Used Pontoon Boats - Oakridge, Oregon Project Manager is Felon
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008Hi gang, Rick here from Used Pontoon Boats with inforamtion out of Oakridge, Oregon about a project manager being felon. The project manager of a multimillion-dollar “manufacturing and office operation” proposed in the city’s industrial park is a convicted felon, City Administrator Gordon Zimmerman and Community Development Director Kevin Urban have confirmed.
The two officials identified the man they know as Atherton Properties LLC Oakridge representative Ted Thomas from a 1998 jail booking photo of Ted Combis, 62.
According to court records, U.S. District Court Judge Michael Hogan sentenced Combis then to 57 months in prison after a plea bargain in which Combis pleaded guilty to payroll tax evasion and mail and bankruptcy fraud. He was sentenced to an additional 24 months in prison in January 2005, when Hogan found he had violated conditions of his probation by consuming alcohol, unlawfully receiving Social Security and distributing controlled substances by selling drugs prescribed for him.
The Register-Guard obtained the prison photo on Friday after being directed to old Modoc Record newspaper accounts of Combis’ criminal activity by an anonymous telephone caller who said he is an Oakridge business owner. The newspaper then showed the photo to Oakridge officials, who confirmed he is the man they know as Thomas.
Thomas called The Register-Guard on Friday afternoon to say that he legally changed his name last year in order to make a fresh start after satisfying his prison term. He also said that because of the disclosure he was now resigning from the company and that his past should not reflect on its partners, whom he identified as “Keith, Joe and Rich.”
Atherton, which is incorporated in Nevada and not registered to do business in Oregon, has been secretive about the identity of its owners and its plans for 18 acres of industrial land it optioned a year ago in a $628,000 conditional purchase agreement with the city. The only publicly identified partner is Eugene attorney Keith Boyd, who did not return phone calls and an e-mail inviting him to comment on the matter.
Court records show Boyd represented Combis in a 1995 bankruptcy proceeding that followed a federal raid of Combis’ former company, Thena Inc., during an investigation of alleged fraud.
Combis was the company’s president. Details of the criminal and bankruptcy cases are archived in Seattle and not immediately available.
But Oregon and California newspapers reported that a July 1996 federal grand jury indicted Combis on 48 counts of mail fraud, interstate transportation of stolen goods, money laundering, failure to pay payroll taxes, obstruction of justice and tampering with a witness.
The indictment charged that Klamath Falls-based Thena sent letters to thousands of Northern California landowners, offering to remove dead and dying timber at no cost. When its loggers did so, they also removed 25 million board feet of healthy timber, the government charged, selling it for $15 million. The alleged fraud loss was reduced to less than $1.5 million as a part of Combis’ plea deal.
“This is news to us,” Zimmerman said Friday soon after he and Urban viewed the booking photo of Combis.
Washington County records show that Combis indeed changed his name to Thomas in May 2007, four months after completing his prison term and post-release supervision. According to city records, however, he was identifying himself to Oakridge officials as Ted Thomas as early as September 2006.
According to court records and news accounts, Thena owed $3.4 million to some 500 creditors at the time of its 1995 bankruptcy filing.
Even though federal authorities seized more than $1.75 million in Combis-owned real estate, airplanes, boats and other assets, the reports said, hundreds of creditors never received full payment.
Zimmerman said he did not expect the revelations about Thomas to affect the land deal, which has not yet closed despite an initial deadline of Jan. 1.
The city twice has extended the timeline as it continues to work with Atherton on details of the proposal.
“All I can tell you is that (the criminal activity) happened before he was an employee, he served his time for what he did, and he was a real champion for Oakridge by helping convince these five principals (Atherton partners) to move their business here,” Zimmerman said.
He credited Thomas with persuading the partners to build their project in Oakridge rather than Harrisburg, the other site they reportedly considered for a development they projected eventually could include 800,000 square feet of manufacturing and office space and create up to 545 jobs in enterprises as diverse as printing, logging and racing.
Oakridge has been trying for more than a decade to attract new employers to the industrial park, site of the former Bald Knob mill that once employed hundreds of area residents.
“We vetted the five principals and didn’t find anything in their backgrounds — we didn’t vet Ted because he was an employee,” Zimmerman said. “I am sorry that this has come out now, because it appears to be his personal life and unrelated to this project.
“I’m sure the council will want to have the five principals answer some questions about this, but I don’t think it changes the economic nature of their proposal.”
Zimmerman said the revelations did not cause him to question the judgment of the company’s partners.
“In fact, I think we ought to applaud a company that employs someone who’s been convicted of wrongdoing and paid the price for it,” he said.
Mayor Don Hampton declined comment on the matter, saying he wants more information first.
In an e-mail to the City Council last week, Zimmerman revealed details of Atherton’s first planned business on the site.
He said Record Boats, a manufacturing plant and showroom, is expected to employ up to 100 workers building fiberglass and pontoon boats “under the Oakridge brand by the end of the year.”
He declined to provide further information, citing a confidentiality clause in the purchase agreement.
He said he was able to speak about the boat businesses because Atherton had made that information public in a press release to Oakridge’s weekly newspaper, the Dead Mountain Echo.
Boyd did not respond to The Register-Guard’s request for the same press release.
He said in December that Atherton would no longer provide The Register-Guard any information about the company because it had refused his request that it withdraw a request for Oakridge’s public records pertaining to the development.
“Other than curiosity, I see no public interest or need to know in connection with our dealings with the city of Oakridge,” he said then.
Thomas said Boyd “convinced me to work for the company.”
“My original capacity was to try to find a location that was suitable,” he said. “I wanted to prove that I was a good and honest person.”
Thomas said other enterprises that he previously owned and were listed in bankruptcy records — including Oregon Racing Products and Diversified Fiber Corp. — are “past companies not remotely connected to Oakridge.”
He expressed concern that publicity about his past would unfairly hurt the owners of the company. “I don’t own the company. Please don’t hurt Keith, Joe and Rich. I don’t want the owners of the company to be hurt because of me. Keith (Boyd) is an honorable man, an honest attorney. They don’t belong in a bad light.”
Thomas said he was in Klamath Falls while his former partner conducted the salvage operation that included the alleged theft of healthy trees.
Thanks to Karen McCowan, The Register-Guard for this.
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