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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe bankruptcy trustee charged with recovering money for the 5,300 investors bilked by Tim Durham’s Fair Finance Co. plans to continue filing lawsuits for reparations into 2014.
“We are continuing to move forward on all cases and collect any assets that there may be,” Brian Bash said this week during a Fair Finance bankruptcy hearing in Ohio, according to the Akron Beacon Journal.
Bash, the Ohio-based lawyer spearheading the recovery efforts, is three years into the scorched-earth legal assault on former Fair CEO Tim Durham, other company insiders and Durham’s friends and business associates.
About 5,300 Ohio investors lost more than $200 million when the Ponzi-scheme-fueled company collapsed in 2009. Durham and two associates also based in Indianapolis were sentenced in November on criminal fraud charges relating to Fair’s demise. Prosecutors charged that Durham looted the company to fund a lavish lifestyle and support other failing businesses he owned.
Durham is serving a 50-year prison term, business partner Jim Cochran received a 25-year sentence, and former CFO Rick Snow was sentenced to 10 years.
Lawsuits filed by Bash and an army of attorneys have resulted in default judgments totaling nearly $200 million, the Beacon Journal reported earlier this week. But so far none of that money has been recovered and returned to investors.
According to Bash’s June report to the court, default judgments totaled $193,671,716.28. They included more than $144 million granted May 28 against Durham and Cochran, the newspaper reported. Bash is evaluating recovery options and deciding how to proceed with collection actions against Durham and Cochran.
The June report said Bash has done an asset search of Durham, found property, and was using information from the examination “to evaluate other recovery options.” Bash said he is negotiating with “certain individuals” interested in buying some assets that belong to Durham or to the Fair Finance estate, according to the report.
All of IBJ's coverage of Tim Durham and Fair Finance can be found here.
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