Why Is Paul Bryant Jr. On The UA Board of Trustees And Not In Federal Prison?

Paul Bryant Jr. (right), with
 UA athletics director Mal Moore

The question hovering above today's meeting in Tuscaloosa of the University of Alabama Board of Trustees will be this: Should UAB be allowed to build a 30,000-seat on-campus football stadium?

But the big question, the one that really needs to be asked, is this: Why is a man with documented ties to insurance fraud serving on the Board of Trustees? In fact, why is that man, Paul W. Bryant Jr., presiding as president pro tempore over a meeting where decisions about large amounts of public funds are being made?

To put it in blunt and stark terms: Why is Paul Bryant Jr. serving on the board of Alabama's flagship university instead of serving time in a federal prison?

After all, that's where a Pennsylvania lawyer/entrepreneur named Allen W. Stewart has been residing for quite some time, after receiving a 15-year sentence for orchestrating a scam that left thousands of Americans with worthless insurance policies. Public documents show that Alabama Reassurance, a company owned by Paul Bryant Jr., was in the middle of the Stewart scam.

Stewart was convicted on all 135 counts against him. And court documents show that nine of those counts directly involved Alabama Reassurance in "a wire fraud scheme to deceive state insurance regulators involving reinsurance." What was the goal? To enrich the executives at three insurance companies "in order to inflate their financial statements."

One of those three companies was Alabama Reassurance. It had $238 million in "admitted assets" and fell under the umbrella of Greene Group, Inc., led by president Paul Bryant Jr.

Is it possible that Alabama Re underlings committed fraud without Bryant's knowledge? That seems unlikely. Documents from the Alabama Department of Insurance show that Alabama Re had only two full-time employees--a president named Scott Moore Phelps and a vice president/actuary named William Rodney Windham. They were joined on the board of directors by Paul Bryant Jr., president of Greene Group Inc.; Allen Wayne May, a Tuscaloosa veterinarian; and Sam Moore Phelps, a Tuscaloosa lawyer.

How do you run a $238-million company with two people? Perhaps that question should be posed to Paul Bryant Jr.

Alabama Re, it turns out, was one peculiar operation. We shined light on its business practices in the following post:

Paul Bryant Jr. and Alabama Reassurance: A Portrait of Fraud

In such a tightly held organization, is it possible that Bryant could not have known about massive fraud taking place on his watch? The answer clearly seems to be no.

If you care about UAB and its future--and everyone living in Alabama should--how do you feel about the notion that critical decisions are being made by a man who has expertise in insurance fraud--and how to get away with it?

It's not as if serious doubt exists about Bryant's connections to fraud. At the bottom of this post is a  ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania that upholds Allen W. Stewart's convictions--and proves Alabama Re's role in the case. And we quote from a pertinent section of that ruling, encompassed in footnote 11:

11. The relevant portions of the charge read as follows:
Counts 24 through 32 charge a wire fraud scheme to deceive state insurance regulators involving reinsurance. The superseding indictment alleges that in late 1992 or early 1993 the defendant devised a scheme to deceive state regulators and others regarding the true and complete reinsurance arrangements involving Summit National Life Insurance Company, its subsidiary Fidelity General Life Insurance Company, and the Alabama Reassurance Company in order to inflate their financial statements.

Let's return to a question we asked earlier: Why will Paul Bryant Jr. be presiding today over a meeting of the University of Alabama Board of Trustees instead of sitting in a federal prison cell like Allen W. Stewart?

To be fair to Bryant, we should note that his company was tied to only nine counts while Stewart was convicted of all 135 counts. Had Bryant gone to trial and been convicted--a virtual certainty considering the strength of the evidence in the Pennsylvania case--he might have received a sentence considerably lighter than the 15 years that Stewart got.

So perhaps Bryant would be a free man today. But would he have been nominated to serve on the UA Board of Trustees? Even in Alabama, the notion of a convicted felon serving on a university board might be frowned upon.

It's also possible that Bryant would have received even a longer sentence than did Stewart. That's because we've never learned the full extent of the financial skulduggery at Alabama Re. Is it possible that Bryant's company concocted schemes that went way beyond anything involving Allen W. Stewart? Stewart must have turned to Alabama Re for a reason, right? Is that because he knew the company had a reputation for engaging in fraudulent schemes?

So why, again, has Paul Bryant Jr. never been held accountable for his apparent crimes? Why is he president of a major university governing board, despite his unmistakable ties to business fraud?

We haven't been able to fully nail down the answer to those questions. But we suspect it has to do with a certain individual who was serving in the U.S. Department of Justice at the time, a person who just happens to be a graduate of . . . the University of Alabama--a person who reportedly has a history of doing legal work for Paul Bryant Jr.

Here is how we explained it in an earlier post:

Public documents show that Alabama Reassurance was implicated in a $15-million scheme that netted a 15-year prison sentence for a Pennsylvania man named Allen W. Stewart in the late 1990s. An investigation of Alabama Re was called off, apparently because Bryant had friends in the U.S. attorney's office for the Northern District of Alabama.

G. Douglas Jones, now a lawyer at the Birmingham firm of Haskell Slaughter, had just become U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama when the Alabama Re investigation was called off. Multiple sources tell Legal Schnauzer that Jones has ties to Bryant and has done legal work for him. I twice have asked Jones if he called off the Alabama Re investigation, and he has refused to answer the question. In fact, Jones has refused to answer any questions from me--including questions about his work with Rob Riley, son of former Governor Bob Riley, on a federal HealthSouth lawsuit that netted millions of dollars for plaintiffs' lawyers. Jones' refusal to answer questions from me is odd, given that he regularly is quoted in various media outlets. He becomes mute when the subjects of Paul Bryant Jr. and Rob Riley are raised.

You might think that Doug Jones, as a former public servant and still an "officer of the court," would feel an obligation to discuss his decisions in the Alabama Re investigation--and his ties to Paul Bryant Jr. But you would be wrong; Doug Jones has made it clear that he feels no duty to answer to the public that paid his salary as a federal prosecutor.

Perhaps UAB supporters should be asking this: Is Doug Jones the guy who let Paul Bryant Jr. "skate" on apparent business crimes? Is UAB now paying a huge price because of Doug Jones' actions?

Alabama Re Memorandum Opinion

University of Alabama Football: The Rest of the Story

The University of Alabama is the toast of college football this morning. The Crimson Tide throttled the University of Texas last night in Pasadena, California, to win the BCS National Championship game.

Alabama's victory is splashed on sports pages across the country today, and the Crimson Tide players and coaches deserve their shining moment; they clearly were the superior team last night.

But an ugly story with connections to Alabama football is going unreported. It involves a man named Paul W. Bryant Jr., the football program's best-known financial booster and a member of the university's board of trustees. He also is the son of Paul W. "Bear" Bryant, the school's late hall-of-fame coach.

One of Bryant Jr.'s companies, Alabama Reassurance, was directly connected to a massive insurance fraud case in Pennsylvania several years ago. A prosecution resulted in a 15-year prison sentence for a Philadelphia lawyer/entrepreneur named Allen W. Stewart. Bryant Jr. and his company managed to escape with little scrutiny and no punishment.

The Alabama Reassurance story is about the sometimes unsavory business activities of those who support big-time college football. It also is about the double standard that can exist in the U.S. justice system. Is your company more likely to get away with unlawful activity if you have a famous name--not to mention money and power? The Paul Bryant Jr. story indicates the answer to that question is yes.

Paul Bryant Jr.'s connections to insurance fraud have gone unreported in the mainstream press. They have not gone unreported in our little corner of the blogosphere. And over the next few days, we will be presenting evidence that proves that the University of Alabama's best-known football booster has ties to an insurance fraud that totaled in the neighborhood of $15 million.

This has not required any Jack Anderson-like reporting on our part. Documents are available on the Web that show Alabama Reassurance's prominent role in the Allen W. Stewart case.

Perhaps the most troubling part of Paul Bryant Jr.'s connections to insurance fraud are that someone in the U.S. Justice Department apparently took steps to cover them up. This was in the late 1990s, when the DOJ was overseen by the Bill Clinton administration. Consider this, from one of our earlier posts:

Bryant and his company, Alabama Reassurance, came through the episode virtually unscathed. Sources tell Legal Schnauzer that a full-bore investigation of Alabama Re was to commence once the Stewart conviction was secured. In fact, Caryl Privett--then U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama and now a Jefferson County Circuit judge--reportedly had promised investigators that they could go after Alabama Re once the Stewart trial was over.

By then, however, Privett was out of office, and someone in the U.S. Department of Justice called off the Alabama Re investigation. One can only wonder if Bryant's company has forsaken the fraudulent business practices that were revealed in the Stewart trial. One can also wonder who cut Bryant and his company a break--and why.

Who, indeed, cut Paul Bryant Jr. a gigantic break? Our research indicates the path runs awfully close to the doorstep of Birmingham lawyer Doug Jones, who at one point led Don Siegelman's defense team while also suing Siegelman's codefendant, former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy. Before becoming Alabama's "King of Conflicts," Jones served as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama in the late 1990s. And we have noted the footprints he has left behind in curious places:

Sources tell Legal Schnauzer that the investigation into Alabama Reassurance was called off after Privett's successor took office. And who was her successor? None other than Doug Jones.

Isn't that interesting? Did Doug Jones help cover up fraud connected to Paul Bryant Jr. while riding a white charger in the Richard Scrushy case?

You can rest assured that Paul Bryant Jr. and his buddies at Alabama Reassurance are riding high this morning, breathing in the rarefied air generated by Alabama's glory on the football field. Meanwhile, Allen W. Stewart resides in a federal prison because of a crime with direct ties to Alabama Reassurance. Is that how our justice system is supposed to work?

Consider the landscape in Alabama today. A former governor (Don Siegelman) and CEO (Richard Scrushy) have been convicted of a "crime" they clearly did not commit. Former educator and Alabama Rep. Sue Schmitz (D-Toney) is headed for federal prison for a "crime" that Harper's Scott Horton describes as "teacher underperforms lesson plan." And former Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford is headed to prison after being convicted on fraud charges that amounted to accepting $236,000 in cash and gifts.

We don't mean to soft pedal the actions that led to Langford's conviction. But even if you factor in the value of business Langford steered to an investment banker, the fraud was less than $8 million.

Public documents indicate that Paul Bryant Jr.'s company was involved in a fraud that totaled $15 million. And the employees of Alabama Reassurance probably haven't been headed anywhere lately--except to the national-championship game last night.

In terms of football, here is a question that University of Texas fans might want to ponder. It's unclear how much money Paul Bryant Jr. contributes to the Alabama football program, but the sum figures to be substantial. What if Alabama Reassurance had imploded under the weight of a federal investigation several years ago and some of its employees wound up in federal prison? Would the University of Alabama still have been able to hire superstar coach Nick Saban? Would the Crimson Tide have been as powerful as it was last night at the Rose Bowl Stadium? Would the Crimson Tide have even come anywhere near making the national-championship game?

Can a booster's connections to criminal activity help lead to football success?

The University of Alabama is basking this morning in the glow of a national championship. But there is an ugly story behind the glory. And we will be providing the details here at Legal Schnauzer.

UAB's Carol Garrison Presents a "Profile in Courage" on Stadium Issue

Carol Garrison

The biggest story in Birmingham last week involved the University of Alabama Board of Trustees and its refusal to address plans for an on-campus football stadium at UAB--even though the chairman of the board's athletics committee had enthusiastically endorsed the plan in September.

Many UAB supporters are baffled and outraged, understandably so. After a presentation on the stadium proposal less than two months ago, Athletics Committee Chairman John McMahon said he thought the project would "get done and get done quickly." At last Thursday's board meeting in Tuscaloosa the project was pronounced dead.

What happened between September and November? UAB supporters tend to point angry fingers at Paul W. Bryant Jr., president pro tempore of the Board of Trustees and son of UA's late, Hall of Fame football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. Blazer fans are correct to be suspicious of Bryant Jr.'s motives; he long has been seen as an impediment to UAB's aspirations in the sports arena. But UAB President Carol Garrison should not escape scrutiny. Her weakness as a leader helped set the stadium fiasco in motion.

To be sure, Bryant Jr. is a shady character, and public documents show that Bryant is a businessman with deeply skewed ethics, as we pointed out in a post with a not-so-subtle headline:

Why Is Paul Bryant Jr. on the UA Board of Trustees and Not In Federal Prison?

Court documents from Pennsylvania show that one of Bryant's companies, Alabama Reassurance, engaged in a "wire fraud scheme" to deceive insurance regulators and "inflate financial statements." A Philadelphia lawyer/entrepreneur named Allen W. Stewart received a 15-year prison sentence in the case, but an investigation of Alabama Re was called off by U.S. Justice Department officials in Alabama.

According to Alabama Department of Insurance records, Bryant was one of five people on the Alabama Re board, and the company had two full-time employees. In such a closely held organization, it's hard to imagine that Bryant was unaware of a $15-million fraud scheme.

Bryant is not the only slippery character in the UAB stadium story. Carol Garrison has her own set of shaky ethics, and UAB is not likely to move forward until both Bryant and Garrison are out of power.

Like Bryant, Garrison has a disturbing history of being tied to financial shenanigans. In fact, she probably should have been fired for misuse of public funds during her first year on the job at UAB. But the Board of Trustees, already facing a likely lawsuit from UAB's previous president (W. Ann Reynolds), decided to keep Garrison on--ensuring that she would be their toady for the foreseeable future.

How weak is Garrison as a university president? Consider her almost comical response to the Board of Trustees' announcement that the stadium plan was going down. First, here is a portion of the board's statement:

A majority of the Board believes that an on-campus football stadium is not in the best interest of UAB, the University System or the State. It is the Board's duty to be responsible stewards of the limited resources available for higher education. In these difficult economic times of rising tuition and decreasing state funds, we cannot justify the expenditure of $75 million in borrowed money for an athletic stadium which would only be used a few days each year. The UAB football program has not generated sufficient student, fan or financial support to assure the viability of this project.

Here is Garrison's response:

I forwarded for consideration by the Board of Trustees the information on our proposed on-campus stadium. My responsibility is to make the best recommendations I can, based on the information that I have available to me. The responsibility of the Board includes reviewing the information and making their best individual and collective judgments. In this case the judgment was not to entertain this item. Together we need to refocus with the Board on all the important and exciting opportunities before this great university.

How's that for a "profile in courage"? That's really standing up for your constituents, isn't it? Garrison came across as a labradoodle, rolling over in hopes that someone would rub her belly.

Paul Bryant Jr.

It's really no secret what's happened over the past two months to torpedo the UAB stadium project. When the athletics committee met on September 16, the Blazers had an 0-1 record (an expected loss to SEC power Florida), and many experts thought the team had a decent chance for a winning season and a bowl game. The next day, UAB got blown out at Legion Field by a bad Tulane team--and the season has disintegrated since then. The Blazers are 1-8, ranked as one of the worst teams in college football, and Coach Neil Callaway now has a 16-45 record in his fifth year.

UAB fans are howling for Callaway's dismissal, and that apparently has ticked off Bryant Jr. It has been widely reported that Bryant Jr. forced UAB to hire Callaway, a former UA player and coach, after the board refused to let UAB hire its first choice, Jimbo Fisher (now Florida State's coach).

In an exchange last Thursday with al.com's Kevin Scarbinsky, Bryant strongly hinted that UAB and its fans are being unfair to Callaway:

Bryant: "Given the way the vote was, if it had gotten to me, I would've voted no (on the stadium project). I think there are a lot of things to be done to help the football program."

Q: Short of building an on-campus stadium?

A: "To start with, it's very difficult for them to have a chance recruiting with the facilities they have. It's very difficult for them to recruit when they can't admit players from Birmingham that qualify under NCAA requirements (but not under UAB's higher requirements). It's tough being the Vanderbilt of Conference USA, and that's what they're having to try to do. My main interest in it is to support the players and the coaches. I think last Friday there was something written in (a Hot Corner in The Birmingham News) whether to pull for them to win the (Marshall) game or not because you didn't know who you wanted the coach to be. I think that was a horrible thing to write. If anybody's looking at it that way, they ought to be doing everything they can to support the team to win games right now."

Bryant's comments are nonsensical, at best. If UAB's facilities make it hard to recruit football players, does Bryant think pulling the plug on a new stadium will help? As for UAB's tougher admissions standards for athletes, reducing special admits, those are an attempt to address problems with the NCAA's guidelines for Academic Progress Rate (APR). Does Bryant think the university should ignore those issues? As for the "Hot Corner" item in The Birmingham News, it was a written by one of the paper's sportswriters--not a UAB supporter. It doesn't represent an official UAB position--and it's not the sportswriter's job "to support the team."

If UAB had a respectable record in 2011--say, 5-4, with three games to play--would the stadium plan be moving forward? Did Bryant Jr. pull the plug on UAB's stadium plans because the university wants to can Callaway in the midst of a dismal season?

The answer to both questions, I think, is yes. And that brings us back to Carol Garrison.

She set this soap opera in motion by agreeing to hire Callaway in the first place. If Bryant Jr. and the board wanted to nix Jimbo Fisher, claiming he was too expensive, UAB could have gone in a different direction. The best choice probably would have been John Neal, a long-time UAB assistant who has been highly successful as secondary coach at the University of Oregon. Former Blazer players speak glowingly of Neal, and he has the kind of energetic, fiery presence the program desperately needs.

If Bryant balked even at Neal, Garrison could have pointed to page 18 of the University of Alabama Board of Trustees Board Manual. Under responsibilities of the campus presidents, it includes:

Personnel administration including employment and termination, wage determination, and conditions of employment for faculty and other employees of the campus.

Translation: The hiring or firing of a football coach--or any other UAB personnel--is the responsibility of the university president. And that would be Carol Garrison.

If Paul Bryant Jr. forced UAB to hire Neil Callaway, and he almost certainly did, it was a violation of university policy. If Bryant Jr. is punishing UAB for its desire to fire Neil Callaway, that also is a violation of university policy.

It appears that Paul Bryant Jr. doesn't take university policy seriously. But what do you expect from a guy with clear ties to massive financial crimes?

Sadly, Carol Garrison is not a whole lot better. And we will show why in an upcoming series of posts.

People who care about UAB should do everything in their power to expose Paul Bryant Jr. for the fraudster that he is. But they also should take immediate steps to help push Carol Garrison toward the exits.

The university will not thrive as it should until both of them are out of the picture.

Larry Langford, Paul Bryant Jr., and "Justice" in Alabama

Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford goes to trial today on federal corruption charges. But a behind-the-scenes story might say more about our justice system than the Langford trial ever could.

Here's the gist of the backstory: If you are Larry Langford--a black Democrat, who grew up in a housing project--you almost certainly will pay for your alleged wrongs. If you are Paul W. Bryant Jr.--a white conservative businessman and a child of wealth and privilege (his father was University of Alabama football icon Paul "Bear" Bryant)--you can avoid scrutiny of your fishy finances.

How does Bryant Jr., president of Greene Group Inc. and a member of the University of Alabama Board of Trustees, have connections to the Langford trial?

Langford's defense attorney is Mike Rasmussen, who spent almost 30 years as a federal prosecutor before going into private practice. In 1997, Rasmussen was a lead prosecutor in Pennsylvania on one of the biggest insurance-fraud cases in U.S. history. The case ended with a conviction and 15-year federal prison sentence for a Philadelphia lawyer named Allen W. Stewart.

Why was Rasmussen, based in Alabama at the time, working on a case in Pennsylvania? It's because a central player in Allen W. Stewart's fraudulent scheme was a company called Alabama Reassurance. In fact, Alabama Re was implicated in at least eight of the 135 counts on which Stewart was convicted--for racketeering, money laundering, wire and mail fraud.

Alabama Re just happens to be one of Paul Bryant Jr.'s companies, part of the Greene Group. When the Stewart trial started, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama was Caryl Privett, now a Jefferson County circuit judge.

Sources tell Legal Schnauzer that Privett's message to prosecutors and investigators on the Stewart case was this: If you go to Pennsylvania and come back with a conviction, you can move forward with a heightened investigation of Alabama Re. In other words, Paul Bryant Jr. & Co. had stepped in some serious doo-doo.

By the time the Stewart case was completed, however, Privett no longer was in office. And when investigators attempted to build on the ugly information they already had uncovered about Alabama Re, someone in a position of authority called off the dogs.

That meant that Bryant's company, which was implicated in criminal activity in Pennsylvania, would face no further scrutiny in Alabama.

Larry Langford should be so lucky.

Mike Rasmussen undoubtedly will have a number of microphones and cameras thrust into his face in the coming days. Wouldn't it be interesting if some enterprising reporter asked this question: "You were a lead prosecutor on a Pennsylvania case in which Alabama Reassurance was implicated in the late 1990s. You were authorized to pursue a heightened investigation of Alabama Re once Allen W. Stewart was convicted in Philadelphia, but someone pulled the plug. Who brought that investigation to a halt? Who took steps to make sure that Paul Bryant Jr. and his company would be protected?"

And here is perhaps a bigger question for Mike Rasmussen: "Does it bother you that your current client--a product of a Birmingham housing project--faces the full weight of the United States government today, while Paul Bryant Jr.--the product of wealth and privilege--escaped scrutiny even though his company already had been implicated in criminal activity?"

Those questions probably would cause Mike Rasmussen to "hmm" and "haw" quite a bit. Not that he did anything wrong back in the late 1990s. Our sources say Rasmussen was gung ho to go after Alabama Re--and almost certainly would have nailed them--until someone over his head put a stop to the investigation.

Our point is not that Larry Langford should be given a free pass. If it is proven that he accepted bribes in exchange for steering government-bond business to certain investment bankers, he should pay the price.

But the same should hold true for Paul Bryant Jr. and anyone else who might have been associated with wrongdoing at Alabama Re. Heck, the company only has two employees--Scott M. Phelps, president and director, and W. Rodney Windham, vice president and actuary. Bryant is chairman of the board and Tuscaloosa veterinarian A. Wayne May, a longtime associate of Bryant's, is a director.

The statute of limitations probably has passed on the financial fraud involved in the Allen W. Stewart case. But how does Alabama Re conduct its business now? Did it change its ways once it received a "Get Out of Jail Free" card back in the late 1990s?

It would not be hard to answer that question. The company and its two employees are located in the Bryant Bank building at 1550 McFarland Blvd. in Tuscaloosa.

In his "Message From the Chairman," Bryant says:

In times of economic uncertainty, it’s natural and prudent to carefully examine the strength of those financial institutions to which you entrust your hard-earned resources.

That’s why I would like to take this opportunity to reassure you that we are always working to make certain our bank is a safe place for your money. . . .

So, call us at any of the convenient locations listed on this site. Or, better yet, come see us.

I wonder if that invitation applies to federal investigators.

New study indicates Paul Bryant Jr.'s bank has adopted mortgage-loan practices tinged with racism

Bryant Bank

Tuscaloosa-based Bryant Bank makes almost no mortgage loans to black or Latino customers, a new study shows.

In an article titled "The Color of Money Runs White At The Crimson Tide's Bank," Adam Rust of banktalk.org. shows that Bryant Bank rarely makes mortgage loans to certain minority groups.

Paul Bryant Jr., a member of the University of Alabama Board of Trustees and son of the late Hall of Fame football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, is director of Bryant Bank. Bryant Jr., a major force behind Crimson Tide athletics, is known as one of the most powerful boosters in college sports.

UA's football and men's basketball teams mostly thrive off the efforts of black student-athletes. But once their athletics careers are over, many of those former Crimson Tiders apparently would not be welcome at Bryant Bank. Reports Rust:

So what kind of bank is Bryant Bank? While it is headquartered in Tuscaloosa (home of the University of Alabama's main campus), the majority of its branches are in greater Birmingham. In addition to those two cities, Bryant also operates branches in Huntsville and suburban Mobile. Bryant's model echoes that of the typical community bank, with emphases in small business and mortgage lending. They are not in venture capital, credit cards, and small auto loan portfolio.

But if they are involved in mortgage lending, do they provide credit to all of the community? Or does the evidence paint a different picture?

Well, they pick their spots. When it comes to single-family residential property lending, they are very pro-active in serving investors who want to buy single-family residential homes.

But race matters in Alabama, and Bryant Bank walks an interesting line when it comes to providing capital to minorities in a state whose metro area populations include many African-Americans.

How much does race matter at Bryant Bank? Rust's research indicates the answer is "a lot."

My review of their Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data suggests that they rarely extend the same opportunity to minorities who want to buy a home for their families. Between 2011 and 2013, the bank made two owner-occupant loans to African-American borrowers, two to Asian applicants, and another to a Latino applicant. They made a home purchase mortgage loan to an African-American in 2010, but they did not do so in 2008 or 2009.

As has been the case with most lenders during the last few years, more of Bryant's mortgage lending has been for refinancing. Again, if we focus on owner-occupants, then refinances made up 54.2 percent of lending at Bryant between 2008 and 2013. But the same racial discrepancy holds true on the refinance side as well. The ratio of refinance loans to white owner-occupants versus black owner occupants is 145 to 4. During the same period (2008 to 2013), the same ratio for home purchase is 122 to 3.

This information is shocking. It shows that Bryant Bank has gone entire years without making a single home-purchase mortgage loan to an African-American. The situation is particularly grim in the Tuscaloosa area, Paul Bryant Jr.'s backyard:

As might be expected, Bryant has a significant presence in Tuscaloosa. According to the FDIC, Bryant had about $460 million (note: I had written $460,000, which was a typo that would have understated their size and inferentially their ability to serve the community) in deposits on account in Tuscaloosa County, second only to Regions Bank. Regions held approximately $670 million in deposits at Tuscaloosa branches at the end of June 2014. Synovus was third, with a shade less than $391 million in Tuscaloosa deposits.

Bryant made no loans in this segment to African-Americans (home purchases or refinance) in Tuscaloosa in 2013. In 2012, they made one of these loans, a refinance on a single-family residential home for $18,000 to a borrower with $124,000 in income. The loan was registered as a "high-cost" loan, because it bore an interest rate that was 3.8 percentage points above a comparably-termed Treasury. If I had to estimate the actual rate, based upon a review of 10-year rates during that time, the interest rate was probably 5 3/4 percent.

How did banktalk.org become interested in Bryant Bank? It came with recent reports about questionable actions of the UA Board of Trustees, including the killing of the UAB football program. Writes Rust:

I became interested in this small bank after reading a recent story ("Paul Bryant Jr.'s Bank is the Tie that Binds UA Trustees") in the Birmingham News, The story focused on the close ties between the University of Alabama football program, Bryant Bank, and The University of Alabama System Board of Trustees ("UASBOT"). In Alabama, the closure of the University of Alabama-Birmingham's football team has sparked a lot of hard feelings. Among those reactions, a number are pointing their fingers at UASBOT. Football is important in Alabama. The state spends a lot of money on two nationally-ranked programs. But Bear Bryant was never thrilled about another program drawing on fans from the state's largest city. With that history in the background, it is not surprising that Birmingham's leading newspaper would spend some time reviewing the mysterious bank associated with Bear's family.

The News pointed out that the UASBOT and Bryant Bank share similar governing styles. Only trustees of the UASBOT can select new trustees, and for years, those choices were made in private behind closed doors. The Trustees oversee a private foundation, which is managed in a similar fashion. Recently the Crimson Tide Foundation opted to stop releasing its IRS forms, as required by law, on the grounds that it was government entity. But another filing mandated by the State of Alabama found that the foundation purchased a $3.1 million home for Nick Saban, coach of the U of A football team.

Bryant Bank was founded by Paul Bryant, Jr., the son of Paul "Bear" Bryant. The Alabama football "family" is deeply connected to Bryant Bank. These connections are not anecdotal speculation, either. The University of Alabama system, which some consider to be the state's most valuable asset, is led by some of the same individuals that are in charge of this small bank.

Rust paints a picture of a bank that mostly ignores the same black community that provides many of the players who have made the Alabama Crimson Tide a college-football powerhouse. In other words, it appears that Bryant Jr. cares about the blacks who wear the Crimson Tide jersey. But he shows almost no interest in blacks who don't make tackles and score touchdowns. Rust shows that Bryant Bank stacks up poorly against one other major bank in the Birmingham/Tuscaloosa area:

Let's acknowledge that most banks have reported lending numbers showing higher rates of lending to non-minorities as a share of population during these years. That is especially the case when the analyses are limited to reviews of conventional lending and exclusive of FHA and VA. Bryant appears to limit its activities to conventional mortgage lending.

Nonetheless, Bryant's numbers are far outside the normal range. Regions Bank, for example, made 75 home purchase loans for owner-occupant African-Americans in just Birmingham in 2013 alone. As opposed to a 40-fold difference, Regions made 7.4 home purchase owner-occupied loans to white borrowers for every one it made to an African-American.

This is not the first time in recent days that we've seen signs Bryant and his associates operate with racial sensibilities out of the 1930s. We will look at another example in an upcoming post.

Do Judge Claud Neilson's ties to Bill Baxley point to Paul Bryant Jr. as a force behind my incarceration?

From Bill Baxley's campaign, managed
by Paul Bryant Jr.

We have shown that Claud Neilson, the judge who unlawfully ordered me jailed in the Rob Riley/Liberty Duke defamation case, has longstanding ties to Birmingham attorney Bill Baxley. And we know that Baxley represents Republican operative Jessica Medeiros Garrison in a companion defamation claim that resulted in a $3.5-million default judgment, which I am seeking to have overturned.

But our inquiry does not end there. We also know that Baxley has strong ties to University of Alabama trustee Paul Bryant Jr. Baxley, a rising political star in the 1970s, was friends with the late Crimson Tide football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, and that apparently helped make him close to Bryant's son, who has built a business empire while mostly dodging a federal investigation of insurance fraud in the late 1990s.

How close are Baxley and Bryant Jr.? Bryant once served as Baxley's campaign manager in a run for governor. (See campaign document at upper right.)

Is it possible that Neilson, via his pal Baxley, also is close to Bryant Jr.? Is it possible the three of them participated in a conspiracy to have me thrown in jail because of my reporting on certain subjects at this blog?

We don't have a definitive answer to those questions. But we do know that I am the reporter who broke the story about Bryant's ties to an insurance-fraud scam that resulted in a 15-year federal prison sentence for a Pennsylvania lawyer/entrepreneur named Allen W. Stewart. We also know that I was the primary source for an article at Bloomberg Markets that brought Bryant's connections to insurance fraud to a national and international audience. (See the print version of the article at the end of this post.)

Perhaps most importantly, at the time of my arrest I was researching an article about Jessica Garrison's ties to an individual who allegedly was involved in an activity that is extremely sensitive in college-athletics circles. As the No. 1 financial supporter of Crimson Tide athletics, and one of the most powerful boosters in college athletics, Bryant likely was concerned about my reporting efforts (which are ongoing, by the way).

How close does the trail of this unsavory activity get to Bryant? We aren't sure--yet--but the trail clearly leads through Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which is Bryant's home base.

Why was I unlawfully thrown in jail, losing my freedom for five months, and who was responsible for it? I suspect there were multiple reasons I was targeted--multiple stories I was working on that made powerful figures nervous and angry.

But Claud Neilson and Bill Baxley clearly were central players in the scheme, and they have connections that span more than four decades. Baxley and Bryant Jr. have connections that span at least that long, maybe longer.

As a side note, a source close to the Baxley family tells us the one-time gubernatorial candidate and legal maverick has been seriously compromised by photographic evidence of certain activities that took place during a Las Vegas trip that involved heavy drinking and gambling. In essence, our source says, powerful interests have kept copies of said photographic evidence for several years as a way of keeping "Dollar Bill" in line.

That might explain why Baxley, a Democrat in theory, now is quick to jump in the legal bed with such corporate, right-wing types as Rob Riley, Jessica Medeiros Garrison, Sonny Reagan, and Luther Strange. (That, too, is a story where our research is ongoing and might soon yield explosive results.)

As for Bryant Jr., evidence suggests his already privileged life might have been a bit more comfortable with the demise of Legal Schnauzer. Is that why the blog's publisher wound up in jail--and did Bryant Jr. enlist the help of Baxley and Neilson to make sure it happened?

We are continuing to examine that question--and it appears we are getting closer and closer to an answer.

ROLL MONEY ROLL by Roger Shuler

With Bunn family ties to Paul Bryant Jr., and Bryant's role in boosting UA enrollment, the Megan Rondini story gets uncomfortably close to Crimson Tide

Paul Bryant Jr.

Reporting on the Megan Rondini story, so far, has largely steered clear of the vaunted University of Alabama football program. But our research indicates the connections between the alleged rape and eventual suicide of Rondini and the UA football team might be closer than many Crimson Tide fans would find comfortable.

For one, the family of alleged rapist T.J. "Sweet T" Bunn Jr. was among the earliest donors to a fund-raising effort that helped launch a 14-year era of dominance for the Crimson Tide, mostly under Coach Nick Saban. Second, UA football "godfather" Paul Bryant Jr. -- the son of the late Hall of Fame coach, Bear Bryant -- was out front in an effort that led to massive enrollment gains via heavy recruitment of non-resident students, such as Megan Rondini.

In fact, the ties between the Bunn family and Bryant appear close enough to raise this question: Did the Bunns seek Bryant's help -- he holds the state's most famous name, after all -- to help quash a possible criminal case against "Sweet T"?

How close are the Bunns and Bryant? When UA launched in March 2002 a $100-million fund-raising campaign for athletic-facility improvements, chairman of the Crimson Tradition Fund (CTF) was Paul Bryant Jr. Among the original 27 donors who formed the foundation of the CTF were Terry and Sonny Bunn -- the heads of ST Bunn Construction and the father and uncle, respectively, of "Sweet T" Bunn Jr. From a press release about the CTF's founding:

The Crimson Tradition Fund Committee, chaired by Paul Bryant, Jr., is comprised of the following University of Alabama supporters: Owen W. Arnonov, Montgomery, Ala.; Randy Billingsley, Mobile, Ala.; Paul W. Bryant, Jr., Tuscaloosa, Ala.; Sonny Bunn, Tuscaloosa, Ala.; Terry Bunn, Tuscaloosa, Ala.; Angus Cooper, II, Mobile, Ala.; Gary Neill Drummond, Birmingham, Ala.; Elise Durbin, Birmingham, Ala.; Melissa Durbin, Birmingham, Ala.; William E. Ezell, Fairhope, Ala.; Wayne H. Gillis, Birmingham, Ala.; Joe Kelley, Nashville, Tenn.; John J. McMahon, Jr.; Birmingham, Ala.; Robert W. (Bud) Moore, Catherine, Ala.; Ozzie Newsome, Baltimore, Md.; Thomas L. Patterson, Birmingham, Ala.; Johnny Plott, Tuscaloosa, Ala.; Farid Rafiee, Huntsville, Ala.; Ambassador Joseph M. Rodgers, Nashville, Tenn.; Richard Scrushy, Birmingham, Ala.; Britt Sexton, Decatur, Ala.; Bart Starr, Birmingham, Ala.; Ted Taylor, Prattville, Ala.; Michael D. Thompson, Birmingham, Ala.; Stanley Verciglio, Birmingham, Ala.; Duncan Williams, Memphis, Tenn., and James W. Wilson, III, Montgomery, Ala.

One year after forming the Crimson Tradition Fund, UA hired Robert Witt as president. Bryant was on the Board of Trustees then, and chaired the committee to hire a new leader for the Tuscaloosa campus. From a 2013 article at bamainsider.com:

Before the football resurgence, the University of Alabama also began a growth period that started with the hiring of Robert Witt as president in 2003. Bryant, in his role on the board of trustees, was part of the process in luring Witt from the University of Texas at Arlington.

Megan Rondini

"The trip that I was involved in was when they took our plane and hired Dr. Witt," Bryant said. "I was president of the committee, went to Fort Worth to meet Dr. Witt and it just happened that his then-wife (Anne C. Witt) had graduated from high school with me, her parents were here in town and had both been on the faculty, and her mother was and still is a good friend of mine.

"That was a good coincidence. I don't think it had anything to do with our ability to get him."

When Witt arrived in Tuscaloosa, one of his primary objectives was clear:

Witt began an aggressive growth campaign, building new student housing and increasing enrollment. In the 10 years since Witt, who became chancellor of the UA system last March, became president, Alabama has increased enrollment from 19,600 to 34,800, added more than 300 new faculty (a 22 percent increase) and added more than 600 new staff employees (a 17 percent increase), all while seeing state funding decrease $58 million in the last five years. In the last 10 years, UA has added 5,000 new beds in on-campus housing with the construction of new dormitories funded by bond issues.

According to documents obtained from open-record requests, UA's revenues have grown from almost $600 million in 2007 to more than $782 million in 2012.

The idea of greatly enhancing enrollment, which eventually focused heavily on out-of-state students, did not originate with Witt. It came from Bryant. As the bamainsider.com article put it, "Witt's vision fit Bryant's mission":

"We had a period of time before Dr. Witt where we were losing students to other schools, to Auburn in particular," Bryant said. "I'm not talking athletics, I'm just talking about students.

"A lot of my friends' children weren't coming to Alabama, (friends) that had been to Alabama. And the one, I won't call it a charge, but the one suggestion I had for Dr. Witt that I wanted to see, when he was hired, was that my friends would send their children to Alabama, and that the leaders in the state would come from the University of Alabama.

"That's what he set out to do with recruiting, first off particularly recruiting in-state -- you have to do that first -- and then he broadened it."

That effort to "broaden" student recruitment eventually reached Austin, Texas, where it attracted a promising young student named Megan Rondini. Megan's experience at UA appears to have been mostly positive until she encountered T.J. Bunn Jr. one evening at Innisfree Irish Pub. That led to a sexual encounter that Megan insisted was not consensual, and when she sought justice, her efforts were met mostly with a stonewall from university officials and local law enforcement.

Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide

In frustration and despair, she returned to her home state and eventually took her own life. UA will go into the 2017 football season as the most powerful program in the country. But some of its most influential boosters have ties to the tragic story of Megan Rondini. Her parents have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit that likely will be pending for all of the 2017 season and beyond. That might create a shadow that could hang over Crimson Tide football for quite a while.

Could the lawsuit help uncover uncomfortable truths, much like the Jerry Sandusky scandal did at Penn State? It certainly might. The Rondini story already is closer to UA football than many fans might want to think.

NCAA Shines Light on University of Alabama's "Abysmal" Ethics

The NCAA calls the University of Alabama's compliance record in athletics "abysmal," according to news reports out today.

A big question is this: Why would anybody be surprised?

The institution, and its fabled football program, are run by the University of Alabama Board of Trustees. The best known member of the board--and probably its most powerful force--is Paul Bryant Jr., the son of the late football coaching icon, Paul "Bear" Bryant.

Bryant Jr. is the president of Greene Group Inc., and at least one of his companies has engaged in highly shady financial transactions, which helped lead to a 15-year prison sentence for a Pennsylvania man several years ago. Bryant and his colleagues managed to escape punishment--and even scrutiny in the mainstream press.

But they have not escaped scrutiny here at Legal Schnauzer. And in a series of upcoming posts, we will show you why no one should be surprised that an organization involving Paul Bryant Jr. would be found to have "abysmal" ethics.

Irony abounds in today's reports about the University of Alabama. They come as cross-state rival Auburn University is receiving some unwelcome attention, due to the financial difficulties of high-profile board member Bobby Lowder and his failed Colonial Bank.

Lowder's latest woes are examined in a story titled "The Man Behind 2009's Biggest Bank Bust" in the current Fortune magazine. Senior Editor Brian O'Keefe exhibits splendid reporting and writing skills on the piece, and we will be taking a closer look at it in the coming days.

But first, let's look at how the Lowder story dovetails with today's reports about the University of Alabama--in which the NCAA says the institution has an "appalling and unprecedented recent infractions history."

Lowder's cross-state counterpart is Paul Bryant Jr. Both have long been considered the key heavyweights on the state's two major university boards. Both have backgrounds in banking--Lowder at Colonial and Bryant at (what else?) Bryant Bank. Both reportedly are fanatical about their respective college football programs.

Here's a major difference between the two men: Whatever Lowder's faults--and O'Keefe reports that he could wind up facing criminal charges--the Auburn trustee's business activities have been quite well known. He has been involved in businesses--banking, real-estate development--that at least appeared to be solid on the surface.

But Bryant? He tends to operate in the shadows--in enterprises like casino management, dog tracks, catfish, ready-mix concrete, and reinsurance.

It's that last field that has attracted our attention at Legal Schnauzer. One of Bryant's companies is called Alabama Reassurance. And it was implicated in at least eight counts of a massive fraud case in the late '90s involving a Philadelphia lawyer named Allen W. Stewart.

Stewart is serving a 15-year federal prison sentence, and in 2003, he coughed up $17 million in criminal forfeiture proceedings.

Our sources say that, after the Stewart conviction, the U.S. Department of Justice was prepared to launch a heightened investigation of Alabama Reassurance. But someone in the DOJ's power structure called off the dogs.

In the coming weeks, we will be looking closely at the Allen W. Stewart case, the role of Alabama Reassurance in it, and the government's decision to call off its investigation of Paul Bryant Jr.'s company.

Can you avoid scrutiny of your "funny finances" when your name is Paul Bryant Jr. in Alabama? Sure looks that way.

Matt Pitt trial hides nasty story of racism and bullying from Alabama's Paul Bryant Jr. and Bob Riley factions

Matt Pit

The trial of youth evangelist Matt Pitt is behind us--and it ended, appropriately, with a finding of not guilty. One is left asking: Why did prosecutors in Jefferson County, Alabama, bring such a weak case at all.

We have the answer to that question, and it means "the rest of the story" on the Pitt trial is not behind us. In fact, sources tell Legal Schnauzer, the Matt Pitt trial was not about the law at all--it was clear from the outset that he did not impersonate a peace officer. But Pitt did anger powerful elitist forces in Alabama by resisting their efforts to more or less take over The Basement ministry he founded. That largely is the reason Pitt has been beset by legal problems for most of the past two years.

We also now have added evidence that these thuggish forces will subvert the "justice system" to attack those who refuse to do their bidding. That's exactly what happened to Matt Pitt, that's the ugly story behind his prosecution.

Who makes up these forces? They are individuals aligned with University of Alabama trustee Paul Bryant Jr. and former Governor Bob Riley. They appear to have race-based attitudes that are right out of the 1930s. And when someone fails to abide their demands, they quickly turn into bullies. Anyone familiar with how the Bryant and Riley factions tend to operate should not be surprised by any of this.

Why would Bryant Jr. and Riley try to wrest control of The Basement ministry from its founder? We have a theory on that, and we will touch on it in a moment.

First, let's return to our post from yesterday, showing that Tuscaloosa-based Bryant Bank (of which Bryant Jr. is chairman) has a dismal record when it comes to providing mortgage loans to Alabama's large black population. As for Riley, he has longstanding ties to the Grand Lodge of Free and  Accepted Masons of Alabama, a secret society that--at last report--was governed by documents that forbid membership to "negroes or other inferior races."

Former Birmingham radio hosts Russ and Dee Fine were fired from their on-air gig not long after reporting on Riley's ties to a Masons sect that appears to have racist origins. The axing of Russ and Dee Fine does not surprise me, given that overwhelming evidence indicates Riley acolytes caused me to be fired at UAB for reporting on this blog about the unlawful acts of wife-beating federal judge Mark Fuller in the Don Siegelman case.

(Ironically, Russ Fine also works at UAB, as a tenured professor of medicine. Because of the safety net tenure provides, Fine was safe in his full-time job. That meant the Rileys could only cheat him out of his part-time radio gig.)

Many Alabamians undoubtedly remember Bob Riley's Mafioso-like threat to anyone who might "get too close to the families," a performance that was caught on video in 2010. (See video at the end of this post.)

Bob Riley

Matt Pitt certainly knows what it's like to run afoul of the Bryant and Riley thugs. As we reported in a post last week, just as the Pitt case was going to a jury:

Pitt's troubles with law enforcement began when he refused to do the bidding of conservative political/corporate forces who wanted to use his ministry (The Basement) for their own purposes, sources tell Legal Schnauzer. Those forces allegedly include former Governor Bob Riley and University of Alabama trustee Paul Bryant Jr. Our sources say Pitt never would have been prosecuted if he had allowed his ministry to be used for the political and financial interests of others. They also say Pitt has made enemies from his desire to build a ministry that reaches across racial boundaries.


What about specifics? We provided them:

What led to Matt Pitt's legal problems? Our sources point to three key events:

(1) Political figures, apparently with ties to Riley and Bryant, encouraged Pitt to use The Basement to endorse a slate of white, conservative political candidates;

(2) Business figures encouraged Pitt to do the ministry's banking with Bryant Bank;

(3) Pitt and a few associates were invited to attend a University of Alabama football game and sit in Bryant's private box. During the game, a Bryant crony was heard to say, after looking out over the packed stadium, "Can you imagine this many people pay us to watch n-----s beat up on each other?"

Pitt rebuffed the first two entreaties and was so disgusted by No. 3 that he decided to have nothing to do with Paul Bryant Jr. or his bank.

Before long, Pitt was in trouble with the law because of an honorary sheriff's badge that he never asked for--Jefferson County Sheriff Mike Hale, an ally of Rob Riley (the former governor's son), gave it to him.

Imagine being a devoted University of Alabama football fan and going to Bryant-Denny Stadium to sit in the regular seats and watch your beloved Crimson Tide play. Then, imagine that up in Paul Bryant Jr.'s box, one of his cronies is making a statement like this:

Can you imagine this many people pay us to watch n-----s beat up on each other?

Would that make you want to vomit, at least a little bit? Would you want to vomit a bit more when you learn that Bryant Bank pretty much excludes blacks from its lending practices? Would Bob Riley's ties to a racist secret society--and his threatening words in the video below--make you want to vomit in projectile fashion?

Paul Bryant Jr.

Why would individuals connected to Bryant and Riley want to take advantage of The Basement, which has been described as "the fastest growing youth movement in the country"--at least until Alabama law enforcement started throwing Pitt in jail and bringing bogus impersonation charges at him? The answer to that question, I suspect, can be found by checking out the roster of judges in the Jefferson County Courthouse.

While Republicans have come to dominate statewide offices in Alabama, that does not apply in the state's largest metropolitan area. Democrats have dominated Jeffco judicial races lately, and those Democrats increasingly have dark skin. In fact, the presiding judge in the county, Houston Brown, is black. In recent years, a number of well-funded Republicans, with support from elite law firms, have lost to relatively unknown black, Democratic challengers.

That probably displeases Bryant, and it almost certainly displeases Riley--whose son heads up the white suburban Riley Jackson law firm, and whose son-in-law is a partner at the corporate, right-leaning Bradley Arant. In the 2012 elections, the Riley Jackson firm provided financial support to white Republican Pat Thetford, who lost by about 17,000 votes to black Democrat Carole Smitherman. In fact, Democrats won every judicial race on the ballot--by margins ranging from roughly 5 percent to almost 14 percent. In other words, none of the races was particularly close, and judges in Alabama's most populous county increasingly have dark skin.

How can conservative forces fight such an unpleasant trend? Why, by intruding on Matt Pitt's ministry and trying to convince its thousands of potential young voters to support white, conservative candidates--even though Pitt has stated a number of times that he intends to build an inclusive ministry that crosses racial, denominational, and political boundaries.

Has Alabama come a long way from the days when Martin Luther King wrote his Letter From the Birmingham Jail? The answer is yes. With people like Bryant Jr. and Bob Riley still in positions of influence, does Alabama have a long way to go? The answer to that question also is yes.

How far does Alabama have to go? To help answer that question, we invite you to view the video of Bob Riley below, and then read Letter From the Birmingham Jail, below that. Are Bob Riley, and people like him, the ones to move Alabama forward--to help the state, and Birmingham, fulfill their  massive untapped potential? I think the answer, to most reasonably objective minds, will be clear.

MLK--Letter From Birmingham Jail

Football Struggles Signal Mismanagement and Disarray at UAB

UA Trustee Paul Bryant Jr.
and U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions

It's impossible to overstate the importance of UAB to the state of Alabama. The university is our largest employer at one location and our strongest economic engine. It provides a comprehensive undergraduate program for students from all socioeconomic strata, has one of the nation's top hospitals, and features a powerhouse biomedical research enterprise that brings in $485 million a year.

Football at UAB is what it should be at all universities--a sideline. But even at UAB, struggles related to the football program can be a sign of something deeper, maybe even sinister. Those struggles became front-page news this week, showing that the university suffers from blatant mismanagement and creeping decay. Will citizens, especially those who live in the metro Birmingham area, wake up and take action? They should because dysfunction is running rampant at UAB--and it could eventually have severe economic consequences.

The 2011 UAB Blazers are one of the worst teams in college football. They are struggling with a 1-7 record and coming off a 59-14 thrashing at Marshall. The Blazers play host on Saturday night to the nation's No. 1 offensive team, the University of Houston, and that game could get ugly in a hurry. As embarrassing losses pile up, calls for the firing of fifth-year head coach Neil Callaway are growing.

With clouds already hovering, UAB supporters took a kick to the gut this week. The University of Alabama Board of Trustees, which oversees the three campuses in Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Huntsville, announced that it is withdrawing plans to build an on-campus football stadium at UAB. The board meets today and tomorrow in Tuscaloosa, and the UAB stadium project was expected to be on the agenda. But word leaked Tuesday that the item had been removed from the agenda, and the board confirmed yesterday that the stadium project has been axed for now.

Kevin Scarbinsky, a columnist at al.com, smells a rat. He is not the only one.

UAB supporters are outraged, and many of them are venting on the Blazer Talk message board, understandably so. The Blazers play at antiquated, city-owned Legion Field, and construction of a 30,000-seat, on-campus stadium was seen as central to the football program's future. Perhaps most alarming, the board had approved a feasibility study, UAB officials presented preliminary stadium plans in September, and the board's athletics committee expressed enthusiasm for the project. Plus, UAB already had shown commitments for luxury suites at a new facility.

So why did someone pull the plug?

To help answer that questions, UAB supporters need to understand two things:

* The University of Alabama Board of Trustees is a corrupt mess, and it includes a prominent member who has documented ties to a massive insurance fraud scheme that netted a 15-year federal prison sentence for one man.

* UAB President Carol Garrison is a feckless leader--in fact, she would have to improve to reach the "weak" level. Garrison probably should have been fired for her unseemly dalliance with the president of the University of Tennessee in 2002-03, her first year on the job at UAB. She managed to survive that debacle, but has become little more than a toady for the board.

UAB will not move forward until the board of trustees is exposed for the corruption in its midst--and the Birmingham campus is allowed to have a real leader.

Regular readers know that UAB issues hit close to the bone here at Legal Schnauzer. I worked at the university in various editorial positions for 19 years. Before that, I was a sports reporter at the Birmingham Post-Herald for 11 years, writing extensively about UAB athletics in both the P-H and several national publications.

In short, few people on the planet have done more than I have to portray UAB in a positive light over 30-plus years. But in May 2008, I was cheated out of my job as an editor in the UAB Publications office because I dared to write a blog about corruption in Alabama's "justice system." Legal Schnauzer obviously has ticked off some powerful individuals, as evidenced by the death threats I have received, and someone clearly instructed UAB officials to cook up bogus reasons to fire me. That, by the way, is not just my opinion. Anita Bonasera, the director of employee relations at UAB, admitted to me in a tape-recorded conversation that I was targeted because of my blog content about the political prosecution of former Governor Don Siegelman. I've run that audio several times, and here it is again:

Audio: UAB and the Cost of Blogging About the Siegelman Case

A UAB IT employee named Sean Maher testified at my grievance hearing that he had been asked to monitor my computer usage at work for about a month. He gave no indication that he had been asked to monitor anyone else's work computer.  But even after checking my every keystroke for an extended period of time, Sean Maher reported that I had never written the first word of my blog on UAB equipment or time. He presented no evidence that I had worked on my blog in any way while on UAB equipment or time.

But I was fired anyway. And Carol Garrison upheld my termination, even after her own grievance committee found that I had been wrongly fired.

As you can see, I know a thing or two about dysfunction at UAB. And by the way, I have an ongoing federal lawsuit regarding my termination, and various UAB employees (past and present) have shown a willingness to lie under oath--while an 83-year-old judge named William M. Acker Jr. has repeatedly ruled contrary to basic procedural law. Experience has taught me that certain large, downtown law firms--especially Bradley Arant and Haskell Slaughter--more or less run Birmingham's federal courthouse and are willing to protect the thugs who run the University of Alabama System.

The University of Alabama Board of Trustees definitely includes a thug or two. UAB football fans are learning that now--the hard way.

Just how deep does the corruption go on the UA board? Consider that it's best known member is Paul Bryant Jr., the son of the late Hall of Fame football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. Bear Bryant turned Tuscaloosa's Crimson Tide into one of the nation's powerhouse football programs, and "Bear Jr." reportedly does not like the idea of UAB having a program, much less a good one.

But more important is this: In the late 1990s, a company called Alabama Reassurance was implicated in a massive insurance fraud scheme in Pennsylvania. A federal trial ended with a 15-year prison sentence for a Philadelphia lawyer/entrepreneur named Allen W. Stewart--and with unmistakable evidence that Alabama Re was deeply involved in the crimes.

Who owned Alabama Re? Why, none other than Paul Bryant Jr.

Want evidence that Bryant Jr.'s company was involved in the Stewart case, one of the nation's largest insurance-fraud prosecutions at the time? Here it is, from one of our posts back in July:

Why has the case received so little attention in the South? It's not like the evidence against Bryant's company is hard to find; it's available with a simple Internet search. And it's not hard to understand; the language in a 2001 memorandum opinion from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania lays out the scheme clearly. (See the full memorandum opinion at the end of this post.) The document shows that the scheme involving Stewart and Alabama Re involved counts 24 through 32 of a 135-count indictment. Footnote No. 11, which begins on page 16 of the opinion, addresses Alabama Re's role in the fraud:

11. The relevant portions of the charge read as follows:
Counts 24 through 32 charge a wire fraud scheme to deceive state insurance regulators involving reinsurance. The superseding indictment alleges that in late 1992 or early 1993 the defendant devised a scheme to deceive state regulators and others regarding the true and complete reinsurance arrangements involving Summit National Life Insurance Company, its subsidiary Fidelity General Life Insurance Company, and the Alabama Reassurance Company in order to inflate their financial statements.

Alabama Re helped "deceive state regulators" to "inflate financial statements"? That's the kind of behavior that helped land a bunch of executives from Birmingham-based HealthSouth in federal prison. How did Paul Bryant Jr. escape the feds in Alabama, when convictions on all counts already had been reached in Philadelphia? We will look at that question shortly, but the more immediate question is this: How does a man with documented ties to insurance fraud wind up on a university board of trustees?

Neil Callaway

Posts on UAB message boards indicate that many Blazer fans believe Paul Bryant Jr. pulled the plug on the stadium project. Here's how the theory goes: It's been well reported that UAB wanted to hire then-LSU assistant Jimbo Fisher (now Florida State's head coach) when the Blazer coaching job came open in 2006. Bryant reportedly nixed that plan and forced UAB to hire Callaway, who was an assistant at the University of Georgia and had played for Bear Bryant at Alabama. In other words, Bryant Jr. wanted a member of the "Crimson Tide family" to coach UAB.

There have been only a couple of problems with that plan: Many UAB supporters have resented Callaway from the outset, and he has proven to be a colossal failure as a head coach.

Word is that UAB wants to fire Callaway, and it's hard to see how he can hang on much longer with a career record of 16-44.

Quite a few Blazer fans now suspect that Bryant Jr. axed the stadium project in retaliation for efforts to can Callaway. I'm guessing those fans are right on target. That's how things are done these days at UAB, and it's largely because Carol Garrison doesn't have the spine to stand up to the corrupt UA board.

Maybe that's because Carol Garrison is corrupt herself. We will be taking a detailed look at Garrison's questionable actions in an upcoming series of posts.

Meanwhile, here is a document about the Allen W. Stewart case, from the United States District Court for  the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. It includes details about Alabama Re's involvement in the Stewart case. In a sense, Allen W. Stewart was Bernie Madoff, before the world had heard of Bernie Madoff--and Paul Bryant Jr.'s company helped pull off his dirty schemes.

Did anyone "vet" Paul Bryant Jr., and examine his business activities, before he was confirmed to the University of Alabama Board of Trustees? Sure doesn't look like it.

Alabama Re Memorandum Opinion

Paul Bryant Jr.: A Man With Ties To Crime Looms Over A Decision About Birmingham's Drinking Water

Mulberry Fork intake facility

The governing board of the University of Alabama soon is expected to make a decision that could have an adverse impact on the drinking water for more than 200,000 people in the Birmingham metro area.

The controversy about proposed strip mining near the Mulberry Fork has been extensively covered in the local press. If approved, the project would discharge wastewater only 800 feet from a major drinking-water intake facility for the Birmingham Water Works Board.

Floating under the radar is background information about Paul Bryant Jr., who serves as president of the University of Alabama Board of Trustees. The board owns most of the 1,773 acres at the mining site, and a recent al.com op-ed piece by Black Warrior Waterkeeper Nelson Brooke says a decision is expected any day.

If the trustees approve Shepherd Bend LLC's plan to strip mine in the area, one of Birmingham's primary sources of drinking water could be at risk. Do members of the UA board possess the kind of forward thinking that is needed to handle such a tricky issue? Public records suggest the answer is no. In fact, records indicate that Paul Bryant Jr. has no business serving on any board that manages public resources.

That's because Bryant has documented ties to a massive insurance-fraud scheme that led to a 15-year federal prison sentence in the late 1990s for a Pennsylvania lawyer/entrepreneur named Allen W. Stewart. (By the way, a source tells Legal Schnauzer that Stewart was released from federal prison in early 2011, so he now is a free man; His sentence was due to run through 2012 and into 2013, but he was eligible for an early release.)

One of Bryant's companies, Alabama Reassurance, was implicated in at least nine counts involving a $15-million financial scam. Alabama Re has since been liquidated, along with its $238 million in admitted assets, and replaced with a company called Alabama Life Reinsurance.

Why was Alabama Re liquidated, and what happened to that money? Why were Paul Bryant Jr. and his associates never held accountable for their documented ties to insurance fraud? How could Bryant, given his sketchy background, wind up as president of a university governing board? Is the public aware that a man with a history of fraud might cast the key vote in a decision that could befoul a major source of drinking water?

Paul Bryant Jr.

We've been asking those questions for months now, but the public seems mainly interested in Bryant's connections to Alabama football, which he has helped restore to its status as a national powerhouse. After all, Bryant played a major role in the hiring of Coach Nick Saban, who has led the Crimson Tide to two national titles, and counting. Citizens, however, might want to pay attention to the Mulberry Fork issue--before it's too late. Writes Nelson Brooke:

This should be a simple decision. It makes absolutely no sense to mine coal at Shepherd Bend and pollute a major source of Birmingham's drinking water. Protection of drinking water sources is critical and necessary. There is no better way to ensure clean drinking water for future generations. 

UA Trustees have the ability to do the right thing, but will they? They expressed interest in allowing coal mining on this property back in 2007. 

Since then, the necessary coal mining permits have been issued to Drummond (owner of Shepherd Bend LLC). Two permits are under appeal, one by Black Warrior Riverkeeper and Southern Environmental Law Center and the other by the Birmingham Water Works Board. Although these appeals are currently under way, mining could start any day.

What is at stake? Several local entities have been fighting the push for strip mining in an environmentally sensitive area. But does the public at large get it? Writes Brooke:

A coalition including Black Warrior Riverkeeper, the Birmingham City Council, local businesses, citizens, students, student organizations and nonprofit organizations across the state have been asking the University of Alabama System Trustees to go ahead and condemn the possibility of allowing Drummond Company, or any mining company, to mine coal on their property at Shepherd Bend -- to no avail. There is no good reason for the UA System Trustees to wait on taking a stance any longer. Our water is too precious a resource for indecision. 

If you or your business use tap water for drinking, bathing, cooking, gardening, or anything, you are a stakeholder in this decision. If you care about your fellow Alabamians and think we all deserve clean water, then get involved in this important battle before it is too late. Allowing a coal mine this close to a public water source sets a terrible precedent in the state of Alabama.

I would echo Brooke's words and add the following: Citizens need to take a close look at the backgrounds of individuals who serve on the UA board. The thought of Paul Bryant Jr. being involved in a decision related to critical natural resources should give anyone pause.