Lots of people contend that they’re owed money by Greg Harrison, a Greensboro temporary agency executive whose expansionist aims were chronicled in a 2003 Business Journal article. Add the federal government to the list.
In 2007, US District Court Judge James A. Beaty entered a civil judgment against Harrison for $350,134 on behalf of Temporary Services Insurance of the Cayman Islands.
The company filed a federal lawsuit against Harrison the following year to try to collect on the judgment. In 2009, National Union Fire Insurance of Pittsburgh, PA joined the lawsuit after obtaining a judgment from a federal judge ordering Harrison and his companies to pay back $5.9 million.
The federal government alleges that Harrison tried to throw off the Internal Revenue Service by providing agents with an Employee Identification Number, or EIN, for a company that purportedly purchased one of his companies. The agents determined that the EIN was for a company in Myrtle Beach, SC that was owned by Harrison’s mother, and that, in fact, she did not purchase the company from her son and was not paying payroll taxes.
A lawyer for the National Union Fire Insurance wrote in a legal filing earlier this year that through discovery the plaintiff obtained a 1099 Form issued to Harrison by one of his staffing companies, StaffCo, that “reveals that defendant Harrison personally received $540,300 in 2007 from StaffCo. This payment represents proceeds from the sale of US Staff-Holding to StaffCo, such that the payment should have gone to US Staff-Holding, and then to its creditors, such as plaintiffs, not defendant Harrison personally.”
By March 2010, Harrison was representing himself.
Rebuffing efforts by his creditors to expand discovery, Harrison wrote in a legal filing: “Plaintiff is well aware that the corporate entities made defendant in this case are either totally without funds to defend themselves or have not been in existence for a number of years. Plaintiff is also well aware that as to the defendant Harrison, no funds or assets exist from which a judgment could be paid even if plaintiff were successful in the prosecution of this case. Further that defendant Harrison currently has some $11 million of judgments against him personally. Additonally, the defendant Harrison does not have funds with which to defend himself in this case and, therefore, is proceeding as a pro se litigant.”
The frustration was evident in a responsive filing by David A. Senter, lawyer for the plaintiffs.
“The need for further discovery is a direct result of defendant Harrison’s efforts to hide the ball and thwart legitimate areas of inquiry as well as his downright untruthfulness,” he wrote.
By September, the parties had agreed to dismiss the lawsuit with each side taking responsibility for their own legal bills.
Harrison once owned temporary staffing companies in at least nine states. He was once an investor in the Much-Heaven nightclub in downtown Greensboro and National Lampoon’s Pucked, starring Jon Bon Jovi. Now, with the federal government claiming he failed to pay $15.1 million in payroll taxes, he turning to the state to pick up the tab for his legal defense.
Joey Medaloni, who once owned Much and other downtown nightclubs, has similarly fallen on hard times. He is accused in a federal indictment of falsifying his tax returns by inflating his income to obtain loans totaling $2.3 million. The lead prosecutor in both Medaloni and Harrison’s cases is Assistant US Attorney Frank J. Chut.
On Monday, US Magistrate Judge Trevor Sharp appointed a public defender to represent Harrison, finding that the defendant “had demonstrated eligibility for appointment of counsel at government expense.”
Harrison will be represented by the same lawyer who handled a case for Randolph Kilfoil, a member of the Latin Kings, this past summer.
Harrison’s plea hearing is scheduled for Jan. 3 in federal court in Greensboro. His trial is set for Jan. 10.
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