The first thing I would want to see is prove they indeed own the rights to the magazine title, in all areas they intend distribution, in all trademark categories that matter.
The second thing is, I don't think $40000 is enough to get that off the ground in a professional way. $40000 to rent some office space, equip it, including a decent IT infrastructure, pay editors, a secretary, a beancounter, run a sales and billing organisation, run a few servers, pay authors. They won't survive for a month with that money.