Thursday, December 17, 2015

Pigeon King creditors accept proposal

The creditors left after Pigeon King International filed for bankruptcy in 2008, then founder Arlan Galbraith in 2009, have only $130,000 to share.

Only four turned out for a meeting of creditors in Kitchener this week, but on behalf of more than 50 claimants, they approved the proposal developed by BDO Dunwoody.

Farmers will get 75 per cent of the money, others, including tax collectors, the other 25 per cent.

Some farmers are owed for pigeons they delivered, but were not paid, others for up-front payments for breeding pairs they never received.

They will get just over five cents on a dollar’s worth of losses.

Three employees get all the money they were owed.

Bankruptcy administration took the lion’s share of more than $430,000 in assets the company and Galbraith held.

Galbraith was convicted of fraud and sentenced to seven years in prison in 2013, but was released on parole in July. His whereabouts are not known.

The court judged his business to be a Ponzi scheme, meaning it depended on luring new investors to pay previous investors, but had little chance of long-term survival.