Former Tallahassee financial adviser released from federal custody

By Nic Corbett
Tallahassee Democrat

Things have gone downhill in the last five years for former Tallahassee investment adviser Don Reinhard.

He’s been slammed with lawsuits from several of his clients, the former Florida Department of Insurance and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which accuse him of causing his clients and investors to lose millions of dollars through fraud and misrepresenting risk. Reinhard filed for bankruptcy in November 2006.

Now a federal grand jury has accused Reinhard, 47, of hiding assets he should have reported on his bankruptcy petition, falsifying financial statements for a loan application and submitting inaccurate tax returns for his pending bankruptcy case. If convicted on all 23 counts, he could get 214 years in prison and be forced to pay $6.5 million in fines. He was arrested Tuesday at his Santa Rosa Beach home.

Reinhard, a former Seminole Boosters president who pledged $1 million to Florida State University, was released Thursday from the Federal Detention Center in Tallahassee after his sister, Anne Reinhard Schildhammer, offered up her Alpharetta, Ga., home to be used as collateral and his brother, Herb Reinhard III, put up $15,000 in a cash bond.

“That is the bulk of my savings,” his brother said to U.S. District Judge William C. Sherrill.

Don Reinhard surrendered his passport. He can’t leave North Florida without giving notice, nor can he drink excessively or possess a firearm. The judge told him to avoid contact with potential witnesses.

Schildhammer’s home could be forfeited if Reinhard does not show up for court or if he violates the conditions of his pretrial release. According to the city of Alpharetta’s online records, Schildhammer’s home is assessed close to $300,000.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Kunz told the judge that Reinhard can’t be trusted since he was lying to his landlord about paying his rent, and then claimed in open court he didn’t have to pay rent on his home.

“We’re very concerned about that,” Kunz said.

The indictment came Oct. 21 after a two-year investigation by the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Trustee Program, which oversees the nation’s bankruptcy system. Reinhard’s attorney, Stephen Dobson of Tallahassee, has said that his client maintains his innocence. Reinhard’s trial has been set for Jan. 5.

Reinhard is accused of submitting a false tax return that inflated his income so that he could get a $220,000 loan from SouthTrust Bank (now Wachovia) and buy a 36-foot Contender boat valued at $265,000. He took that boat and another valued at $238,000 to the Bahamas to conceal them, according to the indictment. After he defaulted on the loan, he refused to tell the bank where he took the Contender.

On his bankruptcy petition, Reinhard falsely claimed he still owed his brother nearly $1.2 million, according to the indictment. He didn’t report gifts of more than $200, although he had paid about $19,000 for his girlfriend’s plastic surgery, used roughly $7,500 to pay off his girlfriend’s Toyota and deposited more than $11,000 in his girlfriend’s bank account between December 2005 and June 2006. He allegedly concealed more than $43,000 of security and lease payments for a home in Southwood and another in Santa Rosa Beach.

Reinhard didn’t report that he jointly owned three art objects, glass gondolas valued at about $40,000 each, according to the indictment, nor did he mention his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, worth some $22,000, plus the two boats. He failed to report his investment account with Raymond James & Associates, the indictment says.

The indictment also accuses Reinhard of not reporting that he prepaid a two-year lease on a 2006 BMW registered in Georgia, that he was leasing a Sea Ray boat and that he had leased property in Southwood between 2006 and 2007.


Posted by Michael Hearns from www.launderingmoney.com and http://launderingmoney.blogspot.com