Surely you remember the case of Andrew T. Melton, the former chief financial officer of ThermoEnergy Corp. who was indicted on 12 counts of mail fraud nearly two years ago?
A few months after he was indicted, Melton was hit with an additional five counts of employment tax fraud.
Well, it looks like his case is finally going to trial after several delays. It is now scheduled for March 17 before U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson.
Melton’s facing allegations that he used almost $110,000 of ThermoEnergy’s money to pay a personal judgment against him and then doctored the company’s financial statements to make it appear that the payments were legitimate business expenses. Other allegations include that between 2005 and 2009, Melton, as CFO, failed to forward to the Internal Revenue Service some $1.9 million in payroll taxes withheld from the paychecks of ThermoEnergy employees.
The wastewater treatment and power generation technology company began in Little Rock in 1988 but moved its headquarters to Massachusetts in 2011.
The publicly traded company never posted a profit in Little Rock, and that streak continued on the East Coast.
It reported a loss of $17.3 million in 2011, followed by a loss of $7.4 million in 2012. In 2013, its loss was $1.6 million, but its revenue had fallen 60 percent from the previous year to just $2.8 million.
ThermoEnergy had more bad news to report to the SEC in August. It said it wouldn’t be able to file its quarterly report for the period that ended in June because to save money it slashed its staff “to essential operating employees” in May. “We do not have sufficient staff resources to prepare and review the financial statements required to be included in our” quarterly report, the filing said.
It did say that its net income for the period ending June 30 will be “significantly less” than for the same period a year ago.
ThermoEnergy said it didn’t know when the second-quarter numbers were going to be filed, and, as of Thursday, neither second-quarter nor third-quarter results had been submitted to the SEC.
Thermo COO Gregory Landegger, who was also listed as the interim CFO on the latest filing, couldn’t be reached for comment because his voice mailbox at the company was full.
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