Judge denies second request for assets from Dulos estate
A judge has denied Gloria Farber’s second attempt to require the estate of Fotis Dulos turn over any available assets to satisfy a $1.7 million judgment she won against the former high-end developer’s company, the Fore Group.
Since winning the judgment in June 2020, Farber’s attorney, Richard Weinstein, said she has not received any money from the estate.
“It is exactly as I anticipated, he (Fotis Dulos) had no money and lived off his father-in-law for as long as he could,” Weinstein said a few weeks ago. Weinstein and a trustee dealing with the financial proceedings involving Farber and Fotis Dulos filed a second demand on Aug. 17 for the $1.7 million after they learned the estate received “a small check,” Weinstein said.
Farber sued Fotis Dulos in 2018 on the grounds he failed to pay back business loans as he was embroiled in a protracted and acrimonious divorce and custody battle with her daughter, Jennifer Dulos.
As the lawsuit and divorce were proceeding, Jennifer Dulos disappeared on May 24, 2019. She was never found and is presumed dead. Fotis Dulos died on Jan. 30, 2020, several weeks after he was charged with murder and kidnapping in connection with the disappearance.
Farber contended in the lawsuit that Fotis Dulos has repeatedly borrowed large sums of money from her husband Hilliard Farber, but failed to pay the money back after her husband died in 2017.
The lawsuit went to trial in December 2019, five months after Jennifer Dulos went missing. Hartford Superior Court Judge Cesar Noble ruled in June 2020 that Fotis Dulos and the Fore Group owed Farber $1.7 million in business loans. Attorneys for Farber filed paperwork in November demanding that the estate pay the $1.7 million judgment. Noble granted the demand shortly thereafter, court records show.
Noble cited his November ruling in a brief order denying the second attempt to collect the money issued Aug. 23.
Weinstein is still hoping to recoup some funds by preventing Fore Group investor Harry Masiello, a friend of Fotis Dulos, from foreclosing on a property owned by the company at 585 Deercliff in Avon. Masiello contended in court papers that he invested $600,000 in the development of the property and was never paid back. That case remains pending.
Weinstein is battling the foreclosure on the grounds it is questionable as to whether Masiello actually invested the money, and Farber has the first claim on any assets owned by Fotis Dulos due to the judgment.
Farber was able to receive $1.8 million from the sale of 4 Jefferson Crossing in Farmington, the former home of Fotis and Jennifer Dulos. The Farber family put up assets and gave the couple a loan to build the house in 2012.
Farber paid off the mortgage in July 2019 as police were searching for her daughter and then later foreclosed on the home.