Shawn Gerety - June 2015
A blog reader noticed January 2015 news that the Pennsylvania Attorney General is challenging the bankruptcy attempt of a consignment store near Pittsburgh. In that case, the AG alleges false pretenses, false representations and fraud/embezzlement by store owners when they took more than $50,000 of value from 200+ consignors knowing they would never fulfill obligations to try to sell the products through the store and pay the consignors.
To be clear, that matter has no direct connection to BuildTrend. However, victims of BuildTrend see parallels to BuildTrend's attempt to discharge debts through a Chapter 7 bankruptcy process.
From the filings with the bankruptcy court, BuildTrend had well over $1 million in unfinished projects. Gerety, Cottrell, Kelly, Donaghy and their other conspirators so far appear to have gotten away with stealing much more than the store owners by collecting deposits and pre-payments for construction work only to abandon the projects and perform almost none of the work.
Could law enforcement challenge BuildTrend's bankruptcy as a fraud?
Contributors to this blog have no insight on possible law enforcement actions, but this is an interesting question.
