Law enforcement authorities in New Haven, Connecticut are asking for the public's help to find Philip Friend, 49, of Ridgefield, Connecticut, who is alleged to have embezzled some $237,000 from Standard Beef, a meet packing company in New Haven. Friend is being sought on charges of larceny and forgery in connection with the alleged embezzlement. According to reports, Friend was employed for about six months as a consultant to the company. No details are yet available on the specific nature of the case. Friend was last seen driving a red Chevy Avalanche, plate number 419-UPH. He also has access to a grey BMW 525xi with plate number 968-UPS and a blue Volkswagen Eos convertible, plate number 613-XND. Anyone with information is asked to contact the New Haven, Connecticut police. Friend is also at the center of the controversy over the collapse of Ridgefield Farms LLC, a separate business he owned in which investors from Minnesota and South Dakota lost some $3 million.
Read the story here and here.
Update: Friend has turned himself in.
5 comments:
The real fraud here was done by Bawarsky and son the owners of Standard Beef. They barnkrupted the company as a scheme to get out of a contract to sell there company after a casew of seller's remorse. Then they tried to cram down a settlement for Pennies on the dollar on the unsecured creditors.these guys ran their business into the ground, were on the verge of bankruptcy, when Friend came in as a consultant only during an interim period until the closing where he and a partner had agreed to buy the company.the company was turned around during this period and Bawarsky refused to come to the closing after he had already signed agreements to do such. Someone needs to write the real story of fraud here. Multimillion dollar fraud by Bawarsky and Standard beef, not $237,000 by friend. That is just a smoke screen.
This is just the latest example of this pathetic and vile man's need for status at the expense of the rest of humanity. His misdeeds while at Ridgefield Farms cheated an entire township out of millions of dollars before this. And before that? His very own family business, where he cheated his own *father* out of millions before filing for bankruptcy.
The pattern of deceit, thievery and incompetence pervades everything about Mr. Friend's personal and business dealings, and will continue unless everyone recognizes and treats him as the human garbage that he is.
I am happy to report that Mr. Friend was convicted on 12 of 13 counts. The trial lasted two weeks. He will be sentenced on Sept. 6th. He could get up to 110 years. It finally caught up to him. I will be there when he is sentenced. Maybe some of the previous victims could feel a little better now that his crimes have finally caught up with him.
Anonymous clearly did not attend the trial. The state refused to produce any representative of Standard Beef to testify about Mr. Friend's work on behalf of the company. The state also failed to explain why almost all of the corporate records for the relevant time period were missing. Indeed, the state's failure to properly disclose as experts several of its witnesses almost prevented the case from going to the jury at all.
I certainly hope Mr. Friend takes an appeal and seeks to undo this verdict. The state transformed an ordinary business dispute into a criminal case. When its chief witness died, it then simply introduced a contract for a consulting agreement into evidence and invited the jury to conclude that anything not explicity covered in the contract was a criminal violation of the law. Never mind that under Mr. Friend's leadership, the company began to turn a profit. Never mind that Mr. Friend was thrown off the premises by the owner's son, and that documents were destroyed. Never mind the truth. In this case, the jury presented half the facts but asked the jury to reach a verdict. I suspect the verdict will either be set aside by the judge or reversed on appeal.
As for Anonymous, shame on you.
How was the prison time, Philip?
Hopefully you enjoyed it.
Stop scamming people, which you are doing today, now that you are out of the slammer.
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