerjack short stories, but the results here are thin and insubstantial.

That would be easier to overlook if there were some chemistry in the central dynamic. Morgan is brash and curious and obsessive. That’s good. But she’s spent her life underestimated by everyone and we don’t get a sense of what it means to have a job that’s fulfilling, pays well and finally validates her intellect. Instead she comes across as a snarky sitcom character— even when talking about murder — whereas Detective Karadec is wooden, macho and often on the verge of popping a vein or two. This pairing of opposites doesn’t create sparks so much as a repetitive cycle. She’s smug. He’s frustrated. It gets tiring awfully quick. That they will learn to grudgingly respect one another doesn’t delight the way it should. Better writing and better performance choices — more nuance, fewer archetypes — would go a long way.

“These are laws! Principles that I devoted my entire life to protecting!”  Karadec yells after Morgan has obtained evidence through theft. Earnest outrage is certainly one way to play the scene. If he had said it deadpan, suggesting that police have a far more fluid concept of professional ethics, well, then you’d be cooking with gas.

“High Potential” — 2 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: 9 p.m. Tuesdays on ABC

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic

Listen to an audio version of this article.

For the past decade, James Frinzi was a hired-gun lobbyist leveraging his deep political connections on behalf of an eclectic rotating roster of clients: investment firms in New York, various medical entities in Texas, the constitutional monarchy of Qatar, and the authoritarian defense minister of Indonesia.

But Frinzi’s employer had long been the Goodman family, a quintet of brothers with a vast web of telecom businesses based in Texas. In 2010, Frinzi became an executive and chief lobbyist for their flagship company, Goodman Networks Inc., a major contractor for AT&T, based then in Plano. 

In the years to come, however,Goodman Networks went into a downward spiral, culminating in 2021 with the company on the verge of insolvency with nearly $20 million in bonds coming due to outside bondholders in the next year, according to bankruptcy filings. 

By October 2021, James Goodman—the co-founder and majority owner of Goodman Networks—was the sole remaining board director and tapped Frinzi to act as CEO. Together Goodman and Frinzi, the former’s friend and “political fixer,” as a court document describes him, took control of the distressed company. 

“For the first time in a long while I’ll be taking a break from being in politics full time, to become the CEO of my client’s company, Goodman Networks,” Frinzi announced in a Facebook post that October. “It’s a very interesting and new challenge, including that I’m going to execute a rebranding and listing the company on NASDAQ.”

If all went well, Frinzi would use his contacts to lead the newly created Austin-based company, called Multiband Global, from penny stock obscurity to the cutting edge of the 5G revolution. As he launched the company, Frinzi turned to one of his closest, most powerful friends for support: Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton—and the AG’s wife, GOP state Senator Angela Paxton.  

In January 2022, Frinzi acquired a dormant public shell company in Nevada called American Metals Recovery and Recycling, Inc. (AMRR), according to court and corporate records, which then bought a telecom business using part of $44 million he’d transferred from Goodman Networks and reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a loan. 

He was now the CEO, chairman, and majority shareholder of a publicly traded company, AMRR, which he later renamed MBG Holdings Inc. and which did business as Multiband Global. One of his first acts was to appoint Senator Paxton to the company’s inaugural board of directors. (In this story, MBG Holdings—formerly AMRR—will generally be referred to as Multiband Global.) 

Senator Paxton, a former math teacher then in her first term as a state senator from Collin County, had little prior business experience—but her political and legislative experience, representing a district that’s home to major telecom companies, was touted as a key asset for Multiband Global. She served on the board, which would grow to six members, for about 14 months before resigning in March 2023. She and other directors were compensated with a quarterly stipend, Frinzi told the Texas Observer. Frinzi also donated $85,000 to Ken Paxton’s campaign just before and during Senator Paxton’s board tenure.

The Paxtons lent an air of prestige and legitimacy to Frinzi’s otherwise obscure company. Frinzi wasn’t shy about boasting of his cozy ties to the powerful Paxtons. “He loved to talk about his buddy Ken,” a former business associate who was involved with the company told the Observer.

In the summer of 2022, the Paxtons joined Frinzi on a trip to the Republic of Kosovo in Eastern Europe that included a meeting with members of a parliamentary committee to promote Multiband Global and to discuss the country’s relations with the United States and Texas and its need for American 5G technology. Their visit to Kosovo was a first step in Multiband Global’s plan to secure a foothold in the region. “Eastern Europe is a blue ocean for us,” Frinzi said in a February 2023 podcast interview.

With notoriously loose ethics laws, Texas has a long-held tradition of politicians freely mixing their public service with personal business interests. Still, Senator Paxton’s board position and the Paxtons’ Kosovo visit on behalf of a friend and donor’s company were unusual and largely unknown to the public. 

“That was clearly orchestrated by Frinzi to try to sell the company to foreign investors and foreign governments. That was the point of it, to make it look very legitimate and powerful by having public officials on the board and helping sell the company,” said Craig Holman, an ethics expert for the government watchdog Public Citizen. “Public officials should not be involved in this type of activity at all.” 

Multiband Global turned out to be a house of cards constructed by Frinzi that would eventually collapse, according to court records and corporate filings. 

“What we see is Mr. Frinzi in Europe on a private jet … fiddling while Rome Burns.”

Interrelated federal lawsuits filed over the past 15 months depict Frinzi as a central figure in an alleged corporate fraud scheme involving Goodman Networks. Over the course of several months in late 2021 and early 2022, Frinzi and James Goodman and others engaged in a “conspiracy to enrich themselves” at the expense of the failed company and its creditors and carried out a “general pattern of looting” according to one of the filings by the trustee in the Goodman Networks’ bankruptcy. Frinzi and Goodman allegedly carried out various schemes that together diverted more than $80 million in cash and other assets from the failed company to other entities they controlled and to themselves, according to claims in several lawsuits filed by the trustee and by a creditor. 

The allegations of corporate plunder first came to light in the fall of 2022 as creditors forced Goodman Networks into bankruptcy in the Northern District of Texas federal bankruptcy court accusing Frinzi, James Goodman, and other company insiders of “serious and brazen misconduct.”

The Goodman Networks bankruptcy has been an unusually contentious, complex, and costly legal battle led by veteran Dallas lawyer Scott Seidel, the court-appointed trustee who was put in control of the company and charged with investigating the alleged fraudulent transfers and recovering the money on behalf of creditors. Since May 2023, Seidel has filed several suits against the Goodman insiders in an attempt to recover the funneled assets.

Over the course of the bankruptcy proceedings, Seidel’s lawyers have described Frinzi as “unsophisticated,” “unexperienced,” “easily-manipulated” by his superiors, a “crooked CEO,” and a “swindler” who ultimately got “swindled” himself, court filings and a transcript show. In response to the allegations, some representatives of the Goodman family or company have claimed Frinzi was a rogue actor—while other players in the litigation say he was far from alone.

“Clearly, Mr. Frinzi is a bad guy and a bad actor, there’s no question about that,” Paul Silverstein, a lawyer for the bondholders, said at a hearing in December 2022. “But the Goodmans are way up there on the list. [Frinzi] wasn’t the lone gunman here.” 

The Observer first reported last August on the Paxtons’ ties to Frinzi, the senator’s board position at Multiband Global, and some of the bankruptcy claims against Frinzi. At that time, Frinzi denied allegations the trustee had made against him and downplayed the Paxtons’ involvement. “Ken didn’t do anything to help Multiband Global at all,” he told the Observer. “And Angela has nothing to do with” any of the alleged activities the trustee described in lawsuits. 

In October of that year the shipping giant FedEx, the biggest and most aggressive creditor in the Goodman Networks bankruptcy, filed a related civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) lawsuit against Frinzi and James Goodman, along with more than 20 other individuals and entities, claiming they conspired to orchestrate a “protracted and multi-faceted scheme to defraud” FedEx by stealing more than $67 million and then laundering it “through a series of fraudulent transactions and shell companies” back to themselves, according to the 178-page complaint. Fedex has called Multiband Global “nothing more than the proceeds of a sophisticated fraudulent scheme.”

In both formal court filings and responses to the Observer, Frinzi and James Goodman have generally denied the allegations, though each points the finger at the other. Goodman claims his signature was forged on the $44 million loan to Multiband Global and that he didn’t learn about it until after the company was forced into bankruptcy. He said his lawyers reported the suspected forgery to the FBI. “I regret allowing James Frinzi into the company and him becoming CEO; it was a mistake,” Goodman said in email responses to the Observer last November. 

Goodman “expressly rejected” Frinzi’s proposal to use company funds to acquire a new business through AMRR, but Frinzi went ahead anyway, according to the trustee.

Frinzi denies this in court. In his responses to the Observer, Frinzi also said he believed the FedEx lawsuit would get tossed out and that he had “settled my case” with the trustee. In a text message, he implied James Goodman’s accusations against him were merely to protect Goodman’s own assets. “Goodman has private jets, real estate, cash, so of course he wants to deflect. Wouldn’t you?” Frinzi said in a July message. “One of your questions was if I think I was a scapegoat,” he said in a follow-up email. “Yes, there is no question to that.” Frinzi also said he’s never heard from the FBI.

During the time of the alleged fraud, Frinzi lived a luxury lifestyle befitting an up-and-coming corporate CEO. Frinzi bought a $1.8 million lake house in the Hill Country resort town of Horseshoe Bay, purchased a nearby plot of land that secured him membership in the prestigious Escondido Golf Club, and spent approximately $300,000 on a 25-foot ski boat and jet skis. He also began driving a brand new $200,000 Bentley, according to a sales record, and bought another home valued at more than $1.2 million in an exclusive gated community in West Austin.

The trustee has alleged that the lake home, the golf club plot, and boats were purchased with over $4.4 million in embezzled cash, though he has not linked the funds used to purchase the Austin house or the Bentley to the alleged fraud, court records show. 

At the same time, Frinzi loaded Multiband Global’s corporate payroll with friends and family and spent eye-popping amounts of time and money on foreign business trips, according to the trustee. He also doled out gobs of campaign donations: Between 2021 and 2023, Frinzi contributed more than $300,000 to state and federal campaigns–including to Ken Paxton, according to campaign finance records.

But Frinzi’s high life didn’t last long. 

James Frinzi—a tattooed 51-year-old Wisconsin native with curly silvered hair, an apparent penchant for the musician Yanni, and a taste for gourmet cuisine—made his way to Austin in the early 2000s, where as a lobbyist and consultant he developed connections throughout the world of Republican politics. “I’ve met some of the richest people in America, some of the most influential people in America, and I still have relationships with those people,” Frinzi said in a 2020 podcast interview. 

Upon its launch in 2022, Multiband Global had the look of a hot corporate commodity. The company brought on several C-suite executives and consultants and rolled out a line of telecom products—headlined by a patented “smart pole” for urban 5G cell coverage. The company’s PR helped generate buzz among some day traders looking for the next penny stock to hit big, and its stock price enjoyed a modest initial surge. But, in reality, Multiband Global would tank and within two years be delisted by the SEC.

On December 23, 2021, Frinzi acquired the majority of shares in AMRR (now MBG Holdings) for $500,000 through a Delaware LLC he set up called Multiband Global Resources. (That same day, he gave $40,000 to Ken Paxton’s campaign.) By that point, Frinzi and James Goodman allegedly knew that Goodman Networks was insolvent and had ordered the company to stop paying its main creditor, FedEx, causing tens of millions of dollars to accrue in the Goodman company’s bank accounts, according to FedEx’s lawsuit. In January, Frinzi began wiring out a total of $44 million into Multiband Global, then executed the loan documents. 

Within its first several months, Multiband Global was operating deep in the red, according to court documents which describe Frinzi living like a corporate hotshot while his company was failing to thrive. By the end of September 2022, when the first monthly payment on the Goodman loan came due, Frinzi failed to pay, records show. Frinzi had allegedly been duped into paying $40 million for a business worth far less, rendering Multiband Global insolvent, one trustee lawsuit claims. 

Around this same time, creditors had petitioned to force Goodman Networks into bankruptcy. That effort dragged on for months as the Goodman family tried to maintain control of the company. By early 2023, attempts by the Goodmans and Frinzi to fend off, delay, or otherwise control the process were defeated. 

“This house of cards is collapsing,” said Multiband Global’s restructuring officer. (Jon Stich)

A routine bankruptcy case involves identifying a troubled company’s assets and creditors, then settling its debts through legal negotiations. But the Goodman Networks bankruptcy has been anything but typical. When Seidel, the veteran Dallas trustee in control of Goodman Networks, and his team went to work, they found a company “stripped” of nearly all its assets, bankruptcy filings state. He quickly set his sights on Frinzi and Multiband Global, where most of the company’s assets had been moved. 

Frinzi initially promised to find a way for Multiband Global to repay the $44 million loan, and he spent weeks negotiating with the trustee, according to Seidel and his lawyers. In early March 2023, Frinzi had the trustee fly to meet him in Miami, saying he had an investor who would provide financing if they could quickly reach a settlement, according to Seidel’s testimony. The trustee has testified that they reached a tentative agreement but that Frinzi did not follow through. Lawyers for Multiband have disputed that an agreement was reached.

On March 24 of last year, Senator Paxton resigned from the Multiband Global board, according to corporate filings. Frinzi told the Observer last year that Paxton’s resignation was due to her busy schedule during the legislative session. Her departure, however, coincided with the similarly abrupt resignations of the company’s outside auditor and chief financial officer—right before financial reports were due to the SEC. Many other top executives left the imploding company soon after; Frinzi was forced out as CEO last July. 

Seidel saw the resignations of Senator Paxton and others as a sign of “very serious issues” within the company and scrambled to force Multiband Global to hand over its financial records and corporate documents, including those that could detail board directors’ involvement or knowledge of various alleged fraudulent transactions, as well as their compensation and other benefits. “Anything short of full transparency at this stage only reeks of shenanigans and mischief, and invites aggressive action,” he said in a court filing. 

Seidel warned that Frinzi had been carelessly running Multiband Global, the key asset in the bankruptcy, into the ground while posting photos of his luxe lifestyle on Instagram.“What we see is Mr. Frinzi in Europe on a private jet being wined and dined and wining and dining people on a daily basis, fiddling while Rome Burns,” said a lawyer working for Seidel in a May 2023 hearing. 

Senator Paxton has not been the subject of any lawsuits, nor have there been any suggestions in court proceedings that she engaged in wrongdoing as a board director.

FedEx, however, made a point of referencing her position at Frinzi’s troubled company in its civil RICO lawsuit. “The theft and money laundering involved a publicly traded company regulated by the Securities Exchange Commission and traded on the Over-the-Counter market with tenacles [sic] extending to a Texas Senator, who is the wife of the Texas Attorney General,” the lawsuit states.

“Angela and a lot of other people were uncovering strong reasons to resign,” Senton Kaçaniku, a Kosovo businessman and political operative who is friends with the Paxtons, wrote in a tweet responding to the Observer’s story last August. Kaçaniku, whom Frinzi hired to help build Multiband Global’s business in Eastern Europe, organized their 2022 visit to Kosovo. “Frinzi likes to say a lot of things which are not true. … Many of us made the mistake of taking what this guy says at face value,” Kaçaniku said. 

The serious allegations against Frinzi and Multiband Global contained in the interrelated court filings raise questions—which the Paxtons have so far refused to address—about the extent of their involvement with an alleged bad actor and his company. These questions include what the Paxtons knew about the origins of Frinzi’s company, what the Paxtons’ connections are to the Goodmans, how much, if anything, Senator Paxton knew about the $44 million loan and Frinzi’s alleged fraudulent transactions benefitting Multiband Global while she was on the board, who paid for the Paxtons’ extensive travel in Eastern Europe, and to what extent, if any, the Paxtons further benefited from their involvement with the company. 

Senator Paxton’s board position was disclosed in Multiband Global’s SEC filings but was not widely known to the public. The Paxtons weren’t required to declare her board position in state financial disclosure reports for 2022 until June 2023, three months after she’d resigned. At that time, the senator did not disclose receiving a board stipend (which Frinzi has said she received) or any other compensation, including for travel costs, or other benefits from the company. Andrew Cates, a Texas ethics attorney, told the Observer legislators must disclose “occupational income” but it is not clear whether board stipends qualify.

The Paxtons’ 2022 visit to Kosovo was part of a lengthy European sojourn that began with them joining Frinzi’s post-wedding celebration on the Mediterranean in Italy and included stays in Rome, a Greek island, a Malta beach resort town, and Albania, according to Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) security detail logs. It’s not known whether they paid their own way or how much the multi-week trip cost. Their trip did cost taxpayers roughly $85,000 for travel, lodging, and meals for the DPS security team, records show. 

Angela Paxton did not respond to the Observer’s requests for comment, nor did Ken Paxton’s campaign or the attorney general’s office. 

Unlike in Texas, members of Congress are banned from serving on the corporate boards of publicly traded companies: The House passed the rule in 2019 after former New York Representative Chris Collins was convicted for insider trading involving a public company for which he was a board director and majority shareholder. Members of Congress are also required to disclose information about all privately funded foreign travel. 

New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez was recently convicted and Laredo Congressman Henry Cuellar was recently indicted, each in separate cases, for allegedly taking kickbacks and illegally serving as agents for foreign interests. All U.S. senators must affirm that privately sponsored trips are in connection to office-holder duties and do not “create the appearance” of using public office for private gain.

There are few such guardrails in Texas’ part-time Legislature, where many members have private-sector jobs, own businesses, or hold investments in companies with interests before the state. Many of the Paxtons’ financial holdings are held in a blind trust, which was created to avoid conflicts of interest for the AG, who regularly oversees criminal and civil cases involving companies. Over time, it has served to obscure the full scope of their real estate and business interests.

There’s no indication that Senator Paxton, who resigned from the board midway through the 2023 legislative session, used her public office to influence legislation or other government action on behalf of Multiband Global. But the company did have at least a limited legislative agenda. Frinzi’s associate Corey Ticknor was registered to lobby for Multiband Global in 2023. His disclosure reports listed his title as Multiband Global’s vice president of government relations. Ticknor worked under Frinzi’s direction and was employed through a Wyoming entity called World Conquest LLC, which belongs to Frinzi. Ticknor, a former legislative director for South Texas state Representative Ryan Guillen, spent over $1,000 on meals for his former boss, according to lobbying disclosures. 

Guillen filed a bill that ordered the state to develop certain “best practices” for awarding billions in new federal broadband expansion funds. Multiband Global promoted the legislation in a social media post implying the bill would help the company tap into state broadband funds for its wireless smart poles. “BiNG BONG this is gonna be a Gold Rush,” one apparent investor tweeted. (The bill died without a committee hearing.) 

Guillen did not respond to requests for comment. 

At its height in the early 2010s, the Goodman family’s sprawling network of businesses and assets—headlined by Goodman Networks, which was headquartered in Collin County–had nationwide operations and revenues over $1 billion, according to company reports.

As cofounder and majority shareholder of Goodman Networks, James Goodman has long been the chief of the family enterprise, seconded by John Goodman, who served as CEO and chairman of Goodman Networks before spinning off his own firm in 2020. Three other Goodman brothers—Jonathan, Jason, and Joseph—have been involved with the business over the years. 

Through their businesses, the Goodmans became wealthy and well connected. 

Independently, James and John are each major donors to their alma mater, Texas A&M University. The university’s Division 1 golf complex bears the name of James and his wife. James lives in San Antonio, where he ran another company known as Genesis Networks that became closely affiliated with Goodman Networks. He also owns a multi-million-dollar mansion in Horseshoe Bay, near Frinzi’s own lakehouse. 

James and John were both longtime friends of Frinzi and both have ties to Attorney General Paxton.

John Goodman, a major donor to Governor Greg Abbott’s 2014 campaign, was appointed by Abbott in 2015 to the advisory board of the Governor’s University Research Initiative. Goodman listed his “friend” Ken Paxton as a reference on his appointment application, which the Observer obtained in a public records request. 

Sometime ahead of Attorney General Paxton’s 2022 reelection, James Goodman met Paxton at a coffee shop in Boerne, Goodman said in responses provided to the Observer by his lawyer. Goodman didn’t say why they met or what they discussed, though he offered at the meeting to lend Paxton a private plane to fly him round trip from Dallas to Washington, D.C., for a November U.S. Supreme Court hearing. That private air travel cost $12,000, according to AG Paxton’s campaign finance records. Goodman said he otherwise had “no relationship” with the Paxtons. 

Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks at the
2024 Texas GOP Convention in San Antonio in May. (Bryan Olin Dozier/NurPhoto via AP)

Frinzi joined Goodman Networks in 2010 as its vice president of government relations, lobbying for telecom-related legislation and government contracts in Texas and a handful of other states. The Goodman brothers are Hispanic, allowing Goodman Networks to be certified as a “minority business enterprise,” a status that was critical to securing business with major customers like AT&T, according to corporate records. Frinzi’s gig was lucrative: He received over $300,000 a year, according to his lobbying records. 

Frinzi temporarily parted ways with Goodman Networks in 2015 and set up his own lobbying firm, but he returned to lobbying for the Goodman company in 2017, state records show. By that point, Goodman Networks was in crisis, with mass layoffs and an exodus of top executives, and was forced to enter bankruptcy—separate from the second bankruptcy that is still ongoing—to restructure its debt. The company never fully recovered, though, as revenue continued to decline, according to court filings. 

The death knell came in October 2021 when AT&T ended its relationship with the Goodman businesses amid ongoing legal disputes, court filings show. Frinzi was made CEO—with James Goodman the sole remaining board director—to purportedly wind down the business, settle debts, and possibly spin off its few remaining assets into a new company, court records say. 

In mid-December 2021, Frinzi joined Paxton and other AG employees at a small Christmas party hosted at the home of a top deputy, photos posted on social media show. Under investigation for bribery and abuse of office by the FBI, Paxton was heading into a big primary battle in 2022. The lobbyist’s attendance at the soiree was perhaps a perk of his longtime friendship with the conservative firebrand, dating back to the early 2000s when Paxton first joined the Texas House. 

“He’s one of my best friends,” Frinzi told the Observer last year. “We do a lot of stuff together.” 

Government records provide glimpses of their continued ties over the years. In 2012, then-state Representative Paxton disclosed that Frinzi paid him up to $5,000 for “services rendered to a lobbyist.” Frinzi says he had Paxton, a probate attorney, rewrite his family will in preparation for Frinzi’s first divorce. In 2013, Frinzi gave then-state Senator Ken Paxton a “tailored men’s blazer” valued at over $450, lobby gift records show. 

The relationship continued after Paxton became attorney general in January 2015. Photos on social media show Frinzi with the Paxtons and other top Texas politicians at the 2016 Republican National Convention. In 2018, Frinzi donated $5,000 to Angela Paxton’s state Senate campaign. In the summer of 2020, Frinzi dined with the Paxtons at Odd Duck, a restaurant in Austin, according to a social media post.

A week after the 2021 Christmas party, Frinzi gave $40,000 to Attorney General Ken Paxton’s campaign. A few weeks later, he appointed Senator Paxton to the board of his company. 

When Frinzi married his third wife at an Austin synagogue in June 2022, the Paxtons sat up front. 

The guestlist also included James Goodman and his close friend Shalom Auerbach, another key co-defendant in the FedEx lawsuit, who are shown in wedding photos seated together at the reception dinner. Auerbach, a New York financier, had allegedly already helped facilitate a series of “sham” transactions with Frinzi to cash out James Goodmans’ bonds and shares, according to the lawsuits. Auerbach also served as a Multiband Global board director with Senator Paxton for several months before resigning in August 2022, claiming in bankruptcy court testimony that Frinzi “was in way over his head” and that he, Auerbach, resigned because “the advice that I was giving was not being taken.” 

“I’ve already kind of thought about this. After you read these messages please delete them.”

While in Kosovo in July 2022, Frinzi and the Paxtons visited a prominent memorial to a leader who fell in the nation’s 1998 war for independence against Serbia. They also toured the mattress factory of a company called Comodita, which exports to the United States and has a facility in the Houston suburbs, according to business records and a company press release. 

Comodita is part of Devolli Corporation—owned by Shkëlqim Devolli, one of Kosovo’s wealthiest industrialists. In September 2022, Devolli visited the States and met with several politicians including Senator Ted Cruz and Governor Abbott. He also attended the wedding of former President Donald Trump’s daughter at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. 

In October 2022, Visar Jakupi, identified in campaign finance reports as a Devolli Corporation employee, gave a $50,000 check to Attorney General Paxton’s campaign. He also contributed $50,000 to Abbott and $5,000 to state Representative Guillen. A New Jersey resident, Jakupi had never before contributed to any campaign aside from two prior donations to a New York politician, according to a review of publicly available campaign finance databases.

Devolli Corporation and Jakupi did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Frinzi told the Observer he had nothing to do with Devolli’s meetings with Cruz and Abbott and had no knowledge of the campaign contributions. 

After Kosovo, the Paxtons journeyed on to Albania, without Frinzi, where they were hosted by Fatmir Mediu, a deeply connected member of parliament who chairs Albania’s small right-wing Republican Party. For years, Mediu has been involved in foreign lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C., and built connections with many Republican Congress members. At the time, he was under investigation in his home country, and last year he went on trial for his part as defense minister in a 2008 explosion at an ammo depot, related to an allegedly corrupt arms deal, that killed 26. 

Mediu posted several photos on his social media with the Paxtons and two of their travel companions outside a hotel in the Albanian capital of Tirana and in Vlore, a tourist destination with seaside resorts and casinos. 

Shortly after the Paxtons’ visit, Mediu made his own visit to Texas, where social media posts show he met with friends of the Paxtons. Mediu also met with Frinzi on his next Multiband Global trip in January 2023 to the United Kingdom and Eastern Europe, according to Frinzi’s Instagram post. 

Frinzi shared a photo of himself with Mediu on the 2023 trip: “Had a great time in Albania. Everyone was so generous and fantastic! Looking forward to expanding our business in The Balkans.”

Frinzi denied to the Observer that Mediu had any role with Multiband Global. Mediu did not respond to messages requesting comment. 

Seidel, the seasoned bankruptcy trustee, and his team of lawyers have steadily filed one lawsuit after another against the alleged bad actors, Frinzi and the Goodmans chief among them. “We are moving on all fronts against the bad guys,” Seidel testified last fall. 

But FedEx, the largest creditor with its $81 million claim in the case, was unhappy with the trustee’s handling of the proceedings, court records show, and separately decided to take more aggressive action of its own. Late last October, the company dropped a bombshell lawsuit against Frinzi, James Goodman, and many of the other defendants being pursued by Seidel, alleging that their coordinated schemes amounted to a civil racketeering conspiracy. If successful, plaintiffs can win triple damages under a civil RICO statute. 

FedEx claims that Frinzi and Goodman spearheaded a sophisticated conspiracy to defraud the logistics company in conjunction with other Goodman brothers and additional entities. To fund the scheme, they allegedly tapped Goodman Networks’ largest remaining cash stream: a contract with FedEx to resell mobile phone accessories. Under the arrangement, “Millions of dollars per month would flow” back and forth from FedEx to Goodman Networks, with the latter getting only a small percentage fee for each transaction, according to FedEx’s lawsuit.

As CEO of Goodman Networks, Frinzi allegedly executed a plan to benefit and protect the Goodman family and their assets, and he was well aware of the legal risks, according to texts and emails FedEx included in its lawsuit. “I think the goal here is to isolate liability to each respective organization, and not get personally dragged into litigation,” Frinzi wrote in an email to James Goodman and others on November 10, 2021. “Also, as a practical matter for me, my name is going to be on all of the lawsuits, and I will have to bear the responsibility of settling with creditors. That’s fine and what I signed up for [with] the turnaround plan.”

Frinzi continued: “First and foremost I want a plan that protects people with the last name Goodman, and myself from personal liability. Then protect each respective asset and develop a plan that is reasonable with the bond holders and trade debt creditors.”

At one point in their frequent text communications, Frinzi told Goodman that the “restructuring plan is bulletproof and will lead to us each owning our own home in La Jolla,” a wealthy coastal enclave in San Diego. 

Frinzi and other employees never told FedEx representatives that the Goodman company was insolvent and closing down and instead actively worked to deceive FedEx in order to keep the cash flowing in, the lawsuit alleges. Then, in November 2021, Frinzi ordered Goodman staff to stop wiring money back to FedEx, according to the lawsuit. When FedEx inquired about outstanding payments, Frinzi allegedly had an employee run interference—falsely claiming that the delays were because the company was transferring to a new accounting system, the lawsuit says. As a result, FedEx continued wiring funds to Goodman, causing roughly $80 million to accumulate in a Goodman bank account. 

Frinzi wired roughly $50 million to finance his Multiband Global enterprise, then allegedly began plotting with James Goodman on schemes to use the rest of the company’s tens of millions to covertly cash out Goodman’s large cache of Goodman Networks bonds and shares, according to court records. They coordinated the details in frequent text messages on the secure messaging app Signal, some of which are revealed in the FedEx lawsuit. 

In mid-January 2022, James Goodman asked Frinzi to come up with a way for him to liquidate $3.5 million in company assets. “I will figure it out. No problem. I’ll have it done legally by Tuesday or Wednesday. I will get you the transaction by Monday,” Frinzi said in a text message quoted in the FedEx lawsuit. “I’ve already kind of thought about this. After you read these messages please delete them.” Goodman texted back, “I delete them at the end of the day.”

Clockwise from left: Ken Paxton, James Goodman, James Frinzi, Angela Paxton (AP Images, Facebook, genesisnet.com)

A few days later, Frinzi proposed that Goodman sell some of his company stock through a third-party sale for $4 million in cash. “Otherwise I have a plan through Antigua,” Frinzi texted Goodman. 

Frinzi followed up that day with another text promising that “I will get you 80 million in 4 years.” Goodman replied: “I will be dreaming of the $80 Million.” Two days later, Goodman asked Frinzi how much cash the company had remaining. Sixty million dollars or so, Frinzi replied, adding that they should meet soon. “I have a plan to get most money back to you, without exposing you are the beneficiary and a reasonable settlement for creditors.”

The following day, Frinzi texted Goodman that he had set up an offshore entity for him in Antigua, the Carribean island tax haven. Although it’s not clear what the firm’s purpose was, Antiguan incorporation records show that the company was registered on February 9, 2022, by an attorney who specializes in setting up companies and trusts to protect assets for high net worth people. Goodman said in a statement that his lawyer provided to the Observer last November that he had originally intended to use the entity to benefit from Antigua’s tax-free zone but never used it. “No money or assets were ever transferred to that company, and to my knowledge it has never conducted any business.” FedEx does not claim in its lawsuit that the entity was used as part of the alleged schemes.

FedEx also claims Frinzi and James and John Goodman committed bankruptcy fraud in an attempt to thwart efforts to recover assets for Goodman Networks’ creditors. FedEx also claimed in its original complaint that MBG Holdings “knowingly and fraudulently transferred and concealed assets and funds” and made false statements and claims in an effort to “frustrate” the efforts of the trustee. (In an amended complaint filed last month, FedEx withdrew its RICO claims against MBG Holdings.)

Senator Paxton served on the board of directors during part of the period when the company was allegedly mismanaged, but she is not accused of any wrongful acts in the lawsuits or bankruptcy filings, according to court and corporate records. 

Frinzi, James Goodman, and the other Goodman brothers, along with their associated defendants, have all filed motions to dismiss FedEx’s lawsuit, arguing that it fails to meet the high legal standard for RICO violations. “FedEx attempts to have this Court believe the Frinzi Defendants, and other Defendants, concocted a salacious, coordinated scheme worthy of a John Grisham novel to launder money,” Frinzi’s lawyer argued in his motion. 

The trustee has also separately accused Frinzi of buying his Horseshoe Bay lakehouse and country club plot with the millions he allegedly embezzled using an LLC he owned called Multiband Global Resources, according to claims Seidel filed in a lawsuit against Frinzi. Frinzi then transferred ownership of the real estate from that LLC to a family trust he’d set up. This transfer was “actual fraud,” according to allegations made in the trustee’s lawsuit, and was done with the intent to keep creditors from recovering Frinzi’s assets. 

“In all the cases, I have denied the allegations and will continue to contest this litigation,” Frinzi said in an email to the Observer. 

Multiband Global’s financial troubles reached a breaking point last summer. 

Frinzi was pushed out as CEO of Multiband Global, according to 2023 testimony from the company’s chief restructuring officer, yet he retained his $500,000 salary—even as other employees were abruptly axed.

“It’s just been weeks of literally putting out fires, and I don’t know how much longer it can last. I’d be surprised if we can get beyond the next payroll,” Multiband Global’s restructuring officer Joseph Baum said at a bankruptcy hearing last September. “This house of cards is collapsing.” 

Over the past year, Seidel has worked with Baum to sell off Multiband Global’s barely surviving businesses for pennies on the dollar, with the proceeds going to Goodman Networks’ estate.

Frinzi has since moved on to other endeavors—including becoming an international arms dealer, according to documents and an email he sent the Observer. 

In June 2023, he registered World Conquest LLC in Texas, got a federal firearms license to import and sell guns and ammunition, and began doing business as “World Conquest Armory.” Frinzi told the Observer he needed a new job after being ousted from Multiband Global and that he has “an interest in the industry.”

“I have a license to deal arms internationally, a license to manufacture arms, and I have Classified Security Clearance, which is renewed annually,” he told the Observer. “If even 1% of what you paint me as [were] true, I would have those licenses and clearances pulled.”

He also set up a company called Danube Defense that deals in “defense products,” according to business filings. Frinzi said the firm only operates outside the United States. 

Last September—as Paxton was on trial for impeachment and then acquitted by the Senate of charges relating to alleged corruption and official acts he took on behalf of his real estate mogul friend Nate Paul—Frinzi was cozying up with a new Texas Republican: U.S. Senator Cruz. On September 1, Frinzi played golf with Cruz at the former’s Horseshoe Bay country club, then hosted a fundraiser for the Cruz Victory Fund at his lakehouse. That month, Frinzi contributed nearly $70,000 to Ted Cruz’s campaign and affiliated PACs, along with a $41,300 check to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and $10,000 to the Texas GOP. Cruz did not respond to requests for comment. 

Frinzi continued to spend much of his time in Europe and, in addition to arms dealing, he apparently has returned to lobbying. In August 2023, he was pitching Governor Abbott’s business development team on supporting a liquefied natural gas deal on behalf of a Bulgarian energy company called Energiko, according to emails the Observer obtained through a public information request. 

One of the governor’s aides tried following up with Frinzi in late August 2023, but his call didn’t go through. “Are you free now? I can talk,” Frinzi emailed back shortly after. “I’m at my Horseshoe Bay house with poor reception.” 

The allegations against Frinzi and Multiband Global contained in interrelated court filings raise questions—which the Paxtons have so far refused to address. (Jon Stich)

Bankruptcy court is not the place for bringing bad actors to justice but rather for cold economic calculations. Trustees are in the business of finding assets and settling debts, though they can make referrals to prosecutors if they uncover alleged criminal acts. Maximizing recovery for creditors means trustees sometimes cut unsavory deals to settle claims and monetize assets, avoiding long, costly, and risky litigation. The Goodman Networks case has been a prime example. 

The trustee, Seidel, has filed four lawsuits with various claims against Frinzi—most recently in June with a claim seeking over $40 million from Frinzi and the Goodman brothers for widespread alleged breaches of fiduciary duty at Goodman Networks. But he has so far avoided suing Multiband Global for fear of forcing the fragile company into bankruptcy or destroying the dwindling value of its businesses.

Frinzi’s bankruptcy lawyers quit in May, citing “substantial fees” owed, though they filed court notices in September to represent him again. At this point, most of the money recovered by the trustee could come from the multiple liability insurance policies that Goodman Networks took out before its collapse, according to court records. 

It could still take years to resolve Seidel’s claims, and even if he wins judgments, actually clawing back assets could be a pyrrhic task. Knowing this, the trustee entered into a limited settlement agreement, approved by the court in June, which targets what the settlement describes as $4 million that Frinzi embezzled and used “for his personal benefit and enjoyment.” Frinzi’s family trust was ordered to pay $1.2 million in exchange for dropping claims against the trust.

The family trust was required to pay that amount within 180 days and to provide the trustee with deeds for the vacation home in Horseshoe Bay, the country club plot, and multiple watercrafts as a guarantee of payment, though the trust could retain those properties if the settlement was paid by other means. In April, Frinzi put his West Austin home on the market for $1.9 million, the listing headlined with “Motivated Seller!” 

“Every creditor in this case [knows] what Frinzi has done and that the Estate has claims against him worth tens of millions of dollars,” the trustee declared in a motion to approve the settlement. As of mid-August, those claims against Frinzi and others remain pending. 

The comparatively small proceeds from Frinzi’s lifestyle liquidation in Texas will go to the Goodman Networks estate. Another company owned by James Goodman declared bankruptcy earlier this year, as did John Goodman and his own company. 

Meanwhile, Frinzi told the Observer in July that he’d recently moved across the world. “I live in Dubai now,” he said.

Downtown Stillwater is about to get a makeover.

The city of Stillwater is replacing its downtown streetlights. (Courtesy of the city of Stillwater)

Starting Monday, crews will begin installing new LED streetlights — about 240 in all — throughout the downtown area. The city is spending about $3.6 million on the project, said City Administrator Joe Kohlmann.

Many of the streetlights in downtown were installed in 1991; others were installed in 1999 by Xcel Energy.

“It’s modern technology, but they also have a historic aesthetic,” Kohlmann said.

Another bonus: The black aluminum SiteLink poles have a modular track system for mounting flower pots, flags and banner attachments, Kohlmann said.

“This improvement project will continue to enhance Stillwater’s position as a premier destination,” Kohlmann said.

Work is expected to start on Mulberry Street and Water Street, and then shift to Myrtle Street and Nelson Street. Following boring, crews will be removing existing equipment, constructing new foundations, and then restoring pavement and concrete.

Installation is expected to continue throughout the fall, as weather permits, and be completed in the spring, Kohlmann said. For more information, go to https://www.stillwatermn.gov/downtown-lighting.

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