Friday, June 20, 2014

DHECC - Fabworx...the plot thickens

Shortly after publishing the email chain which proves that the PSC lawyers were expediting their own claims, I stated that I believe the claim PSC attorney Calvin Fayard requested to be expedited in his email to Christine Reitano was for his cousin and business partner, Robert Maurin III.  The email chain I received had the claim # blacked out so there is no way for me to confirm who the company is but I have spoken to sources off the record who believe the claim was for Maurin's Baton Rouge based construction company, Fab-Worx.

Maurin has a large and labyrinth list of business registered on the Louisiana Secretary of State Database including businesses with both Calvin Fayard and his daughter Caroline Fayard

He was also in business with a man named Gregory M. Walker who was recently indicted by the Feds for a Louisiana motion picture tax credit scam...seems to be all the rage these days:

What's more, a company named Sodexo Operations has filed a motion to subpoena documents from Maurin for his companies:  Jamestown Gaming, LLC; Jamestown, Inc.; New Braunfels Healthcare Properties, LLC; Gulf States Meadows, LP; Gulf States Healthcare Properties of Dallas, LLC; Jamestown Healthcare Properties of Dallas, LLC; and B&G Healthcare Properties, LLC.

Essentially Sodexo is claiming Maurin has shifted finances from one LLC to another in order to hide money from a bankruptcy filing that could be used to pay back Sodexo for their monetary losses.  While Maurin has repeatedly blocked Sodexo's attempt to obtain said financial records, they claim they are privy to these financial documents under theories of "veil piercing, single business enterprise, fraud, conversion and civil conspiracy to commit same".

Calvin Fayard is not a registered agent in any of the companies named in the suit, however, Caroline Fayard is listed as a registered agent for another gambling enterprise along with Maurin, Safari Investments, Inc.

The time frame of Maurin's Gulf States Health Services (GSHS) bankruptcy is curious in respect to the claim filed by his other company Fab-Worx.  Obviously, Maurin's web of companies under GSHS were in financial distress around the time the Fab-Worx claim was submitted to the DHECC.  If Maurin was shifting money from one LLC to another, as this civil suit suggests, it could have been extremely fortuitous for him to have the Fab-Worx claim expedited ahead of everyone else in the BP settlement.

I'll be curious to see if the court does require him to produce the requested financial records and I would suggest that Sodexo counsel add Fab-Worx and Safari Investements to the list of Maurin companies listed in their motion to compel.  

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Scott Walker just got in trouble for his misadventures combining political and non-profit enterprises. Your friend over at Slabbed had some coverage of this.

Walker had some Mississippi and Louisiana friends, one of whom, I learned recently, encouraged his spousal equivalent to go into non-profit management not too long ago. I laughed so hard when I learned this.

This shit is totally endemic.

Film tax credits and con-profits are like invasive plants-- kudzu, long horned beetles, zebra mussels, purple loosestrife.

Anonymous said...

I know Scott and Gregory are totally different Walkers.

Clay said...

BP shuts down claims office

http://t.co/4S5pEIDQQ1

Also, Matt McBride has a new post:
http://fixthepumps.blogspot.com/2014/06/hidden-in-plain-sight.html?m=1

Kevin said...


A couple of potentially noteworthy developments:

Maurin and his LLCs' accountant/CPA, Donna Marshall Drake, just recently "retired" from her own CPA/Tax Preparation/BP Claims business and moved to Colorado with her husband who was a dentist in Madisonville.

Yesterday, lawyers for Maurin and his LLCs submitted a letter and grainy copies of photos to Judge Triche-Milazzo informing her that boxes of documents at 1 of Maurin's office buildings in Baton Rouge had been sent off to a shredding company in March 2014 to be destroyed at Maurin's request. Of course, the motion to compel was pending at this time.

According to the letter, Maurin's tenant in the building called him and asked him about removing the boxes from an office in the building which was once occupied by Maurin's partner, Greg Walker. It's not clear that Maurin even asked the tenant about the names or labels on the boxes. The letter says Maurin simply "believed" there were no documents in those boxes related to the numerous LLCs at issue in the motion to compel and the lawsuit in which he has been involved since 2011.

The grainy photos appear to show otherwise. Allegedly unbeknownst to Maurin, the tenant at his office building took the photos to send to the shredding company so they could decide what size truck to send over to collect all the boxes.

Depositions are continuing and there may be additional developments on the way.