NADINE’S PUB AND A MILLION DOLLAR DEBT
Star’s LA dream that collapsed with $1.4m debt and saw her father beaten up by a creditor
JUNGLE star and former
Girls Aloud singer Nadine
Coyle suffered the humiliation of having her father beaten up by an angry creditor as her Los
Angeles bar and restaurant was shut over a $1m debt.
The closure of
Nadine’s Irish Mist in
2015 marked a huge setback for the
Derry girl who had been convinced she would crack the US off the back of her Girls Aloud fame. The singer, who this weekend left I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here, is trying to rebuild her showbusiness career after her business collapsed with debts of more than $1.4m.
Now, the inside story of the collapse of the US bar and restaurant is laid bare for the first time by the Irish Mail on Sunday in court documents.
The dispute over Nadine’s Irish Mist got so bad that her father Niall Coyle sued a man who accused him of ‘embezzling or losing’ millions of his daughter’s fortune – claims he strongly denies. Our revelations show a different narrative to previous suggestions that the bar, in LA’s wealthy Huntington Beach community, closed after her family got ‘bored’ with running it.
It is also a far cry from the success and large sums of money she made singing alongside Cheryl Cole, Sarah Harding and Kimberley Walsh in Girls Aloud.
Californian Roy Fassel, 82, was part of the Anthony Plascencia Living Trust organisation that sold the Northern Irish star the doomed property, which has since been knocked down, as part of a loan totalling €1.9m including interest.
In an exclusive interview, he revealed: ‘Nadine and her dad had some nice ideas for the place and we trusted them – they were good people – but you don’t build on quicksand and unfortunately that’s exactly what they did. It was disastrous. One of their biggest mistakes was there was very limited parking in the area so people found it hard to get there. They were not getting enough footfall. They had invested in an area where there are celebrities and lots of wealthy people and they had live music on weekends but they didn’t get enough business to pay back the loan.
‘We tried to help them out by cutting the monthly payments and letting them skip payments but there was nothing we could do in the end.
‘They were really upset because Nadine’s Irish Mist was supposed to be their home away from home and give them a foothold in the United States. They hoped to expand eventually and create more restaurants but things went against them. In the end the place was foreclosed and they moved back to Derry.’
Mother-of-one Nadine, 34, closed the Irish Mist in 2015. She invested around €300,000 in it in 2008, according to Mr Fassel, when the girl band was setting records for their four million album sales and were collectively worth around €35m.
The lithe singer was often seen pulling pints or chatting to locals at the venue, a stone’s throw from a golden sand beach and a few miles from the home of her ex-fiancé, former American football star Jason Bell, 41. A-list actress Sandra
Bullock lived nearby and is said to have popped in on more than one occasion to sample the authentic Irish dishes created by her father Niall and mother Lillian.
Nadine clearly hoped her investment – which she claimed was one of a number she made across the US – would prove to be a cash cow as she launched a solo career to rival that of bandmate and former X Factor judge Cheryl, 36.
But in 2017 she was forced to admit the business was no more. In a television interview, she said: ‘The restaurant in LA, we kept it for about eight years and the plan was always just to have it for a while.
‘My family run it and you get bored and like, it’s really hard work. It’s fun when you have a chef to make you breakfast and dinner every day but after a while everyone was over it – so we sold it. So now we are looking for something else to torture ourselves with.’
Nadine added that she was once offered a reality show set in the bar but refused, saying: ‘That is not how we want to see ourselves on TV.’ Los Angeles court records show that by 2014 – a year after Girls Aloud split – the Coyles were already critically behind on their loan repayments.
The same year they were forced to pay $163,000 in back taxes to the state of California as the family had not paid property tax since the venue opened. The bill included $51,000 in late payment fines. Rather than suffer any more losses, Nadine decided to sell up, and recruited a local estate agent called Joel Burnstine to help offload it, according to court documents. But the relationship turned sour and Mr Burnstine sued the star and her dad for $172,500, for unpaid ‘commercial real estate marketing services’.
Documents show that in June the following year, 2015, the property was lost to foreclosure over an unpaid debt of $1.435m and returned to the Anthony Plascencia Living Trust, named after a businessman, now dead, which later sold it on for $800,000.
Niall Coyle sued Burnstine and the trust for ‘wrongful eviction’ and for ‘wrongful foreclosure’. He claimed that he owed a slightly smaller amount of $1.3m. In dramatic legal documents, he claimed Mr Burnstine changed the locks on Nadine’s Irish Mist, physically assaulted him in the restaurant car park and knocked him to the ground causing multiple injuries including bruised ribs. The documents added that Mr Burnstine kicked his car, called him ‘limp d***’, and alleged he had ‘embezzled or lost’ $3m of his daughter’s money.
Niall sued for $500,000 damages but the case did not progress through the courts and Mr Burnstine has since died from lung cancer. His son Josh Burnstine, an estate agent in his 20s, slammed the Coyles this week, saying: ‘It was a total s*** show. There are things that I know that I do not feel comfortable talking about. I can’t comment on the assault.’
In 2015, just before Nadine’s Irish Mist folded, another man called Ronald Capps sued the Coyles for $100,000 over injuries he sustained during a fight with a 19-year-old man who was underage according to US law, and so should not have been served alcohol at her bar.
Neither Nadine nor her family appeared in court as they had already moved back to Derry and the victim was awarded that amount in their absence. Mr Capps said: ‘I sued because it was their fault. They had hired a security guard at the bar but he did not do his job. I have read up on Nadine but I have never met her. Her dad was running the bar but I can’t get a response from him or his insurer.
‘They ran off without paying up. I feel they skipped out on all of it. I can’t get a response from anyone so it is in the hands of my lawyer now,’ he said.
A spokesman for the Coyle family said: ‘This is a historic issue that has long since been resolved, all debts were paid back in full, at the time, which was nearly five years ago. There are categorically no
‘She and her dad were good people but don’t build on quicksand’
‘The documents added that Mr Burnstine kicked his car’