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‘Fragile’ Parish says he didn’t hide assets
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
Fallen economist and professor Al Parish says he did not hide any assets he’s accused of bilking from as many as 600 investors, said J. David Dantzler, an attorney and investigator for receiver Hays Financial Consulting.
"One thing he was unequivocal about was that he had not hidden anything," Dantzler said. "And that's consistent with what we've seen during the investigation. His assets were not hidden; they were just not well organized."
Dantzler recently spent five hours at the federal courthouse in Charleston talking with Parish, who appeared "psychologically fragile" and unable to remember all the details related to his alleged fraudulent handling of five speculative investment pools.
Dantzler said the unprecedented access was suggested in part by psychiatrists for the one-time Charleston Southern University professor, who believed the session would help enhance his memory.
Parish has been treated for amnesia since shortly before the federal government filed five civil fraud charges against him in early April. Since then, much of his memory has returned.
In addition to his civil case, Parish also has been indicted on 11 criminal charges related to his handling of the money from investors.
He will be arraigned on those criminal charges Wednesday morning.
Neither the treating psychologist nor Parish's attorney, Andrew Savage, who also sat in on the discussions, set any ground rules for the meeting, which he described as "more of a conversation than a cross-examination," Dantzler said.
"We focused a lot on assets, uses of money, those kinds of things, and then, at a very high end, we had some discussions of the investment pools themselves," he said.
"I think if there was a break-through here, it was that he apparently now has more extensive and specific recollections on certain things than he had in the past. His recollection is returning, but he certainly did not recall everything."
Dantzler prefaced his remarks by explaining that his interpretations of Parish's condition were those of a lay person with absolutely no training in psychiatry.
"I'm not sure in all those hours we were together he ever used the word amnesia," Dantzler said. "I will say that he certainly had his wits about him, that there were no 'Where am I, Who am I' type of moments.
"In some cases, the moments in which he lacked recall where just like similar moments for all of us, moments I'd attribute to the simple passage of time rather than as the result of some kind of condition."
Parish has evidently been asking to speak with the authorities since he was first incarcerated at Charleston County Detention Center on April 12.
During the time he spent with Parish, Dantlzer refrained from asking questions that delved into Parish's motivation, emphasizing the "what' and "where," rather than the "why" of the case, he said.
The lengthy back and forth did not reveal any more of the kind of hard asset purchases since the first charges were announced in the case two months ago, but did help fill in some of the blanks investigators had come up against.
"These primarily had to do with monetary transfers to third parties, some of them quite large, others quite frequent," Dantzler said.
When asked about those transfers, Parish was able to give lengthy, detailed explanations of each one. In many cases Parish acted as more than a financial counselor for several investors, he actually managed their money for them, Dantzler said.
"In a sense, he was like a bank for them, paying their monthly expenses. But given the nature of the case and when we became involved, these were transfers we hadn't been able to make sense of until he offered an explanation," Dantzler said.
Asked if he believed those explanations and Parish's repeated assertion during their meeting that he hadn't hidden any assets or money, Dantzler chuckled softly.
"Well, obviously, given the circumstances, we couldn't just accept his word, but I can tell you that in the days since our conversation we've been able to confirm everything he told us about those large transfers, in many cases with a simple phone call to the investors in question," Dantzler said.
And those disclosures, he said, may ultimately save investors money by reducing the time investigators would have spent looking into these matters.
But did Parish seem to honestly believe purchases like Red Skelton clown paintings and gnomes were legitimate investments?
"We didn't use words like 'legitimate' and I didn't walk in with lots of paper and confront the suspect with respect to the kinds of things we've spent countless hours on. Now, understand that I'm talking in broad strokes here, but I believe after speaking with him at length about this, that Parish's position is everything he bought he believed he bought at a bargain price or at something less than market value," Dantzler said.
"The problem, it seems to me, based on what the information provided to us by the dealers he was working with, is that he was not really an expert in terms of valuation. What they've told us is that in the case of a number of his purchases, these were no bargains … and as a result we're really concerned that we're not going to get out of these assets what Parish contends we should. That's bad news for the investors."
Dantzler did get the impression that Parish believed he got a good deal when he bought the items, Dantzler said.
Hays Financial Consulting is currently firming up plans to have an auction of some of the items Parish allegedly purchased with investors’ money in late June. A date and venue have not been determined, and Dantzler also hedged in characterizing it purely as an auction, he said.
"It'll be an event, let me put it that way, although an auction is sure to be a component of it," he said.
As Dantzler spoke on Monday afternoon, the receiver in the case, Gregory Hays, was traveling to Charlotte, N.C., to see for himself three 1960s-era electric guitars that Parish had purchased but never taken possession of; the guitars are purported to have once belonged to Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and George Harrison.
"What we've found is that authenticating guitars is not the same as authenticating artwork, it's a lot more difficult," Dantzler said. "For now, they're safe, they're not going anywhere, and we're doing what we can to determine their lineage. It would be nice if they did belong to those individuals, because then they would have some value we could return to investors."
The receiver also hopes to file a document with the federal court in Charleston regarding the sale of King Street clothier AJ Davis & Son, which Parish owned, before the end of the week, Dantzler said.
As for another meeting with Parish, Dantzler said he's playing that possibility by ear.
"As you can imagine, it's not a simple undertaking, given all the arrangements that have to be made for his transportation and such, but he has indicated that he would like to cooperate," Dantzler. "And I will say that I think our first meeting was productive."
After Parish's arraignment, the next courtroom event related to the case is scheduled for May 31, when the receiver expects to file another interim report on the case and his first fee application.
Dantzler said the bill for the first 2 1/2 to three months of work will be “huge" and he expects the receiver will take "a lot of shots in the press" because of its size.
"This investigation, especially the early-going, has been unbelievably expensive," he said. "I can tell you without exaggeration that we've never filed a fee application this large, but never have I felt that we earned our money as much."
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