Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Lender Says Baker Boy Committed Fraud

A lender accused one of the Baker Boyz, Jon Seawright, of engaging in a bit of fraud when he filed bankruptcy recently.  The legal industry website Law360 reported:


A director at Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz PC borrowed more than $81,000 to insure trucks in a floundering shipping business just hours after the venture filed for Chapter 11, a Michigan financing company told a Mississippi federal bankruptcy court.

In an adversary complaint filed Friday, Kalamazoo-based Premco Financial Corp. Inc. says Jon Darrell Seawright signed a contract in January and confirmed there were no pending bankruptcy proceedings related to the business he started with a Baker Donelson colleague, Brent Alexander.

But in fact, by the time Seawright signed the contract for $81,750 on the afternoon of Jan. 18 and faxed it to an insurance agent, the trucking company, Alexander Seawright Transportation LLC, had been a Chapter 11 debtor in a Mississippi federal bankruptcy proceeding for “approximately 4-5 hours,” according to the filing.

Premco says Seawright, as AST's manager, also made similar misrepresentations in a previous contract for  insurance premium financing in 2018 when he failed to tell the company about his connections to a massive timber industry Ponzi scheme.

“Had [Seawright] told the truth and represented to Premco that in fact AST had been suffering from declining revenues, Premco would not have extended financing at the time AST entered into the 2018 contract,” the company says. “Furthermore, had [Seawright] disclosed that he and his business partner Brent Alexander were implicated in the Ponzi scheme run by Lamar Adams, based on their sales of investments in Adams’ timber ventures, Premco would not have made the loan to AST.”...

The Premco filing comes just days after Seawright, a health care partner and member of the Baker Donelson board, told a Mississippi court in his Chapter 7 filing that he owes creditors $166 million.... Rest of article.
 The case is assigned to U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Neal Olack.  









28 comments:

Anonymous said...

At this point, his continued employment at BD makes me certain that I would NOT trust that firm with anything at all. That may be unfair, but it is impossible to conceive of a good reason that the firm has not distanced itself from him except that perhaps they can't?

Anonymous said...

Maybe they don't get rid of him because he has wood (timber) on somone?

Anonymous said...

@2:24 That would be used against BD in the lawsuit as a tacit admission that they knew it was wrong for them to do what they did.

Anonymous said...

2:24 makes a good point. Why are any of these guys on the payroll? They can not be completing any billable hours can they? What investments can the firm allow the non lawyers hawk in good faith? I’m no lawyer but I would think this is negligence. Wouldn’t every client whether legal or financial have just cause if any of their work proved shoddy?

On another note how are the animals at the zoo during this cold snap? Where’s chokwe’s big announcement?

Anonymous said...

Pretty sure there is also insurance fraud as there are several questions that either the insured or the insurance agent on behalf of the insured mark "no" with an "x" on the Accord Apps(form 125) or the insurance companies apps that plainly ask the questions:

General Info question 7: During the last five (5) years, has any applicant been indicted for or convicted of any degree of the fraud, bribery, arson or any other arson-related crime in connection with this or any other property

General Info question 9: Has applicant had a foreclosure, repossession, BANKRUPTSY, or filed for BANKRUPTSY during the last five(5) years?

General Info question 10: Has applicant had a judgement or lein during the last five(5) years?

Commercial insurance companies will not hardly touch an account that has truthfully marked stating "yes" to any or all of the above.

Anonymous said...

2:45, read Rule 407 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which governs admissibility of evidence in the federal receivership litigation. No subsequent remedial measures - such as firing their asses - could be taken as evidence of culpability. Which is all the more reason I am baffled that BD hasn't canned them yet.

Anonymous said...

@2:49

Is "BANKRUPTSY" different from "bankruptcy?"

Anonymous said...

What's a little bankruptcy fraud when you got the feds up your ass already on Madison Timber. Like he gives a damn. This is nothing other than material evidence he is actually a crook, where some may have thought he "did not know" before. Funny thing is, this act may bite him faster than the Ponzi. Does this give BD the out to actually kick him now.

Anonymous said...

In-house company lawyer here.

One thing I've noticed about Jackson big-firm lawyers, much more so than other markets we operate in, is their tendency to have side hustles.

I'm not talking about passive shares in businesses, which many lawyers have. I'm talking about active businesses that they're spending significant time managing, and sometimes subtly trying to interest you in.

You just don't see it with nearly the same frequency in places like Birmingham or Nashville, in my experience.

If a guy is so disinterested/mediocre at his legal job that he needs to spend half the workweek trying to hustle up money in another field, that tells me I need another guy.

Anonymous said...

4:41 put into words what I've been thinking for some time now. I don't know how anyone can be a competent, full-time attorney and (competently) do anything else.

3:31, The idea of firing Seawright as a subsequent remedial measure made me actually laugh out loud. I don't see why that argument wouldn't hold up in court. Maybe an evidence professor can shed some light . . .

Anonymous said...

I thought I'd been reading on this blog-site that all the local talent is LEAVING Mississippi in a giant sucking brain-drain. Stories like this blow that shit-theory out of the water.

Anonymous said...

407 is irrelevant to this discussion

It’s likely not a subsequent remedial measure but....the larger point is he is still at BD because he knows more information.

BD has to keep him employed....I imagine their ALAS insurer is quite interested in lots of details and Seawrong might be the guy who could defeat coverage for the real equity partners....

So Seawrong stays at BD but his comp is cut to damn near zero.

What would Perry Mason Say? said...

Due to the negative publicity, they may be changing their name to Dewey, Cheatham, & Howe.

Posting for a friend.

Anonymous said...

Does Seawright have to sell that big ole home near William Winter's home?

Anonymous said...

My experience with Judge Olack: he will cut through this crap very quickly.

Macy Hanson said...

Give Seawright a break. The BK Petition was only filed 4-6 hours before he signed the loan contract...

And to think of the number of times Baker attorneys have threatened me with sanctions motions for merely suing one of their clients, like poor, innocent Wells Fargo. Great folks. Worth $300-$600 an hour.

Been there, done that said...

Judge Olack will drop kick him out of the courthouse. Does anyone know who the bankruptcy trustee is? We have good Trustees who will do the right thing, too.

Macy Hansen - I'm a retired attorney who has been threatened repeatedly by arrogant, shitty attorneys at BD and BSOSC with bogus motions, too. I started filing sanctions motions against them for filing frivolous sanctions motions against my clients. LMAO because what goes around, comes around. Those two firms have bad karma which is finally catching up to them.

Anonymous said...

Macy with no due respect you deserve to be sanctioned for your antics....I notice you don't act like an ass in Federal court....

Anonymous said...

According to court records, Wells Fargo was not represented by Baker in your cases. Is that correct?

Macy Hanson said...

When you post your names, I'll give you full answers. I promise. Fair enough? (I have my guesses).

Anonymous said...

I do not understand why Alexander and Seawright are not being criminally indicted by the feds. I’m loosing all faith in the legal system at this point. What more do we need to glean about their criminal activities to put them behind bars? Are white collar criminals exempt from punishment? Furthermore, Baked Donelson should have immediately terminated these two criminals. The fact that they haven’t yet makes one suspicious of the law firms involvement.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps because neither committed a crime.

Anonymous said...

"Perhaps because neither committed a crime."

Perhaps, but don't bet on the lack of arrests being solid evidence of the lack of crimes. The Fed often move with seemingly slow deliberation on things like this because there is little danger of either of them pulling a (successful) disappearing act and little chance of making a markedly more-substantive recovery of funds for "investors" in this mess by acting sooner rather than later. Further, since those who "invested" via Alexander and Seawright were, at least in large part, better-off people looking for above-average and unrealistic returns on "investments" (rather than, for example, a bunch of elderly _victims_ of meager means barely surviving on SS and cat food), your average Fed or USA isn't likely be so sympathetic to the alleged "victims" so as to rush down to pop one cow when they can walk down and nail them all.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps but all of the other promoters have been charged.

Anonymous said...

"Perhaps but all of the other promoters have been charged."

A couple of points. Depending on what you mean by "charged," not all of the publicly-disclosed direct promoters of Adams' scheme have been "charged" in the sense the word is most-often used and understood by laypeople. Wayne Kelly, for example, was "charged" by the SEC but that was a civil action in which he paid money, etc. and settled it. But more importantly to the Alexander and Seawright situation, from what I've seen the only promoters of that "investment opportunity" (which was, as I understand it, basically a derivative based upon underlying Adams'/Madison Timber "investments") were Alexander and Seawright. It is at least theoretically possible they were just mindbogglingly stupid, negligent, and not actually aware the underlying basis of their derivative "investment opportunity" was a Ponzi scheme. If there is enough evidence to convince a USA that either or neither of them had intent of criminality, it would be the duty of that USA to refrain from charging or seeking indictment(s). It is also possible, and I'd suggest reasonably likely, that not every shoe has dropped in the entire situation.

Anonymous said...

No reasons for the feds to be waiting if there were proof of a crime.

Anonymous said...

"No reasons for the feds to be waiting if there were proof of a crime."

Put in very simple terms, in the US criminal system the finder of fact - a jury or a judge acting as the fact-finder - decide what is or isn't "proof" of a crime, just as they determine guilty or not guilty. Federal agents, cops, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges other than in a fact-finding role, etc. deal with alleged facts and evidence. In the US system both terms only mean what the evidence proved to that particular fact-finder beyond a reasonable doubt, and "not guilty" does not mean the same thing as "innocent."

Anonymous said...

Ok, evidence of a crime.



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