Convicted con man Joel Tucker doesn’t show for sentencing; judge issues arrest warrant
A Prairie Village man who was scheduled to be sentenced Thursday for a phony debt selling scam and evading taxes did not show up and a federal judge issued a warrant for his arrest.
Joel Tucker, whom a top prosecutor in Kansas City once called a “well-dressed thief,” pleaded guilty last year to criminal counts of transporting stolen money, bankruptcy fraud and tax evasion.
Lawyers for Tucker said he was in Colorado on a critical family situation.
Judge Roseann Ketchmark said it was admirable that Tucker cares about his family, but she said the sentencing date had been set and that Tucker had fair notice. She issued a warrant for his arrest.
She set a new sentencing date for 11:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Once sentenced, Joel Tucker likely will join his brother, convicted payday loan racketeer and former professional race car driver Scott Tucker, in the federal prison system.
Scott Tucker is serving a 16-year, eight-month sentence for running an extensive and illegal payday loan operation in Overland Park that federal authorities said exploited more than 2 million borrowers.
In Joel Tucker’s case, most of the charges stem from his scheme of selling phony consumer information to debt collectors, causing those debt collectors to try to get consumers to pay up on debts they did not actually owe. In 2017, the Federal Trade Commission obtained a $4 million judgment against Tucker for the same scam.
Collectors buy unpaid consumer debts from businesses, often for pennies on the dollar, and try their own luck at getting consumers to pay up. Some collectors buy debt owed by people who have filed for bankruptcy.
Debt portfolios are essentially spreadsheets with row after row of consumer data — names, addresses, phone numbers and the amount they owe — that are often bought and sold among debt collectors. Some debt buyers are careful to verify the authenticity of the portfolios they acquire. Others are not.
Tucker’s portfolios listed debts that consumers did not owe or that were entirely made up. At times, he sold portfolios that purported to come from payday lenders, some of which included the brand names belonging to his brother’s companies.
In 2016, a Texas judge noticed a number of consumer bankruptcy cases that included claims worth $390 from a company that called itself Castle Peak that couldn’t be verified. The judge opened an inquiry and discovered they originated from Tucker.
Tucker was called to testify in court about the debts in 2016. When Tucker was ordered to provide the judge documentation to support the validity of the debts he sold, Tucker created a bogus spreadsheet that he turned into the court.
Tucker also owes nearly $12 million in unpaid taxes, interest and penalties. As of May, only $512 had been paid toward that debt, according to court records. Meanwhile, Tucker spent big on himself, such as buying a Cadillac Escalade for $105,367, spending some $226,000 on private jets and $50,000 at a private club in the mountain resort town of Vail, Colorado.
All the while, Tucker told an agent with the Internal Revenue Service that he had no income to pay his tax debt.
Tucker also obtained a Paycheck Protection Program loan, a Small Business Administration program that offered cash to companies that feared the coronavirus pandemic would affect their business. The application for a PPP loan asked applicants whether they were under indictment at the time they sought the loan. Tucker replied that he wasn’t, which was untrue. He received a nearly $21,000 loan.
While Tucker is likely headed to prison for tax evasion and phony debt sales, he’s deeply connected to the Kansas City payday loan scandal that ensnared several local men in legal trouble for running enterprises that authorities concluded was exploitative.
Tucker was a primary owner of eData Solutions, which gathered consumer data and sold it to several payday lenders as leads to potential borrowers. eData, which was previously known as Bahama Marketing Group, also sold software to payday lenders.
Tucker and others sold eData Solutions to the Wyandotte Nation Tribe in Oklahoma for $277 million in 2012.
This story was originally published July 8, 2021 at 10:35 AM.
