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Lake Village Woman Among Tuberville’s Disgruntled Investors

2 min read

Eventually you may get around to asking why Texas Tech’s head football coach, Camden’s own Tommy Tuberville, would be running a hedge fund.

But first you probably want to know the name of the Arkansan among seven plaintiffs who recently sued Tuberville, business partner John David Stroud and eight business entities they set up in Alabama.

That would be Debra Clark of Lake Village. She’s the wife of Stan Clark, who runs ChrisAir, a crop-dusting company in Lake Village, and daughter-in-law of Reagan Clark, owner of a crop insurance agency.

Whispers reached Barbara J. Wells, the Montgomery, Ala., lawyer who filed the complaint, but she declined to add anything to the allegations in the lawsuit, and Stan Clark said he was also going to honor his wife’s lawyer’s instructions.

But he did say that Debra is from Georgia, and it was through connections there that she hooked up with the Tuberville-Stroud folks. She did not know Tuberville personally, he said.

The complaint filed in federal court in Alabama, where Tuberville previously coached at Auburn University, claims that, between September 2010 and March 2011, Clark invested almost $285,000 with a Tuberville-Stroud entity.

The total invested by the seven plaintiffs, including four from Alabama and two from Tennessee, was more than $1.76 million. It’s unclear how many other people might have invested in any of the TS Capital entities.

‘Day-to-Day Oversight’
The complaint fills more than 30 pages, but its allegations boil down to this: TS Capital was a joke. It wasn’t registered, but it wasn’t exempt from registration. It wasn’t audited, it wasn’t capitalized and it didn’t file tax returns. Most ominously, the plaintiffs’ money wasn’t returned last fall as promised.

In an offering memorandum from June 2009, while Tuberville was temporarily out of the coaching business, he was described as "the co-founder of TS Capital Management" and said to be "responsible for the investment direction, capital raising, and the day-to-day oversight of business decisions of TSCM. In this capacity, Mr. Tuberville provides the fund with strategic direction and guidance while overseeing investment opportunities. Mr. Tuberville also evaluates and researches each private equity investment opportunity considered by TSCM."

Vic Hayslip, the Birmingham lawyer who represents Tuberville, didn’t return a call from Whispers last week. But other news organizations reported on a statement he released saying that Tuberville "has never even met or spoken with most of the plaintiffs," "absolutely never solicited any investment from any of these or other individuals," and "himself invested significant funds and has never received any return from his own investment."

How’s that for day-to-day oversight?

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