Thursday, January 14, 2010

KARE | Ex-employee said in legal 'barroom brawl'

A former long-time KARE-TV advertising employee, Christi Rowan, is at the center of a jaw-dropping bankruptcy case involving her boyfriend, a prominent Minneapolis-area car dealer mired in nearly $800 million in debts, local newspapers are reporting. A new lawsuit accuses Rowan of posing as a Gannett attorney making nearly $190,000 a year, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune said yesterday.

The suit filed by bankruptcy trustee Randy Seaver accuses the indebted auto dealer, Denny Hecker, of transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars to Rowan, 36, without logging that information into court records.

"Some of the more outlandish things Seaver alleged involved Rowan," the Minneapolis Star Tribune says, in describing the case as the legal equivalent of a barroom brawl. "He said she helped Hecker obtain a 2009 Land Rover because he could not obtain financing while in bankruptcy. Rowan, a freelance photographer, allegedly falsified loan applications in April by claiming falsely that she was a lawyer for Gannett making $189,000 a year."

KARE is one of Gannett's 23 TV stations. Hecker told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that he and Rowan had known each other for about a decade, around the time she started working in advertising at KARE-TV. She left the station in July 2008, the paper says.

Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

4 comments:

  1. One of the stories says she was convicted of two counts of felony theft in 2000 in Arizona. Seems that conviction had something to do with working at a car dealership.

    Now, is it typical for Gannett to hire convicted felons for advertising jobs, I wonder?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anyone know why she left Kare11 in July '08?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Christi was big revenue producer as well as a great spokesperson at kare when Kare owned the market. Mpls love to hang the rope on any one they can without all the facts just to make them selves feel better. In L A this would not even hit the news but Mpls is such a small city its like Fargo.From what I have read Seaver the Trustee must be a real out of control do gooder and makes his own rules for another notch in his belt. No where have I read the creditors have benefitted by his actions only for his name in headlines.
    Heckers ex aka (GOLDDIGGER) sued him quoted to say hes weak and a two faced lier to the deal he promised to her .
    The greed between them fighting over the remains
    of Heckers almost dead body.
    Heckers no angel but was always known as a very tuff business person
    This is a Jerry Springer show live in the twin cites.
    Greed and Idots Live!
    One lier accusing another? They so much deserve each other.
    Starring
    A reborn again Bible Banger VS a Gold digger!
    Good Night from LA

    ReplyDelete
  4. I don't know where the above poster got theirs ideas on the people in Minneapolis, but I do know the Mpls-St Paul Metro area is the 16th largest metropolitan area in the nation. It may not be as big as L.A., but it ain't Fargo either.

    The fact is that when Hecker closed down he left hundreds of workers without pay for their last few weeks of work, and dozens of customers without titles for their newly purchased vehicles and without their trade-in vehicles paid off- all thing that could have been avoided had he not been so greedy or stupid in the last few weeks before they closed.

    Not only that, but Denny put his face on nearly every bus in the twin cities (and every newspaper classified ad section). This has made the developing story closely watched by many people.

    ReplyDelete

Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.