No sooner had the auction been advertised throughout Grand County and on the auctioneers website, than the emails from the bank & the SBA’s attorneys started flying – not directly to me of course, but to my designated $300/hr legal counsel. The auction was advertised as a ‘Foreclosure Sale’, giving the public the opportunity to snatch up countless bargains on priceless antiques; antiques that were advertised as having had inhabited The Riverside since the turn of the century. There were pictures of 30+ pieces of dressers, armoires, tables, chairs, ornate clocks, beautiful wooden bed frames, and so on; both of the attorneys claimed that all of these pieces were part of the property, germane to the operation of the business and needed to remain at The Riverside. There was also the SBA’s assertion that due to provisions in our loan, they had a security interest the items; they were in fact encumbered. And as for that Brunswick Bar, it took less than 24 hours after hearing from Billy Banker “it’s theirs if they can haul it out of there” for someone at Grand County Bank to wise him up on the value of the bar, at which point he, uh, reneged on his generous offer. I imagine the real scenario involved one of the cowboy bankers on the bank’s Board having found just the spot for that old bar in his $1,000,000 log home on the 14th fairway of Pole Creek Golf Course.
However, there was one small issue that these lawyers failed to consider before raising the hackles on their clients back to the point where they were asked to write expensive emails to my lawyer. Not one of the items advertised in the auction preview was at The Riverside – they belonged to the auctioneer, who intended to cart them from Denver to Hot Sulphur for sale, using The Riverside as nothing more than a vessel to give what weren’t probably genuine antiques in the first place a needed air of authenticity. Trust me; other than the Brunswick Bar, Abe left nothing of value at The Riverside after selling us the hotel and certainly not a valuable ‘antique anything’ that he could have otherwise carted off.
Back and forth, the emails went between the SBA, the bank and my attorney regarding this auction that was to be held for items that didn’t belong to any of the participants. The SBA attorney was including terms such as “in violation of the law” and “punishable by fines, imprisonment or both”; I just wanted to sell the beds we bought for the hotel, not rip the tags off of them. What we were talking about selling in the auction that did belong to us – remember, most all of value that we had left behind had already been pilfered – were principally the 14 primo queen beds that we’d purchased for the hotel, and are still technically paying for on our Master Card. I sat back, helplessly, as I watched one email after the other fly back and forth between my attorney and the attorneys for Grand County Bank and the SBA, all the while envisioning the dollar signs mounting into an ever burgeoning pile.
Finally, at about 10:00 PM that evening after the umpteenth email, I could stand the legal raping and pillaging no longer. I sent all three attorneys the following email; I won’t deny that alcohol might have helped fuel this rant.
Gentlemen: Re the auction of assets.
We're talking about selling some beds, beds that I'm still paying for on my Master Card, that were purchased after the 2007, bifurcated, 504, blah, blah, blah screw job loan that I signed without the aid of counsel. The auction company that we hired (after being given the OK by the bank to auction the furnishings) is bringing onto the site numerous items that are their property to sell, and using the old hotel as nothing but a backdrop for the sale of these antiques. Pay Attention - the items being auctioned are not the property of your client, the bank, or either of my LLC's, and are not subject to your lein, or were ever previously at The Riverside; they are being trucked up from Denver to be sold at the site.
Mr Jones (a fictitious name for the SBA lawyer), you say your client is now willing to discuss the ramifications of the bifurcated 504 loan application with me - too late. A representative of your client, Suzy SBA, did not answer 20+ calls, nor respond to any of the 20+ voicemails I left for her, placed between December 1st, 2009, and February 1st, 2010, to discuss her promised 6-month payment deferment due to my hardship. After Grand County Bank (GCB) declared the loan in default in early February, and I did finally get to speak with your client, Ms. Suzy, she rather sheepishly informed me that she was instructed by both Billy & Betty Banker @ GCB, not to return my calls and discuss my situation. I'm guessing the SBA deferral would have interfered with the banks plans to foreclose on the loan and get their guaranteed SBA paycheck.
My wife and I have left our $XXX worth of life’s savings in Colorado at The Riverside. We were trying to sell a few thousand dollars worth of personal effects to defray credit card debts - now it will be used to pay for expensive emails sent by lawyers. I don't know the definition of a bifurcated loan, but I do know the definition of carrion – that’s all that I have left for the bankers and the lawyers.
Mr. Jones, you threaten to come after my assets if we sell our personal items out of The Riverside; good luck with that, as I have no assets for you or anyone to come after. I'm broke! I live in a shitty little rental house in Mississippi, living paycheck to paycheck, and as of this writing, I have $242 in my bank account to get me to my next end-of-the-month payday. Had your client and GCB been as open, honest and diligent about the X's & O's of loaning money as they are about collecting it, neither of us would be in our current situation.
You can have the money from the sale of the beds. May you all sleep well.
That stopped the emails.
To be continued....
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