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Emails obtained by the American-Statesman show state and local prosecutors have met to discuss the company. Leavitt confirmed the U.S. attorney’s office also has begun investigating Bullion Direct.
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Bullion Direct filed for bankruptcy protection on July 20, several days after the company abruptly shuttered its operations and let go its dozen or so employees. The company’s new lawyer, Joe Martinec, has hired a local turn-around specialist to try to squeeze whatever value remains out of it.
Several weeks into the job, he has described the company’s finances as a mess. Bullion Direct hadn’t filed a tax return since 2010. What little has been unearthed suggests it was losing money almost from the day it opened its doors. Records also indicate McAllister paid himself hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual compensation.
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Beneath the surface, however, financial documents from Bullion Direct’s bankruptcy depict a startlingly different picture. James Hoeffner, an Austin attorney representing a Florida customer missing an estimated $250,000 in cash and metal from the company’s vault, said Bullion Direct filed only a single income tax return, in 2010, covering the previous decade.
It showed the company lost money for all but two of those years. By 2009, the documents show, the company was carrying $17 million in losses — not counting the tens of millions of dollars’ worth in eventually missing money and metal. Records also show McAllister had hired a bankruptcy attorney in 2012, but never filed.
At the same time, he paid himself as much as $365,000 annually, and borrowed an additional half-million dollars from the company, according to the documents.
Officials said they are still trying to reconstruct Bullion Direct’s finances for the past five years. ...