You have to hand it to Howard Jonas. At least he makes the telecom industry more interesting. He's morphed from telecom mogul to oil-shale baron.

Jonas is the founder and chairman of IDT Corp. (NYSE: IDT), the Newark, N.J.-based telecom operator that was one of the pioneers in international calling cards and inexpensive VoIP communications. Jonas, a former hot-dog vendor and author of the book On a Roll: From Hot Dog Buns to High-Tech Billions, got IDT into the energy business, investing in an oil-shale operation in Colorado, all to beneficial effect of shareholders, who have seen its stock rally hard.

IDT announced last week that it will spin off its energy subsidiary, Genie Energy, while IDT completely overhauls its capital structure. Genie has energy interests in the Northeast as well as the shale-oil operation in Colorado and a green-energy outfit in Israel. Then, on Monday, the company announced that Lord Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch would invest in Genie.

Add Rothschild and Murdoch to legendary hedge-fund investor Michael Steinhardt, who is chairman of Genie's Israeli business, as well as an investor in Genie. Steinhardt is famous for outperforming the S&P by 300 percent or so during his management tenure at multibillion-dollar funds. It's a nice collection of names to splash around. Excitement about IDT's restructuring and the new energy spinoff has sent its shares on a tear, up about 500 percent since the beginning of the year.

Then there's the capital restructuring -- which, true to IDT's ways, is complicated and may result in a de-listing from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) . The plan was outlined by IDT last week in a series of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings and press releases:

Okay, got that? While it's complicated and confusing, let's not try to overthink it -- the stock price is up. And Michael Steinhardt is involved, so it must be okay, right?

It's all good until you remember that IDT has been terrible at managing spinoffs and diversification strategies in the past. And though IDT has recently turned profitable, let's not forget that its shares were whacked in the downturn of recent years like everything else, trading as low as 72 cents in 2008, from a split-adjusted peak of $65. Yes, if you bought at the bottom in 2008, you made a fortune. But everybody in it for the last five years has not fared well.

Here are some examples of IDT's busted experiments in alternate industries in the past:

So is Howard Jonas a genius or just a wild man? Well, he certainly has done well with IDT, as he's made his millions. And he's got a great story about going from Bronx bun-hawker to telecom mogul.

If you would like to speculate in IDT, go ahead and ride it along with Rupert Murdoch. Personally, I'd rather just sit back and watch as one of the telecom industry's most colorful characters tries to make some money drilling oil shale with some of the world's most famous investors.

— R. Scott Raynovich is the Founder and Publisher of The Rayno Report (www.raynoreport.com), which analyzes trends in technology innovation and investment.