Breakthru Beverage & Empire Merchants get nasty double whammy with fraud lawsuit & Trump casino bankruptcy clawback

New York’s largest distributor Empire Merchants and its co-owner Breakthru Beverage Group, have been hit with double whammies that include internecine fraud charges and an unanticipated problem resulting from the Trump Casino bankruptcies. Empire is the largest distributor in NY, doing about $1.9 billion in 2015, according to Shanken’s Impact Newsletter.

 

The September double whammy

• Empire has sued Breakthru co-owners for fraud, alleging, among other things, a conspiracy to smuggle low-taxation Maryland booze into high-tax New York state.(See Shanken News Daily) and “Maryland booze peddlers cheated NYC distributor out of millions of dollars in tax-dodging scheme”)
• Breakthru has also been hit with a six-figure clawback demand from the Trump Casino bankruptcy trustee.

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Also available in this article:

• Trump trumps Breakthru misery

• Parsing the Breakthru/Empire Corporate Web

Full court filings for Wine Executive News Premium Subscribers

• Empire/Breakthrough federal fraud – Court Complaint (.pdf, 108-pages)
• Trump Bankruptcy Trustee Demand For Clawback – Court Complaint
• Trump Bankruptcy Trustee Demand For Clawback – Invoices

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