A federal bankruptcy judge has approved the sale of Big Storm Brewing as part of the ongoing effort to recover money that authorities say was stolen from medical trust funds by the craft brewing firm\u2019s former owner.<\/p>\n
The brewery\u2019s Clearwater tap room on 49th Street North, along with its fixtures, liquor licenses, trademarks and inventory, will be sold at a Dec. 2 auction, court records show. The starting bid is $7.5 million. A Gulfport company, Tide LLC, has already pledged a bid in that amount.<\/p>\n
The business will remain open while the sale continues, court records show.<\/p>\n
Big Storm Brewing was one of more than 100 companies fully or partly owned by Leo Govoni, a Clearwater entrepreneur who was indicted in June on charges of wire and mail fraud and money laundering. He is accused of stealing funds from the medical trust funds of injured and disabled people.<\/p>\n
More than $100 million was siphoned from the trusts, which were administered by the Center for Special Needs Trust Administration. The theft sent the St. Petersburg nonprofit, which Govoni co-founded, into bankruptcy and left roughly 2,000 trust fund holders with little or no money for future medical needs.<\/p>\n
Govoni was denied bail and will remain in a Pinellas County jail until his trial, which is scheduled for early next year.<\/p>\n
Federal bankruptcy Judge Roberta Colton in June approved transferring ownership of Govoni\u2019s business assets, including Big Storm, to the bankruptcy estate, which is seeking to recover assets from Govoni\u2019s business empire.<\/p>\n
The 3.5-acre property includes Big Storm\u2019s tap room, brewery and office space. It is valued at $3.5 million by the county property appraiser, records show.<\/p>\n
The sale will mark the end of efforts by bankruptcy officers to continue operating Big Storm, with any profits going into the bankruptcy estate. That effort included a rebranding of its website that claimed, \u201cHope is on tap.\u201d<\/p>\n
Govoni purchased a stake in Big Storm in 2013. He and his son, LJ Govoni, later became principal owners and rapidly expanded the business with tap rooms in Odessa, Ybor City and Orlando, and the purchase of smaller breweries, including Fat Point Brewing in Punta Gorda and Darwin Brewing in Bradenton.<\/p>\n
Sponsorship deals were signed with the Tampa Bay Lightning for a Bolts-branded beer for the franchise\u2019s 25th anniversary and with the Tampa Bay Rowdies and the Clearwater Threshers.<\/p>\n
A forensic accounting analysis instigated by the bankruptcy estate found that Big Storm received roughly $16 million in loans from Boston Finance Group, a Govoni company that prosecutors said was the conduit for him to disperse trust fund money to his other business assets.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear how much of the sale will end up going to the victims who lost money. Bankruptcy estate attorneys are in negotiations with Briar Capital, a finance firm that lent Big Storm roughly $3.2 million and has filed motions to secure repayment for the loan and accrued interest.<\/p>\n
Andrea Lay, listed in state records as the registered agent for the Gulfport firm that filed the \u201cstalking horse\u201d bid for Big Storm, told the Tampa Bay Times that her firm\u2019s interest is undecided. A stalking horse bidder is a company that makes the initial bid on the assets of a bankrupt firm before an auction begins. This initial bid sets a minimum price floor, preventing unreasonably low offers.<\/p>\n
Lay declined to say what industry Tide LLC is part of or what they would do with the property.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know that we will pull the trigger,\u201d she said. \u201cWe haven\u2019t formalized anything yet, and I don\u2019t know if we\u2019re going to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal bankruptcy judge has approved the sale of Big Storm Brewing as part of the ongoing effort…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[36729,1339,36731,596,202,204,203,199,201,200,36730],"class_list":["post-60799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-big-storm-brewing","tag-clearwater","tag-leo-govoni","tag-pinellas-county","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tide-llc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}