Home / Scallywags & Crew / Capt. Joseph J. Frohnhoefer Jr.
The Founder (1983) · Deceased
Capt. Joseph J. Frohnhoefer Jr.
Founder of Sea Tow Services International · Signatory of the 1989 Assurance of Discontinuance
- Also known as
- “Joe 2” — the father, never to be conflated with Joe 3
- Founded STSI
- 1983, Southold, NY
- AG summons
- April 18, 1988 — 120 Broadway, Room 23-122
- Signed AoD
- December 1989, notarized in Suffolk County
The origin story — and the one before it
The official history says Captain Joseph J. Frohnhoefer Jr. founded Sea Tow in Southold, New York in 1983, after the Coast Guard stepped back from non-emergency tows. The public record, however, contains a curiosity we file under BIG QUESTIONS: a Florida corporation named SEA TOW, INC. Doc. 408894, filed September 18, 1972 in Rockledge, Florida by principals Billy R. Todd, Autry Todd, and Jere E. Lober — dissolved October 1974, nine years before the “founding.” Coincidence of names? Perhaps. We simply note that the water was not as uncharted as the brochure suggests.
1988: the People come calling
On April 18, 1988, Sheldon Horowitz of the New York Attorney General’s Investor Protection & Securities Bureau wrote to Frohnhoefer directly Doc. 192-2. The letter informed him that franchise sales had been regulated in New York since January 1, 1981, that a registered prospectus was required, and that — in the Bureau’s words — “Our records show no registration of a Sea Tow prospectus.” He was ordered to appear at 120 Broadway on April 26, 1988.
1989: the signature that never expires
The matter resolved in December 1989 with an Assurance of Discontinuance Doc. 192-3, in which the Attorney General alleged that Sea Tow “is a franchisor engaged in the offer and sale of franchises,” that it sold franchises from 1984–1988 for a $2,500 initial fee, and that doing so unregistered violated General Business Law Article 33. Frohnhoefer signed personally, under oath. A companion settlement Doc. 192-4 bound “Sea Tow and Frohnhoefer” not to violate the franchise law — in the regulator’s own extraordinary phrase — “from now until the end of time.” The Assurance armed the AG with a permanent-injunction trigger on ten days’ notice, with proof of violation serving as prima facie proof. That clause, as far as we know, is still loaded.
Captain Frohnhoefer has passed, and we tip our tricorn to any mariner who spent a life pulling boaters off sandbars. But the paper he signed did not pass with him. It sits today as a public exhibit in his children’s federal lawsuit — filed, with some irony, by Sea Tow’s own counsel.
⚓ Why it matters to the case
Every question on this site runs through the founder’s 1989 signature. The Assurance of Discontinuance is the reason “we’ve never been a franchise” is such a complicated sentence for Sea Tow to say: the State of New York alleged in a formal enforcement document that it is a franchisor, and the company’s escape hatch — a restructured $500 “sales materials” agreement blessed only by an informal, heavily disclaimed 1989 staff letter Doc. 192-5 — describes an agreement that, as far as we can tell, no longer exists in its 1989 form. The lock was changed decades ago; the company still shows everyone the old key.