Judge tells Orlando man to pay $10M to businessman

A Circuit Court judge recently ordered Orlando-area resident Bryan Brewer — founder of TraxAir pilot school, a paddleboard manufacturer and other companies — to pay $10 million to a businessman from Russia.

Circuit Judge Donald Meyer ordered Brewer, his wife and affiliated companies to repay the millions to Russian agriculture executive Sergei Mikhailov, who provided three loans to Brewer’s companies in 2011 and 2012 for more than $11 million. The money was not repaid, according to court documents.

Court records say that even though Brewer had pledged property to Mikhailov in the event of a loan default, Brewer had pledged the same property as collateral to Bay Cities Bank for a $7 million loan from that financial institution. Brewer was not available for comment.

After the two were introduced by a mutual acquaintance in 2009, “Brewer gained Mikhailov’s trust to the point they socialized together, travelled together and became more than business associates and acquaintances. Brewer even made multiple visits to Mikhailov’s home for family birthdays and holiday celebrations and went on multiple vacations with Mikhailov and his family,” states the complaint filed in Orange County Circuit Court in January 2016.

Central Florida philanthropist Tony Nicholson made similar statements about Brewer when he claimed the businessman failed to repay him $1 million invested in a Volusia County paddleboard company, US Board Inc., which was owned by Brewer before it closed more than a year ago. A judgment in that case is pending.

“I really trusted Bryan Brewer,” said Nicholson, 77, in a statement last year to the Sentinel. The donor of millions of dollars to UCF and other groups has been a fixture on advisory boards, including the Walt Disney Memorial Cancer Center and National Apartment Association for years. “He portrayed himself as a friend and urged me to invest, and I reviewed the company books and records that he had given me.”

The judgment comes months after the pilot school Brewer owned in Orlando, TraxAir, closed after instructors walked out, saying they had not been paid. In addition, Brewer’s lakefront home in Maitland was foreclosed on in February with a sales date set for May 9.