Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Judge orders armored transport company deliver transfer records
We may soon learn more about the mysterious transfer of $180,616 from Penn Dutch’s Hollywood store more than a month after it closed for good last fall.
The armored company that transported the money has been ordered to turn over records that could reveal who authorized the transfer and where the money is today.
In a Sept. 4 order, Circuit Judge Jack Tuter gave Loomis Transport US 21 days to turn over records connected to the mysterious transfer on Oct. 24.
The order was sought by Philip Von Kahle of Fort Lauderdale-based Michael Moecker & Associates, an insolvency firm assigned by Penn Dutch’s owners last September to oversee distribution of any remaining assets to creditors left unpaid after the longtime meat and seafood retailer’s stores in Margate and Hollywood were permanently closed.
The transport of $180,616 — which was not listed among assets turned over to Von Kahle — came to light when Von Kahle obtained a spreadsheet from Loomis documenting near-daily cash pickups from the two Penn Dutch locations in 2019. Those pickups stopped in early September after state health officials found listeria contamination at the two locations and ordered the stores to close.
Then on Oct. 24, a Loomis driver logged a pickup of $180,616 from the location.
On July 28, Loomis branch manager Rasheeda Samad was sworn into a teleconference deposition and offered few answers to Von Kahle lawyer Jason Slatkin’s questions about the transfer.
No, Samad said, she didn’t have records on hand identifying who called Loomis and handed over three bags containing a total of $180,616. No, she didn’t know where the money went after Loomis dropped it off at the Miami Lakes offices of another armored transport company called GardaWorld. No, she didn’t know why Penn Dutch’s bank, Bank of America, had no record of a deposit even though Loomis provided a document indicating that’s where the money ultimately went.
But she did say that Loomis likely had additional documents that could help answer some of those questions, and she agreed to turn them over to Von Kahle. However, Von Kahle on Sept. 2 asked Tuter to order Loomis to turn over those documents, saying the company had ignored “repeated emails and telephone calls” since the deposition.
Tuter’s Sept. 3 order canceled a scheduled Sept. 8 hearing on the matter, stating that Loomis had agreed to turn over the documents.
None of the principal attorneys involved in the case responded to questions or requests for comment.
Miami Lakes-based attorney Douglas J. Jeffrey, who is seeking to recover $30,000 for his client, Balter Meat Company, said by email that Von Kahle “wouldn’t be pushing this inquiry unless he strongly felt someone took that cash.”
Jeffrey has said previously that this case is unusual because of the adversity that has developed between Von Kahle and two of Penn Dutch’s co-owners, William and Paul Salsburg, members of the stores’ founding Salsburg family and principals of W&P Holdings LLC, which owned the Hollywood store property.
In a typical state court version of a dissolution proceeding, known as an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors, a dissolving company’s owners work closely with the firm they select to oversee the dissolution, Jeffrey said.
But in this case, co-owners William and Paul Salsburg decided to sue Von Kahle and his firm in federal court.
The brothers turned against Von Kahle as part of a series of legal moves that began just days after Penn Dutch closed its doors for good. That’s when two produce suppliers filed a federal lawsuit against Penn Dutch and each of the seven co-owning Salsburg family members for $480,135 in unpaid bills. The suppliers invoked a federal law known as the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act of 1930 PACA that put them first in line to collect money owed, ahead of any other creditors, including Penn Dutch’s employees whose final paychecks bounced. The PACA law also extended liability to the company owners as individuals.
At an Oct. 18 court hearing, Von Kahle was surprised to learn that W&P Holdings was in the process of selling the Hollywood real estate and using the proceeds to pay off the produce suppliers. At that early stage of the dissolution, Von Kahle was still determining how to clean up the listeria contamination and preserve the stores’ remaining assets for eventual sale.
After selling the real estate for $3.73 million on Nov. 7, W&P Holdings paid the produce suppliers’ claims and persuaded them to sign over their PACA “super priority” creditor status.
W&P Holdings then substituted itself for the produce suppliers in the lawsuit, removed the individual Salsburgs as defendants and named Moecker and Von Kahle as defendants along with Penn Dutch. In a new version of the suit filed in July, W&P claimed it now has PACA status and should be first in line to receive Penn Dutch’s remaining assets — ahead of other unpaid local suppliers and even ahead of longtime employees whose final checks bounced.
Von Kahle responded by asking the court to dismiss W&P’s suit, arguing that PACA protections weren’t meant to be transferred to entities that aren’t produce suppliers.
“It is inconceivable that Congress intended that W&P be able to maintain this PACA lawsuit, particularly as a sword to effectively deprive real creditors — including former employees who lived paycheck-to-paycheck and on whose backs the Salsburgs built Penn Dutch into a successful business — from receiving payment through the contrived ‘PACA assignments,’” Von Kahle’s filing states.