Sale of National Lampoon may help investors

The sale of National Lampoon and a stock sale has netted $3.75 million for the bankruptcy trustee trying to recover money for investors who lost $208 million in the long-running Akron-area Fair Finance Co. scandal.

Now, trustee Brian Bash is attempting to sell a movie script called National Lampoon’s Dead Serious for $150,000.

It’s unclear how much of the incoming cash will trickle down to investors.

Bash couldn’t be reached for comment.

The $3.75 million was expected, as Bash had worked out a settlement with National Lampoon two years ago, with the California company agreeing to pay $3 million to the defunct Akron company’s estate. He also received $750,000 through the sale of National Lampoon stock.

The former owners of National Lampoon also ran Fair Finance.

Philadelphia-based PalmStar Media last month bought the assets of National Lampoon, including the trademark and “a library of print, audio and movie content spanning nearly 50 years,” Deadline.com reported.

Bankruptcy court records show that Bash wants to sell the script National Lampoon’s Dead Serious to Rowland Stone Media of Los Angeles. The plot of the film is unknown, but court records indicate that producers wanted actor Jerry Lewis to play a part in the movie and had agreed to pay him $50,000 for one day of work.

The film was to be shot in Las Vegas.

Fair Finance was forced into bankruptcy in February 2010 after FBI raids the week of Thanksgiving 2009 closed the business down. It never reopened.

The raids followed federal wiretaps on owners Tim Durham and James Cochran and an October 2009 story by the Indianapolis Business Journal that investigated Durham and his use of Fair Finance as a source of money that paid for a mansion, luxury cars, parties and more.

Durham and Cochran bought Fair Finance in January 2002 from the Fair family, which founded the business in 1934. By 2003, Fair Finance was being operated as a Ponzi scheme, prosecutors said.

Durham was sentenced to 50 years in prison, while Cochran got a 25-year sentence. Another company executive, Rick Snow, received a 10-year prison sentence.