Former Eagle Pointe owner sentenced to 4-year prison term
Laura Lane
A Bloomington man who bought Eagle Pointe Golf Course for $1.4 million in 2016 and then lost it to bankruptcy is off to federal prison for bilking a Minnesota trucking company of $730,000.
Douglas Ray Thomas, 49, pleaded guilty in federal court, and was sentenced Jan. 17 to 51 months in prison for wire fraud and failure to pay employment taxes.
The Monroe County address for Thomas listed in local court records is a five-bedroom French provincial house in the Muirfield subdivision worth more than $600,000.
A U.S. District Court judge in Minneapolis also ordered that Thomas pay $692,457.13 in restitution to the trucking company.
When he gets out of prison, Thomas will be on supervised release for two years, according to a news release issued by the court.
Thomas devised and executed a fraud scheme to gain control over the assets and revenue of Northwoods Trucking Inc., a transportation business located in Duluth, Minnesota, the news release states.
In October 2013, Thomas and the former owners of Northwoods Trucking entered into a stock purchase agreement. Thomas was to buy the outstanding shares of the company for $730,000.
While he never made the payments he agreed to, Thomas took control of the company two months later.
He then began transferring Northwoods Trucking's business revenue into a personal bank account, court documents reveal.
"Thomas repeatedly failed to pay many of the company's liabilities, including fuel and insurance for the company's trucks, payroll to employees and employment taxes due to the Internal Revenue Service," the news release states.
"Instead, Thomas used a significant portion of Northwoods Trucking's business revenue to pay personal expenses and debts, including housing, furniture and a family vacation."
Back in Monroe County, the state shut down 130-acre Eagle Pointe in the fall of 2017 for failure to pay retail and payroll taxes. The business filed for bankruptcy six days later.
In the spring of 2018, the homeowners group at Eagle Pointe purchased the golf course at a sale ordered by the bankruptcy court. It has since reopened.
Seven counts of check deception filed against Thomas in Monroe Circuit Court — four of them felonies — still are pending. Court records in the case say that from April through August 2017, Thomas paid seven employees with bad checks that totaled $5,860.12.
A pretrial conference in that case is set for Monday at the Zietlow Justice Center.