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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowMore than three dozen residents of a northeast Ohio county who invested in Fair Finance Co. filed a lawsuit Monday seeking
to recover more than $2.1 million from the shuttered company.
The suit, filed on behalf of purchasers in Wayne County, is the second filed this month alleging that
Akron, Ohio-based Fair and its officers defrauded purchasers of its unsecured investment certificates.
The other case, filed by a legal team that includes Fishers-based Maddox Hargett & Caruso, seeks
class-action status on behalf of all investors, who are owed more than $200 million.
Fair, co-owned by local businessmen Tim Durham, has been shut down since Nov. 24, when FBI agents raided
Durham’s Indianapolis office and Fair’s headquarters and seized documents and computer equipment.
In court papers filed that afternoon, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Indianapolis charged Fair was
operating as a Ponzi scheme, using money from new purchasers of certificates to pay off earlier rounds
of investors.
Records filed with Ohio securities regulators show that since Durham bought Fair in 2002, he and other
insiders have used it almost like a personal bank to fund a variety of business interests, many of them
unsuccessful. Durham and related parties now owe Fair more than $168 million, according to the records.
Through an attorney, Durham, 47, has denied doing anything wrong.
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