Bank: John Rogers Misrepresented Price of Hoffman Collection

John Rogers

North Little Rock sports memorabilia and photo dealer John Rogers misrepresented the purchase price of an archive he bought in 2012, leading First Arkansas Bank & Trust to loan him almost five times the value rather than the 75 percent it intended to lend, the bank said in a court filing Monday.

Rogers denies misleading the Jacksonville bank. He said officials knew the loan also covered the cost of digitizing, editing and obtaining copyrights associated with the collection.

First Arkansas loaned Rogers $1.5 million to buy the Hoffman Collection, the actual purchase price of which was $325,000. 

“We didn’t use $1.5 million to purchase it,” Rogers told Arkansas Business. “The loan was for the purchase and cost to digitize the 4,000 hours of film. Editing and obtaining rights were the balance.”

But an attorney for First Arkansas said the loan’s sole purpose was to acquire the Hoffman Collection, not to cover any other costs. 

“According to the records of the bank, the purchase price as represented by John Rogers was $2 million,” said Roger Rowe of the Little Rock law firm of Lax Vaughan Fortson Rowe & Threet.

(Related: An Australian media company has sued Rogers, saying his company violated an agreement to digitize the company’s photographs and has refused to return the collection.) 

The now-controversial loan is among four delinquent loans with a combined outstanding balance of more than $14.5 million. On Friday, First Arkansas obtained a default judgment against Rogers, who personally guaranteed the loans.

Details of the Hoffman acquisition hit the public record on Nov. 21 when the seller, David Hoffman of Santa Cruz, California, sued Rogers to collect $80,000 owed on the $325,000 sale of his collection back in May 2012.

The Hoffman collection included Hoffman’s interest in “How Hitler Lost the War,” “Earl Scruggs: His Family and Friends,” “Sing Sing Thanksgiving” featuring B.B. King, “Making Sense of the Sixties” PBS series interviews, and thousands of digitized snapshots of 19th century advertisements and other historic images. 

Hoffman obtained an order on Thursday for Rogers to satisfy the debt by turning over another archive, the Rickerby Collection, which Rogers pledged as collateral. The Rickerby Collection includes photos and negatives of President John F. Kennedy taken by Arthur Rickerby, the late American photographer who covered the Kennedy administration for Life magazine.

But according to Monday’s court filings, Hoffman could be third in line to claim a security interest in the Rickerby Collection. Rogers also pledged the Rickerby Collection as collateral with Mark Roberts, a former investor in Rogers’ business ventures; and First Arkansas Bank & Trust.

Hoffman didn’t file a security interest in the collection until his Uniform Commercial Code filing with the Arkansas Secretary of State in October 2014.

The loan for the Hoffman Collection is not the first Rogers loan to face scrutiny. 

Early this month, Arkansas Business reported a questionable UCC filing indicating that Rogers used a newspaper photo archives that he never owned, The Daily Oklahoman’s, as security for a private debt with Mac Hogan, one of his investors. 

Questions surrounding Rogers’ financial dealings join an investigation into his involvement with counterfeit sports memorabilia. FBI agents raided his business and home on Jan. 28 as part of a national fraud investigation in the sports memorabilia business.

No criminal charges have been filed against Rogers.

Rogers relinquished his voting rights to Mac Hogan and any day-to-day involvement with the businesses after he defaulted earlier this year on a forbearance agreement with First Arkansas Bank.

Rogers assigned his stock ownership in the sports memorabilia and photo archive ventures to his wife, Angelica. That transfer occurred as part of the property settlement in their speedy divorce case earlier this year.