Tag: fraud

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Guilty plea: Dandridge admits bilking widow, bank and fraternity

Victor Dandridge pleaded guilty July 19 in federal court in Richmond to three counts of fraud that carry up to 70 years in prison. U.S. Eastern District Court of Virginia 

Victor Dandridge III had already admitted to swindling his dead friend’s widow. In a guilty plea entered July 19 in federal court in Richmond, Dandridge owned up to defrauding Blue Ridge Bank and the company that owns the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house as well.

Dandridge pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud, which each carry a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, and one count of bank fraud, the maximum penalty for which is 30 years and a $1 million fine.

He also faced a $9 million lawsuit filed by Lynne Kinder, who alleges that after her husband died unexpectedly on New Year’s Eve 2005, Dandridge offered to manage her assets, but instead bilked her out of nearly $7 million to prop up his own failing businesses.

Dandridge owned several capital management companies, although he wasn’t licensed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission until after he joined Richmond wealth management firm Thompson Davis in 2012. He
also owned Timberlake Lighting and Huntington Learning Center franchises, and said in response to Kinder’s suit
that his businesses had been “hemorrhaging monies for years.”

In addition, he was the former president of the Farmington Country Club, Farmington Property Owners Association and the Virginia Athletics Foundation.

In the criminal plea agreement, Dandridge agreed to repay Kinder $3.2 million. He also agreed to compensate Blue Ridge Bank $302,000 for a loan based on false financial information, and to make restitution of $118,527 to Virginia Omicron Chapter House Association. While Dandridge was president of that organization, he refinanced the Sigma Alpha Epsilon frat house on Madison Lane, which owed $204,000 on its existing mortgage, for a new $330,000 loan, funneling the excess to his personal bank account.

In a July 17 consent order in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Lynchburg, Dandridge agreed that Kinder’s $6 million claim will not be exempt in his bankruptcy filing.

“Mr. Dandridge deeply regrets his actions and the terrible consequences that they have had for his victims and others,” says his attorney, Fran Lawrence, in a statement. “He accepts sole and total responsibility for his actions. He is undertaking and has undertaken efforts to assist in recovering assets for the victims, in addition to being fully transparent and cooperative with each party and the government.”

Dandridge has “committed his life after he is released from prison” to paying the monies back in full, says the statement.

According to Lawrence, Dandridge filed for bankruptcy at the behest of the U.S. attorney and Kinder’s attorney to document the assets he has, and “not with the purpose of having any discharge” of his debts.

Her lawyer, Mark Krudys, declined to comment.

When Kinder filed her lawsuit in November 2016, she named multiple defendants, including Dandridge’s wife and father. In a response, Dandridge admitted to the swindling and insisted the other defendants had nothing to do with his unauthorized use of Kinder’s assets.

In her suit, Kinder says of the $6.9 million she entrusted to Dandridge, she’d recovered only $735,000.

Dandridge will be sentenced October 20 and is free on bond until then.

dandridge statement facts 7-19-17

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Widow bilked: Former Farmington president sued for allegedly stealing $7 million

Timberlake Lighting, which is owned by Victor and Ann Dandridge, is named in Lynne Kinder’s $9 million suit against the couple and their business. Staff photo

 

When Lynne Kinder’s 41-year-old husband died of a heart attack while riding his bike on New Year’s Eve in 2005, his childhood friend and groomsman in their wedding said he owed it to Trey Kinder to take care of his widow and two young children. She believed him, until discovering earlier this year that the $6.9 million she’d entrusted to Victor M. Dandridge III had shrunk to $735,000, according to court documents.

Kinder filed suit against Dandridge, a local businessman who was the former president of Farmington Country Club, Farmington Property Owners Association and the Virginia Athletics Foundation, November 17 in Richmond Circuit Court.

The suit ensnares a dozen other defendants, including his wife, Ann Claiborne Dandridge, whom the suit contends has an economics degree from UVA and had to know her husband was diverting Kinder’s funds to “line his own pockets and those of his family” and to prop up Timberlake Lighting and the Huntington Learning Center franchises they owned, the latter of which was losing $300,000 to $400,000 a year, according to the complaint.

It also names Dandridge’s father, Victor M. Dandridge Jr., who was a well-known financial adviser with Wall, Patterson in Atlanta; Richard Lloyd Booth, a “close personal friend” of the Dandridges and a managing director and co-chief investment officer with Dallas-based HBK Capital Management, which manages more than $9.7 billion; and Virginia National Bank.

According to the suit, the FBI began an investigation of Dandridge in October.

Dandridge was a partner at Thompson Davis & Company, a private wealth management firm in Richmond, from 2012 until earlier this year, when he resigned after Kinder started seeking documents from the firm, which is also named in the suit.

He helped establish local venture capital firm Tall Oaks Capital Partners LLC in 2000, according to his Thompson Davis profile.

Dandridge managed his own Runnymede Capital Management, which Kinder alleges was an account to pay his personal debts and expenses, and Wycliffe Capital Management and Selwyn Partners LP, which handled multiple clients’ money without Dandridge being licensed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, according to the suit.

[Chris Wang with Runnymede Capital Management in New Jersey emails to say his company is in no way connected with this Runnymede.]

Thompson Davis was aware of that lack of registration when it hired him, the suit says, although Dandridge did become licensed when he joined the firm.

Kinder accuses Dandridge of illegally transferring money out of her IRA, which she says “should have raised red flags” with Thompson Davis, but the firm never noticed its employee “was purloining her money,” according to the suit. The early withdrawals caused her to incur tax penalties, she says.

Thompson Davis attorney Bill Bayliss of Williams Mullen did not respond to phone calls from C-VILLE.

Virginia National Bank is named in the suit for providing Dandridge with a $2.7 million line of credit, secured by collateral from his father in early 2014. Kinder claims Dandridge used her money to fraudulently make payments and to clear the line of credit and remove his father’s obligation.

Bank president Glenn Rust did not return phone calls from C-VILLE.

Kinder also alleges Dandridge sold his Farmington house in 2015 and bought a house in Inglecress, which he sold to his friend Booth earlier this year and is now renting it to impede her “ability to unwind the transaction.”

According to Albemarle property records, Dandridge sold the house he bought in 1999 for $812,500 at 2530 Pine Lane for $2,125,000 in 2015. He paid $1.09 million for the house at 1105 Inglecress Drive that same year, and sold it to Booth’s 1105 Inglecress LLC in May for $1.5 million.

Kinder also says Dandridge used her funds to make real estate investments, buying the building at 695 Berkmar Court, the address of Timberlake Lighting and Vitruvian, the LLC that operates the learning centers. She claims he sold the building in 2014 for $1.25 million and didn’t share the proceeds or any rental income with her.

“I don’t have any comment,” says Dandridge when reached by phone.

According to the suit, Trey Kinder became an investment banker in 1997, and at the time of his death was making $2 million a year. He left his wife a $2 million life insurance policy, and $3.3 million in Wachovia stock and stock options.

Within 17 days of his death in January 2006, Dandridge sent Lynne Kinder a letter with an investment portfolio strategy and recommendations, including a “preservation of capital approach” on the $6.5 million portfolio, according to the complaint.

By 2008, she says he was no longer providing statements from the third-party brokerages where he said he’d put her money, and when she asked, Dandridge “continued to assure her that they were doing well,” the suit says.

Kinder made only modest withdrawals from the accounts, but when she did, she had to go through Dandridge, and by 2013, “grew tired of having to make requests to withdraw her own money,” she says in the suit.

With her requests for greater transparency going unanswered, according to her complaint, Kinder drove to Charlottesville on April 7 of this year, and Dandridge presented her with a one-page financial summary that said she had $1,277,536 in liquid assets and $1,407,760 in illiquid investments, a number that included her $1 million house that she’d paid off after her husband died and her $458,000 IRA.

That’s when she sought counsel.

The $6.9 million she’d entrusted to Dandridge had “catastrophically and inexplicably” been depleted to around $1.7 million, the suit alleges, during a time that, she conservatively estimates, based on S&P 500 returns, should have grown to at least $7.3 million. So far, she’s recovered only $735,000.

According to the complaint, “Dandridge admitted that he had both stolen and mismanaged Mrs. Kinder’s assets.”

Among the 13 counts, Kinder is suing for breach of contract and of fiduciary duty, fraud and negligence, and is seeking $9 million in damages.

Her attorney, Mark Krudys, declined to comment beyond the complaint. Dandridge has until January 12 to respond.

KinderComplaintVDandridge

Updated December 19.

 

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Judge will consider bond for psychic

Sandra Marks’ psychic reading business on Seminole Trail was raided in June 2014, and she was arrested a year later in New York. Staff photo

Sandra Marks, aka Psychic Catherine and Catherine Marks, had a bond hearing October 22 in U.S. District Court and Judge Glen Conrad said he would consider it if she and her attorney can come up with an acceptable plan for her release.

Marks, 41, has been in jail since her July 23 arrest in New York for 34 counts of fraud—31 wire fraud, two mail fraud and one money laundering—and is accused of bilking clients for more than $3.5 million. She’s now being held at Central Virginia Regional Jail.

At an August 28 hearing in New York, the judge denied bond, citing concerns that she was a flight risk because she left Charlottesville right after a raid on her Seminole Trail place of business in June 2014, and because of missing funds.

A motion filed by her Richmond lawyer, Bill Dinkins, says Marks does not meet any of six conditions that must be met to deny bond: She’s not charged with a violent crime and facing life imprisonment or death; she’s not charged with a crime under the Controlled Substances Act; she’s not previously been convicted of those crimes; she’s not charged with a crime involving a minor victim, firearm or dangerous weapon, and she’s not charged with failing to register as a sex offender.

Dinkins also argues that she doesn’t meet the sixth condition—a serious risk of flight—because when she left Charlottesville, she had not been indicted, was living openly with her family in Georgia in a house titled in her husband’s name and she used bank accounts, credit cards and cell phone service in her own name. Nor did she attempt to conceal her identity when her family moved to New York in December 2014, says the motion.

Her husband, Donnie Marks, now lives in Richmond and works for a cab company and sells scrap metal, according to the motion.

In court, how much bond Marks would need to put up was not discussed, says U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesperson Brian McGinn. “The judge left the door open for bond,” says McGinn.

“Most certainly a plan is in the works,” says Dinkins. “First we’ve got to raise an adequate amount of money for her bond.” He declined to specify what that amount might be.

Marks’ incarceration has been “tough,” says her attorney. “She’s never been incarcerated before, she’s never been charged before. It’s a shock.”

According to the indictment, some of Marks’ victims came to her business for palm readings, candle readings, tarot card readings, astrological readings and spiritual readings, and often they’d suffered traumatic events and were “emotionally vulnerable, fragile and/or gullible.” She met others at the Synchronicity Foundation for Modern Spirituality in Nelson County, where she was an outside consultant, according to the foundation.

Marks would tell her alleged victims they were under a curse and “dark cloud,” according to the indictment, and to be healed, they had to sacrifice cash and jewelry, which she would cleanse through prayer, meditation and ritual.