Tim Durham Scandal Update

[democraticinsurgent]

From Advance Indiana blog (for those not up on this, Durham has a been a major funding source for Indiana GOP candidates, including Gov. Daniels. Mega dirt here, but it's been largely covered up so far)

Akron Beacon-Journal Series Puts Pieces To Durham Puzzle Together

The Akron Beacon-Journal has a great investigative journalism series it launched today looking into the demise of Fair Finance Company, the now-bankrupt company Indianapolis businessman Tim Durham plundered to bail out his losing business enterprises and to finance the lavish lifestyle he unabashedly flaunted over the past decade after acquiring the Ohio-based company. A lengthy introductory piece by Jim McKinnon and Cheryl Powell, "Borrowed time finally runs out," retraces Durham's acquisition of the Akron-based company in great detail:

Fair Finance investors were stunned on Nov. 24 a year ago when the FBI raided the company's East Market Street headquarters and its corporate parent's offices in Indianapolis. The agents hauled away computers and boxes of files and Fair Finance, in business since the days of the Great Depression, never reopened.

For many, this was their introduction to Timothy S. Durham, a prominent Indianapolis buyout specialist who, along with business partner James F. Cochran, had purchased Fair Finance in 2002 from the Fair family.

Durham was well-known in Indiana as a successful, if highly leveraged, businessman and millionaire playboy. And he had a growing profile in Hollywood as the new chief executive of struggling entertainment company National Lampoon Inc., whose previous top executive — Dan Laikin, a friend and business partner — is now in federal prison after being convicted of manipulating the company's stock price.

Profiles of Durham in Indianapolis newspapers, magazines and public documents show he has been an aggressive businessman all his adult life.

http://advanceindiana.blogspot.com/2010/11/akron-beacon-journal-series-puts-pieces.html