Changing channels: even when the reception was good, nobody had a clear picture of these Southern Pines enterprises.

• Author: Moriarty, Matthew
• Position: Feature - Gatelinx Communicator

Starting over is nothing new for David Hagen. He's doing it again after a fight with its only supplier wiped out Southern Pines-based Prime TV LLC, a seller of satellite-television systems that he expected to generate $70 million in revenue this year. But he has come back from tougher spots--bankruptcy and prison, for example--with lesser prospects.

In a boardroom in a building that once was a Winn-Dixie, it's hard to tell whether anything is bothering him. He's wearing brown leather Italian loafers. The top three buttons of his royal-blue shirt are open. He raises to his lips a bottle of water imported from the Fiji Islands. His thick, dark-brown hair is perfect. He's fit. He and his wife, Annette, wake up early every day to work out in Pinehurst.

The glowing white letters on the sign outside announce Hagen's future: Gatelinx. The company makes software, called Gatelinx Communicator, that links computers in a way that allows them to swap high-quality video, audio, text and other data at top speed. It's what he is here to talk about. Gatelinx is the type of thing that people in the computer industry have said for years is theoretically possible. But none have accomplished it. Hagen says he has, and he says he can make Gatelinx a billion-dollar company by next year.

But then, Hagen has said a lot of things. Some have even happened.

That was when he was talking to the press. He doesn't talk much anymore, particularly about his past. Hagen says he was born in Virginia. Just Virginia. Neither he nor his attorney, Richard "Trey" Yelverton III of Southern Pines, will reveal much about the Hagens' backgrounds or even their ages. "Only an ass would print a lady's age," Yelverton says, adding: "They are both over 21."

This story was based on earlier interviews with Hagen and Yelverton, El Segundo, Calif.-based DirecTV Inc. spokesman Bob Marsocci, former employees and installers of Prime TV and documents from Gatelinx, Prime TV, the N.C. Secretary of State's office, the Better Business Bureau and the N.C. Attorney General's office. It begins in the late 1980s, another time the Hagens were the subjects of media coverage.

Their last name then was DeFusco. Or Hagen. Or Haggin. Or Brown. Or DuFusco. But usually DeFusco. They were the subjects of criminal investigations in Texas and Virginia. Articles published in The Washington Post in 1989 and 1990 detail how the couple, who filed for bankruptcy in Alexandria, Va., in 1987 after previous filings in Seattle and California, fled to San Diego with furs, a $50,000 wine collection, jewels, $1,500...