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Joel tucker
On April 4, 2016, Prairie Village businessman Joel Tucker was sitting in the witness stand in a Houston courtroom when a federal judge issued this warning to him:
“If I were you, I would start taking this seriously,†said Marvin Isgur, a US bankruptcy judge for the Southern District of Texas.
Isgur and other bankruptcy judges had noticed irregularities in personal bankruptcy cases across the country. Debt collectors struggled to justify their claims that people who filed for bankruptcy owed them money – $ 390 in each case. Isgur opened an investigation to find out more, which led him on a path to Tucker.
“If I were you, I would start listening to my lawyer,†Isgur continued. “If I were you, when I was asked a question by a federal judge, I would no longer give evasive answers. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,†Tucker replied.
The Houston case was the start of a particular legal issue for Tucker, the brother of jailed payday loan mogul and former professional racing driver Scott Tucker. Joel Tucker himself had ties to payday lending in Kansas City, an industry that has come to the attention of civil and criminal authorities over the past decade for business practices that push the boundaries of the law.
This legal saga was due to end Thursday for Tucker. He had pleaded guilty to several criminal charges stemming from his selling bogus consumer debt portfolios to debt collectors and evading millions in taxes.
But Tucker didn’t show up for his sentencing in front of a federal judge in Kansas City. An arrest warrant has been issued against him.
In court, Tucker’s attorney cited a family emergency in Colorado as the reason for his client’s absence. Asked by The Star about the nature of the situation, Tucker in an email declined to discuss it.
“Do you have anything else to do?” Tucker wrote.
From the time he was called to testify in the Isgur court until the time the Federal Trade Commission sued him for the sale of bogus debt portfolios and his criminal case on the same case, Tucker stood by engaged in a series of missing court deadlines, avoiding questions from judges and not following court orders.
U.S. District Court Judge Roseann Ketchmark, who is presiding over Tucker’s criminal case in Federal Court for the Western District of Missouri, has set a new sentencing hearing for Tuesday. Whether Tucker shows up remains to be seen.
Payday Loan Connections
The scheme that got Tucker in trouble was indirectly linked to the payday lending industry. Still, Tucker’s connection to payday loans in Kansas City runs deep.
Tucker was among the owners of a company billed as a “one stop shop†for payday lenders called eData Solutions. It would sell leads to potential borrowers to lenders, and provide software to manage all loans.
In 2012, Tucker and others agreed to sell electronic data solutions to the Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma for $ 277 million. The tribe would pay for the eData solutions through the company’s future profits.
According to federal prosecutors, Tucker kept with him a database full of consumer data he obtained while he owned eData.
At one point, Tucker started selling consumer debt portfolios. These wallets are basically spreadsheets or databases with the names of people who have unpaid bills. Debt collectors buy these wallets for pennies on the dollar in hopes of having a better chance of getting consumers to pay.
Diligent debt buyers buy portfolios that include documents that verify the validity of debts. But other wallets can sell without this information.
Porania was one of those companies that bought portfolios of debt, especially from the payday lending industry.
In 2015, Porania was approached by a broker who said he had a database with 2 million consumer loan applications, worth $ 390 each. The broker told Porania the loans came from a company called Castle Peak, which made payday loans of $ 300 to consumers and added a fee of $ 90.
Porania purchased 15,000 of these claims for approximately $ 72,500. And then the company started filing bankruptcy claims all over the country.
But within weeks, Porania discovered that several people who had filed for bankruptcy were objecting to the validity of Porania’s claims.
Porania went back to the broker to see what the problem was. The broker had purchased the debt portfolios from Tucker but, according to court records, had not received any documentation to support the validity of the claims.
Porania, suspecting a problem, withdrew her claims in the various bankruptcy courts.
Bankruptcy judges also noticed the trend of consumer debt claims that could not be substantiated and suspected that some sort of fraud had occurred.
Isgur, the Houston judge, decided to investigate the case in early 2016.
“He continually lied”
Isgur ordered Tucker to appear in Houston court to testify and bring documents relating to the databases he sold to the debt broker.
Tucker did not appear in court the first time he was ordered to do so, and a lawyer he hired asked the judge to schedule another hearing a week later. He also did not show up for that hearing, nor did he submit the documents the judge wanted to see. Isgur has issued an arrest warrant for Tucker.
Tucker attended an emergency hearing on April 4, 2016.
The judge asked Tucker’s attorney if Tucker had brought the debt documents. The lawyer said no.
“How long ago did I order him to produce these documents?” asked Isgur. “And today he shows up undocumented and expects not to be taken into custody?”
Tucker was called to testify. He was first asked why he did not show up when originally ordered to testify the previous month.
“I did not clearly understand the very serious problem with this case,” Tucker said, adding that he missed the next date he was called to testify because he was ill.
Explaining why he didn’t bring the documents in the judge’s order, Tucker said he needed time to go through everything. His description of the judge’s order to bring documents as a “request†seemed to irritate Isgur.
“It’s not a request, it’s an order,†Isgur said.
“Your order,†Tucker replied. “I’m sorry, judge. “
“You will begin to understand that there is a difference between someone asking nicely and a court forcing you to do something you decide not to comply with,†Isgur said.
“Yes, judge,†Tucker said.
“There is a big difference,†Isgur said.
“Yes, judge, I …” Tucker began.
“Start to put it in your head,†Isgur said.
“I got that very clearly, Judge,†Tucker said.
“No, you don’t,†Isgur said, “because you haven’t complied yet.â€
Asked about the sale of the debt to Porania and another company, Tucker said he was not involved.
Tom Kirkendall, Porania’s lawyer, pressed Tucker on this point.
“Do you want to rethink that answer, sir?” Kirkendall said.
Tucker eventually conceded that he received money from the broker in exchange for the wallet.
“So your previous testimony that you were not involved in the transaction to sell these receivables to my client, that was just wrong, wasn’t it? Kirkendall said.
Shortly after, the court took a break after Tucker asked to speak to his attorney. When the hearing resumed, Tucker stopped answering questions citing his Fifth Amendment right not to self-incriminate.
At the end of the hearing, Isgur ordered the US Marshals to take Tucker into custody until he could produce the judge’s order documents.
Later that day, Tucker’s attorney persuaded the judge to release his client so he could retrieve the documents. The judge said he would notify the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office that a crime may have been committed.
“It’s up to them what to do about it,†Isgur said. “But it is my statutory duty to make this report.”
A month later, Tucker was brought back to Houston to testify at another hearing after submitting some of the court order documents.
Tucker endured hours of cross-examination and his answers seemed to frustrate the lawyers and the judge asking the questions.
“He lied continually on the stand, sometimes even minute to minute,” Kirkendall said near the end of the hearing.
Isgur became suspicious of Tucker’s testimony and the documents that were submitted to the court.
“I just think this is one of the strangest audiences I have ever attended, where the witness gleefully testifies that he made things up,” Isgur said. “It’s just the strangest thing.”
The FTC gets involved
The Federal Trade Commission, a consumer watchdog agency, sued Tucker in 2017 over his sale of fake debt portfolios. The FTC said the wallets sold by Tucker included debts that those listed had never owed. At other times, Tucker was selling debt he had never actually owned.
Kansas District Court Judge Julie Robinson dealt with the FTC v Tucker case.
As in the bankruptcy case, Tucker was ordered to provide documents regarding the loan portfolios to the FTC.
At a February 9, 2017 hearing in Kansas City, Kansas, where Tucker appeared without a lawyer, Robinson asked why he had not provided the documents.
“I’ve had a lot of hurdles in the sense of retaining a lawyer for this case based on a financial situation I’m in,†Tucker said. “All the lawyers I’ve spoken to are asking for $ 100,000 in this case, which I don’t have financially.”
According to the sentencing memorandum drafted by federal prosecutors in the Tucker criminal case, Tucker led a lavish lifestyle during this time.
The memo said that between January 2015 and July 2017 – a period that includes the hearing in which Tucker told the judge he was unable to afford a lawyer – Tucker paid American $ 682,437. Express. During the same period, he paid rent to Ferrari Financial and Porsche Financial for his personal cars. He also spent $ 226,000 on private jets during that time.
The FTC ultimately secured a $ 4 million judgment against Tucker. The FTC sent him a formal notice asking him to pay the judgment, but a spokesperson for the agency said Tucker had not responded.
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