Oceanfront Auction

Few things expose a private life as much as a public auction.
If it involves a house and its contents, anyone who shows for the event up is allowed to see the items, inspect the home and walk the premises. In almost any other type of situation, unless you had an invitation from the owner, such behavior would be called trespassing.
You can learn a lot about the former owner, maybe more than they would want you to know, by getting an up-close look at their stuff. Maybe, by chatting with others who attend, you can even find out why their stuff is being offered to the highest bidder.
Auctions can be held to sell off estates of the deceased, seized property (by the government) or foreclosed property (by a bank), so sometimes there is a story involving death, criminal behavior or financial ruin to go along with the bidding. Which can make for a fairly interesting afternoon, especially if someone who is owed money by the former owner happens to attend.
This past Saturday, an auction was held for a waterfront home and property in Jonesport. The 3.2-acre parcel, formerly owned by Robert and Marshia Brown, is next to Sandy River Beach and overlooks Roque Island. Leading up to the weekend, advertisements for the auction were printed in Down East and Maine magazines.
According to the July 2010 online newsletter of the local Port and Starboard Yacht Club, there is no scandal or tragedy behind the auction of the Browns' property. They simply are selling off most of their worldly items so they can move onto a 36-foot sailboat that Bob Brown has refurbished and then live on it while they sail around the eastern seaboard. So much for controversy.
They are divesting themselves of quite a bit. The auctioneer's list of items offered for bids, posted online by D.A. Folsom Auction Service, Inc., is extensive. There's a main house, a garage with studio, and a boat house, not to mention a backhoe, a GMC truck, a forklift, boats, machine shop equipment, assorted tools and a 1972 Mercedes Benz. Housewares, numerous paintings (several by Marshia Brown), a mink coat, household electronics, furniture, clothing - the list goes on. More than 400 items in all.
How much it all sold for I don't know. I haven't seen any reports about the outcome. Not all auctions result in acceptable bids but, given the economy, I bet someone got a nice piece of shorefront property - and a whole lot of other stuff- for a relatively decent price.

Feeling the Heat

A photo from the Mount Desert Islander of a July 29, 2008 fire in Northeast Harbor. This post is about the financial and legal problems of some of the town's seasonal residents, not the fire.

Summer is in full throttle in Northeast Harbor. The sidewalks are crowded, the boutiques are buzzing and there is barely a parking space to be found - but that doesn't mean that the legal troubles for a few members of the town's seasonal monied elite have been put on hold.

Frederic Bourke, co-founder of the Dooney & Bourke handbag company and owner of a cottage near Bracy Cove, is contesting his conviction last year of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Bourke, 64, allegedly turned a blind eye in the late 1990s when, in a failed $350 million oil deal, a Czech business partner tried to bribe Azerbaijani officials into rigging an auction of the former Soviet republic's state-owned oil company. He was ordered to pay a $1 million fine and to serve a year and a day in federal prison, but has yet to do time or pay the fine while pursuing the appeal.
Another well-heeled seasonal resident also was featured in the trial last summer. According to this Bloomberg article, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell - who owns a home in Seal Harbor - is a friend of Bourke's who invested $200,000 in the failed deal. Mitchell testified that he, like Bourke, was unaware of any bribes. Bourke did not testify.
Bourke's appellate attorneys are arguing in New York that the federal judge's instructions to the jury about the legal concept of conscious avoidance prejudiced Bourke's defense, according to this Main Justice article. On July 31, prosecutors filed an 80-page response with the 2nd Circuit federal appeals court, arguing that the trial judge's instructions to the jury were entirely proper, the article states.

Closer to home, alleged antique and clothing thief Dianna Brochendorff (at left) is being pursued for small financial claims. Brochendorff, 63, is facing a criminal larceny charge in Connecticut, where a former friend claims the Northeast Harbor consignment shop owner made off with nearly $200,000 worth of items Brochendorff had promised to keep in storage for her (which Brochendorff denies). In Maine, there is more than one person who claims they have been stiffed by Brochendorff with unpaid bills.
Brochendorff was in Ellsworth District Court on Monday, Aug. 2, to answer claims that she owes Bar Harbor Bank & Trust $23,415. The bank has been trying to get Brochendorff to repay the money for four years. At the end of Monday's financial closure hearing, she was given two weeks to come up with $20,000. If she does, that will settle the case. She also has been pursued by MCM Electric, which claimed she owed them $1,170 for two days of work they did last September. According to a hand written note in that court file, she paid the contractor $600 in May. That case was dismissed on Monday.
Since Brochendorff's financial woes became public, she has moved her consignment shop from Somesville to Main Street in Northeast Harbor and renamed it "Maine Coast Exchange," according to the Bangor Daily News.

On July 29, a state supreme court judge in New York refused to throw out the guilty verdict for Anthony Marshall (at right), who was convicted in October 2009 of stealing millions from his mother, the late philanthropist and New York society doyenne Brooke Astor. According to this New York Daily News article, Marshall, 86, argued the verdict should be dismissed because a juror was pressured by other jurors into finding him guilty.
Marshall, who now owns the Northeast Harbor estate where Astor summered for decades, remains free on $500,000 while considering other appeals. His wife, former local resident Charlene Marshall, has not been charged in the case but has been savaged by the New York media (here's just one example of many).

There doesn't seem to be much news lately about Donald Anthony Walker Young (at left), the former Tennis Club Road homeowner who is accused of stealing $25 million from investors in his Pennsylvania investment firm. As we pointed out in April, Philadelphia Business Journal reported that Young was indicted on April Fool's Day (believe it or not) with running a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme. Among Young's victims are other local wealthy seasonal residents, according to the Bangor Daily News.
The federal Securities and Exchange Commission seems to have sold Young's local home, which it seized and then put up for sale last year. According to the local assessor's online database, the house sold on Jan. 21 for $1.25 million, over half a million dollars more than what Young paid for it in 2001. Young, while awaiting his fate, now resides in Palm Beach, Fla., in a home not far from where Bernie Madoff used to live.

Tree Claw

Winter Harbor. Reminders of the importance of lobstering to the economy and culture of Maine, especially Downeast, seem to sprout up everywhere...