Tag Archive for Stephen Darr

TelexFree Receiver Stephen Darr Speaks Out

 
In 35 years of handling bankruptcy cases, Stephen Darr has seen plenty of ugly. He has doled out funds to creditors of an asbestos company and a machine gun maker and to victims of several Ponzi schemes.
But nothing comes close to the scale of the TelexFree Inc. bankruptcy. Never in history has a trustee been responsible for divvying up the assets of a company that prosecutors say defrauded 2.1 million people, from Boston to Uganda.
Darr, an accountant by trade and senior managing director at Mesirow Financial Consulting in Boston, is the court-appointed trustee charged with paying out claims to victims who believe they are owed more than $1 billion in the case. TelexFree was purportedly a long-distance phone company, but in reality generated most of its money by luring a stream of small investors from 2012 until it was shut down earlier this year, according to prosecutors.
Many Brazilian immigrants risked — and lost — large portions of their savings, in hopes of reaping the generous returns that were promised.
“I feel very sympathetic toward these people,’’ Darr said. “They lost a lot of money. They deserve to get it back, and it’s my job to get it back to them as

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