By Dan McCue
Staff Writer

July 13 and 14 proved to be less than successful for the auction held to liquidate the personal and business assets of disgraced economist Al Parish.

After two days of sometimes-fevered bidding at the Charleston Area Convention Center, the receiver in the investment fraud case, which now has the once flamboyant Parish awaiting a federal criminal trial, raised $2.35 million.

But the dollars pouring into the receivership’s coffers represent far less than meets the eye. Most of the money raised came in the sale of only two of several of the high-ticket items that receiver Gregory Hays, of Hays Financial Consulting, had hoped to sell.

Going into the two-day sale, J. David Danztler, the receivership’s attorney, said if the sale of “the rest of the items,” the less valuable collection of gnomes, knickknacks and household and office items, brought in at least $1 million, the sale could be considered to have been a “home run.”

In the end however, the sale of those items only brought in about $550,000. And in the end, even the grand total raised represents a potential return of just pennies on the dollar for the aggrieved 500 or more investors who allegedly lost more than $55 million though five investment funds run by Parish.

“We have always said this case would not be a happy ending for his investors, and as time goes on, we’re even more certain of that,” Dantzler said.

“Aside from this stuff, there’s still some real estate to sell, of course, but a lot of it has hefty mortgages attached to it, and while Dr. Parish did make several business investments, none are in very big companies.

“There’s not a Google in the batch,” he said.

All of the money raised through the auction and subsequent sales of assets will go into a single fund, the receivership.

From there, the expenses of the receivership will be paid first, with court approval, followed by payments to those creditors of Parish’s who have perfected their claims of liens and security interests, and then, whatever’s left, that’s what will go to investors. 

Along with financial disappointment, Dantzler said investors must also be prepared to wait quite some time to receive what little compensation is coming to them. As things stand now, the receiver is expecting to make only a single dispersal of cash once all of Parish’s assets are sold.

“How long that will be, is anyone’s guess. It all depends on how long it takes to sell everything we can,” he said.

Dantzler hastened to add that expenses related to the actual auction itself have been kept to a bare minimum. The management of the Charleston Area Convention Center itself provided the receivership with a deep discount on rent for the exhibition hall, while everyone from the auctioneer to the security detail has agreed to cap their rates.

“Gathering this stuff and conducting the initial investigation ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but thanks to people being good citizens and being concerned for people hurt in this situation, costs associated with the auction have been kept to a minimum,” he said.

Receiver Hays echoed those statements, recalling that when he first became involved in the case on April 5, assets were everywhere, Parish was in a psychiatric ward, and nothing was adequately insured.

“Parish had almost all of these assets in a home covered by a $1.5 million insurance policy that specified coverage of ‘contents” of his home, the house did not have any working locks, and there was no alarm system,” Hays said. “A lot of the expense associated with this case was getting a handle on what he had done and securing these assets so that there could be some return to those he (allegedly) defrauded.”

Parish has been charged by federal prosecutors with defrauding more than 500 investors of about $55 million in connection with a series of investment pools he operated as a sideline to his job as an economics professor at Charleston Southern University.

While Parish’s criminal trial is still several months away, his assets were sold by order of the U.S. District Court in Charleston in connection with five additional civil charges filed against him in connection with the same investment pools.

During the asset sale itself, the biggest shocker was Charleston businessman James Geiger beat an anonymous pre-auction bid of $1.25 million for 117 watches accumulated by Parish, many of which are encrusted with diamonds and other jewels.

While Geiger said he’ll probably keep some of the watches, many would probably wind up being sold again.

The other big sale, and one that was for an amount significantly less than had originally been hoped, was $350,000 paid for a guitar once owned by the late rock icon Jimi Hendrix.

Even well into Friday, Hays was saying he was expecting a bid of $400,000 to $500,000 to come in for the instrument.

Other high-end items, including guitars once owned by Rolling Stone Keith Richards and the late former Beatle George Harrison, and Parish’s now infamous collection of Red Skelton paintings, went unsold after pre-auction bids failed to reach pre-set minimums established by the receivership.

The minimum for the Skelton paintings, which Parish bought for roughly $35,000 apiece, was set at $6,000.

Also unsold was Parish’s customized $200,000 Sprinter van. Privately, Dantzler had suggested the receivership would accept as little as $60,000 for it. But even that proved too rich for some people’s blood.

Items that did sell included a case of Parish’s “Bottle of Death” hot sauce sold for $130, a life size Brett Livingston Strong bust of John Lennon sold for $14,500, and a Mont Blanc pen, “The Black Window,” sold for $52,000.

The Mont Blancs were another of the auction’s disappointments. While the receiver had hoped for a bid for the whole lot like he received for the watches, such a bid failed to materialize.

Dantzler said high-end items that did not sell, and the Skelton clown paintings, will now be sold through private dealers.

Though final tabulations have not been done, Dantzler said a 90% off tag sale of items from the now defunct A.J. Davis & Sons store, which Parish bought in 2005, did much better than was anticipated.

“At the outset, we thought at best the store’s creditors would see a return of 50 cents on the dollar, but our sense now is that they did much better than that,” Dantzler said.

Dantzler and Hays said there had also been many very hard moments leading up to the auction. The Wednesday night prior to the auction, many of Parish’s investors got a first-hand look at what he’d spent their money on.

“Some were angry, some wept, some were completely in a daze,” Dantzler said.

At the same time, the receiver had been negotiating for most of the week with Yolanda Parish over what pots, pans and utensils she would keep and what was added to the auction floor.

“Those discussions, as you can imagine, were very difficult,” Dantzler said.

While the auction didn’t come anywhere near raising an amount of money comparable to what investors lost, by the close of bidding on Saturday night it did do something almost as significant from the point of view of the receivership—reducing the amount paid to store all the stuff.

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