AP News, July 15th, 2007
A court-ordered sale of the estate of a former university economist and professor accused of fraud has brought in $2.35 million for the estimated 600 people who the government says gave him money to invest.
Court delegates auctioned the last of Al Parish's estate Saturday, but some items, including guitars owned by former Beatle George Harrison and Rolling Stone Keith Richards, didn't receive minimum bids.
Those guitars, however, along with one reportedly once owned by Jimi Hendrix were later sold to the same buyer for just under $450,000, Ed Roumillat, the sale's auctioneer, said Sunday. Parish spent more than $1 million on the guitars.
Several items that didn't get the minimum bid were sold afterward, Roumillat said, including a customized Mercedes-Benz. Other items will be sent to auction houses in larger cities, such as New York, to see if they can get higher bids, he said.
That includes some of the many Mount Blanc pens that Parish collected.
The biggest sale at the Charleston auction by far was the $1.45 million bid by the owner of a high-end Charleston audio store for 117 high-end watches.
"I've been planning this for a while," James Geiger said after winning the watch collection.
But the auction organizers were not expecting Geiger. "This guy just came from out of the blue," Roumillat said.
The auction Friday and Saturday is part of the Securities and Exchange Commission civil action against Parish. Early in the case against the flamboyant economist known for his colorful suits, a federal judge granted authority to dissolve Parish's estate.
Before the auction, David Dantzler, an attorney for the Atlanta company rounding up Parish's assets, said $3 million would be a good amount to get from the sale. That's still just a small percentage of the $50 million that investigators say investors lost.
In his criminal case, the former economics professor at Charleston Southern University is charged with securities fraud. Hospitalized with amnesia when authorities announced their investigation, he is free on $1 million bail and under house arrest.
