Free at last
Jennifer Parsons cashes out
COURTS | Bruce Rushton
It isn’t easy to get in bed with embattled entrepreneur Jeffrey Parsons and walk away with money in your pocket.
Just ask hundreds of creditors in Parsons’ bankruptcy case, including people who got rubber checks in exchange for gold, landlords who got stuck with unfulfilled leases and vendors who never got paid. Parsons’ former employees got stiffed out of more than $12 million in wages they may never see, given that a judge has ordered Parsons to pay just $5,155 a month to whittle away the debt and he has failed to make court-ordered monthly payments. There is also the Internal Revenue Service, which says that it is owed more than $3 million, and the state Department of Revenue, which has claimed a debt exceeding $1 million.
Then there is Jennifer Parsons, erstwhile spouse of Jeffrey Parsons, who will receive more than $207,000 in a divorce settlement approved Monday by U.S. bankruptcy judge Mary Gorman. Including to monies she had previously been awarded, Jennifer Parsons is walking away from the marriage with nearly $700,000.
Jennifer Parsons, who wedded Jeffrey Parsons in 1982 when she was just 18 years old, stood by her man through thick and thin, from his days selling vegetables in roadside stands to his career as a fireworks salesman to his brief zenith as the brainchild of Get & Go Express, a can’t-miss series of unmanned vending kiosks offering soda and snacks that fizzled after the Springfield city council in 2005 passed a moratorium and set standards for parking, landscaping and other amenities.
Jeffrey Parsons hit it big with THR and Associates, a company that specialized in buying gold and silver at events typically set up in hotels from coast to coast. THR went nationwide while the price of precious metal skyrocketed. You didn’t have to be a mathematician to grasp that a lot of money can be made by writing checks for gold and silver at prices below the escalating spotmarket value. Jeffrey Parsons once compared it to paying less than $50 for a $50 bill during a bankruptcy hearing.
Before long, the Parsons were tooling around in luxury cars that included a Bentley. They bought a luxury home in Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri worth more than $1.5 million. Jeffrey Parsons, who didn’t have a bank account in his own name and wrote checks on THR accounts, cut a contract-for-deed deal for 165 acres of prime whitetail property in Pike County and started building a hunting lodge. Meanwhile, the couple drifted apart, with Jeffrey taking up with another woman with whom he eventually had a child and Jennifer filing for divorce in early 2011. And a fortune quickly amassed was just as soon squandered.
Under terms of the divorce agreement approved this week and agreed to by a bankruptcy trustee, the IRS and the state Department of Revenue, Jennifer Parsons owes nothing to either the IRS or the state. She will receive nearly half of the money from liquidation of personal property, which works out to nearly $207,470. Jennifer Parsons had previously received more than $184,300 from sale of the couple’s former home in Athens, plus credit for real estate taxes and mortgage payments. She also had received more than $280,600 from sale of the Lake of the Ozarks home. All told, Jennifer Parsons is now a divorcee with awards totaling about $698,000.
Divorce lawyers also got paid, with Jennifer Parsons’ lawyers due as much as $55,000 from bankruptcy trust accounts. Greg Scott, Jeffrey Parsons’ divorce lawyer who withdrew from the case in 2012, has received nearly $16,000 from bankruptcy accounts.
Still doing battle to keep money collected from Jeffrey Parsons is local car dealer Todd Green, who sold a boat and a half-share of a jet airplane to Parsons in 2011 and 2012 for silver coins worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Green also bought a Panther Creek home in 2011, then leased it to Parsons, who paid with silver coins, cash, cashier’s checks and checks drawn on THR accounts. Green sold the plane in 2013 and paid the bankruptcy estate more than $106,000 from sale proceeds. However, Jeffrey Richardson, bankruptcy trustee, says that THR was insolvent when Parsons paid for the house and the boat and so could not legally purchase the assets. Richardson is demanding that Green return more than $579,000 he received for the house and boat to the bankruptcy estate.
John Myers, attorney for Green, declined comment.
At least $411,600 of THR assets flowed through United Community Bank to pay for the Panther Creek home, according to Richardson, who is asking that the bank repay the money to the bankruptcy estate. In court papers, Richardson alleges that the bank did not receive the money in good faith and knew that each of a series of money transfers was voidable. In court papers, the bank says that it followed instructions from Green when handling the funds and acted in good faith without any knowledge that the money transfers could be voided.
Contact Bruce Rushton at brushton@hotmail.com.
