You’ve heard of Bernie Madoff, former chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange and his cheating billions from investors. He is sitting on house arrest in his luxury estate. You may have heard of the most recent “scandal” involving Texas billionaire Sir Allen Stanford and his multi-billion dollar investment scheme. He was stopped trying to flee the United States when using his credit card.
Apparently there are similar scandals across the nation, but at a substantially smaller scale. Even the small town my mom grew up in (New Haven, WV population 1,559) had its encounter with a ponzi scheme involving currency trading on the FOREX. As you can imagine, the $21 million invested with Mr. Gibbs was the talk of the town for quite some time – although the amount was just a drop in the bucket compared to the billions stolen from investors with Madoff & Stanford. He was sentenced to 63 months in prison.
Well, Gatlinburg officially has its own investment fraud and unlike the cases mentioned above authorities have no idea of his whereabouts. Dennis Bolze was living the life of luxury in Gatlinburg off Campbell Lead road in his 16,512 square foot mansion on 8.5 acres. The land was supposed to be a development, but Mr. Bolze just decided to buy the entire tract of land and make it his personal retreat and place for social gatherings and to wine and dine business contacts. The home had at least $5.1 Million in mortgages against the home – including Regions Bank. The enormous home is set to be auctioned off at the Sevier County Courthouse steps on February 26th at Noon. I suspect the Courthouse will have a rush of activity around lunch time to see the results and what happens with the auction.
I happened to be in downtown Gatlinburg on Monday with Brooke (my wife) looking at a couple properties and since I was already on Ski Mountain Road decided to swing on by 635 Campbell Lead and snap a picture. Judging by the Christmas/Winter decorations still in place outside the gate, it is evident that Bolze made a quick exit around mid-December! It is a magnificent place, with its imposing gates, lavish landscaping and absolutely enormous structure. It is just a shame knowing that the means the property was obtained was at the harm of others.
Bolze’s location has been uncertain since around Mid-December after his alleged ponzi scheme caught up with him. I feel bad for not only the investors that got swindled, but local contractors such as Carl Ownby & Co. who did work for him and despite their filings of liens against Bolze’s property are most likely not going to see any of that money in return. It was certainly not the first time that Bolze was in trouble with the law though – in 2001 “Bolze plead guilty to 16 counts of failure to file sales tax returns after he did not report $731,455 of taxable sales for two Gatlinburg businesses he operated.”
Bolze was known as a philanthropist in the area, but I guess it is easy to give away other people’s money. Seems eerily similar to what our government has been doing to the taxpayers in the most recent “bailout” and “stimulus” bills actually.