Corporate & Securities Law

Fair Finance: Doors Remain Shut To Investors On Dec. 7

By Steven Caruso

Fair Finance?s offices in Akron, Ohio, remain closed, leaving investors with no answers and no access to their money. One investor who has $140,000 invested with Fair Finance and its co-owner Tim Durham showed up at the company?s Market Street headquarters at 7:30 a.m. on Dec. 7, hoping to be first in line, reported the Akron Beacon Journal.  By 9 a.m., he was joined by other investors - all of whom were greeted by locked doors and dark offices. 

Last week, Maddox Hargett & Caruso and David P. Meyer & Associates filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of Fair Finance investors that alleges the company?s offering circulars to prospective investors contained material misrepresentations and omissions. The complaint also charges that insiders, including co-owner Durham, breached their fiduciary duty to investors and instead personally enriched themselves. 

Investors, all of whom are Ohio residents, purchased investment certificates from Fair Finance that paid interest rates substantially higher than those for certificates of deposit offered by commercial banks. Unlike CDs, however, the securities sold by Fair Finance come with no government guarantee if Fair Finance is unable make good on its payments to investors. 

FBI agents raided the offices of Fair Finance on Nov. 24, as well as the offices of another Durham-owned company, Indianapolis-based Obsidian Enterprises.

Full post as published by Representing Investors on December 08, 2009 (boomark / email).