Dallas financial services firm Beneficient has hired the same law firm that represented Dominion Voting Systems in its high-profile case against Fox News to file its defamation lawsuit against Fox News. wall street journal Reporter.
Attorneys for Claire Locke filed a lawsuit Friday on behalf of Beneficient and its founder and CEO Brad Heppner over social media posts and a series of articles published over the past year. , filed a defamation lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of East Texas seeking undisclosed compensatory and punitive damages. Newspaper written by staff writer Alexander Gladstone.
journal Published an article citing personal documents on Friday. The company deemed Beneficient to have used flawed accounting methods that misrepresented revenue and showed payments were made to Mr. Heppner's approximately 1,500-acre ranch in East Texas. . journal In 2019, Chief Financial Officer Tiffany Kais said she discovered this and left the company. Three board members and other executives left within a few months.
GWG Holdings, which invested in Beneficient, The company defaulted on a $2 billion debt last year and went bankrupt, leaving retail investors with potential losses of up to $1.3 billion, the article said.
journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which is chairman of Fox, which settled a two-year lawsuit in April by paying Dominion $787 million. , considered a record settlement in a media case, ended this legal battle. A network spreading lies about the 2020 election.
“Mr. Gladstone willfully ignored material facts, distorted important timelines, and cherry-picked the information he received in order to promote predetermined overarching conclusions,” Beneficient said in the complaint. “Brad Heppner manipulated himself through his control of Beneficient and other companies.” -Serving deals to enrich myself and maintain a so-called “luxury lifestyle” at the expense of vulnerable older “individual” investors. ”
The complaint also said Hepner could prove the statements were false and that Gladstone published his article with “malicious intent.”
Gladstone did not respond to requests for comment. journal He declined to comment. The beneficiaries declined to comment.
Gladstone's tweet from a year ago slammed Heppner Ranch, located in Anderson County, and said its debts were being covered by transfers of funds from Beneficient and its former parent company GWG Holdings, which is in a bankruptcy court-led reorganization process. .
Other prominent Twitter accounts received tons of likes and replies, according to Beneficient's complaint.
“Mr. Gladstone's Twitter audience and others in the community take Mr. Gladstone's allegations at face value and believe that Mr. Hepner and Mr. Beneficient engaged in inappropriate conduct,” the complaint states. ing.
The complaint states that Heppner purchased the Bradley Oaks Ranch in 2003, 16 years before GWG ultimately began investing $230 million in Beneficient. ing.
Beneficient said in its annual filing that on June 29, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil enforcement action against the company and Hepner with the SEC alleging SEC violations related to Beneficient's entities. The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it has issued a preliminary decision recommending that a lawsuit be filed. Together with GWG.
Heppner said in the filing that he and the company intend to “vigorously defend and refute any allegations of wrongdoing.”
According to the complaint, Beneficient was affiliated with GWG until it spun off as an independent company in November 2021. Heppner joined GWG's board of directors as chairman in April 2019, but the lawsuit says he was not a member of the special committee that decided to invest in Beneficient.
GWG, which issued high-yield bonds to fund the purchase of life insurance policies on the secondary market, filed for bankruptcy in April 2022 after failing to pay interest to bondholders. GWG previously disclosed that the SEC was investigating its accounting practices, according to regulatory filings.
Current and former directors of Beneficient and GWG are prominent, including two former Federal Reserve District Presidents. Former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach, who founded a large commercial real estate company, is no longer a member of the company's board of directors.
Former Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher, former Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, and leveraged buyout investor Tom Hicks currently serve on Beneficient's board.
Friday's article journal Mr. Fisher, Mr. Lockhart and others are accused of “facilitating the pyramid scheme orchestrated by Mr. Heppner,” he said in a court filing.
Beneficient went public in June with the intention of going public through a SPAC (special acquisition purpose company) structure after being acquired by Avalon Acquisition last year. Beneficient ultimately raised about $8 million in its IPO, according to the company. journal.
