The courts will be the judge of whether Wild West World founder Thomas Etheredge is guilty of the 10 counts of securities fraud with which he has been charged. It’s possible that the 2007 bankruptcy of Etheredge’s amusement park involved no criminal wrongdoing, that its quick closure really was all Mother Nature’s fault. But too many people lost money and jobs in the Wild West World debacle for accountability to be optional. Etheredge’s arrest Wednesday was a reassuring sign that accountability, as well as more answers, may be forthcoming.
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35 Comments
Etheridge, all hat an no cattle (except for what he rustled from others).
Stupidity and fraud are not the same thing.
Kia,
“Stupidity and fraud are not the same thing.”
No, but they often travel together.
I think his history is disturbing.
It does make the idea that he was just plain stupid (vs. stupid and fraudulent)not as easy to buy.
The investors however were just plain stupid. I’d have more sympathy if there were falsified documents that would lead them to believe it was a good investment vs. a snake oil salesman.
“Mr_Kia” channels his inner Zen –
“Stupidity and fraud are not the same thing.”
Oh, but they work so well together.
Find a bunch of fat cat baby boomers who grew up on Hoppy and Gene and Roy and convince them there’s nothing kids love better than westerns on TV!
And here’s the bold new idea in theme parks: No Rides!!!
The people who invested in Mild West World were stupid.
I even give Etheridge a bit of credit for actually building the stupid thing. Most genuine frauds would simply take the money and a Brazilian mistress and get away with it.
Years ago I happened into the tiny town Wetumka, Oklahoma. They had a huge turn-out for a small-town fest consisting of local and regional musicians, hundreds of barbecue and Mexican food and Indian taco booths, an art fair with three billion plywood duck lawn ornaments….and it was called “Sucker Day.”
Apparently, in the 1920s or so, a con man showed up in Wetumka and raised all sorts of money from the townspeople to bring a circus to town. Sold all the tickets in advance. Printed up posters with elephants and tigers and trapeze artists and loose women in skimpy costumes….
And the day of the circus: nothing.
The next year they had a public picnic and established “Sucker Day.”
In a real Americana piece of irony, that small town acceptance of sucker-dom has evolved in something way bigger than that one day with a circus in the 20s.
The fraudmeister needs stupid people to feed on. It helps when the stupid people are greedy too! So what’s KIA saying, no paper trail, no fraud? Guess we’ll just have to let Madoff walk too.
They should try Etheredge in a different venue, like NYC.
I understand their mood is just about right for lynching.
“Etheredge made several hundred thousand dollars over the last two years running an alpaca ranch near San Antonio.”
The guy must be quite the huckster.
Etheredge should have hopped on O’Bama’s Money Train for some stimulus/bail out cash!
He can get his relative the Park City Mayor to vouch for his character, maybe.
Phantom
Posted April 30, 2009 at 2:09 pm | Permalink
The fraudmeister needs stupid people to feed on. It helps when the stupid people are greedy too! So what’s KIA saying, no paper trail, no fraud? Guess we’ll just have to let Madoff walk too.
—————————————————-
What I’m saying is no paper trail, really really stupid investors. I am sure Etheredge bears more than some responsibility.
But what’s the old saying, something like “A fool and his money are soon parted”?
If you have not prospectus, no balance sheet, just ” I think this is a great idea”..you’re pretty dumb or at the very least like taking alot of risk with your investment. This very may be criminal. But with what these people were suckered in with I don’t have alot of sympathy for them. I feel more sympathy for the folks that bought season passes when they saw buildings going up and rides going in.
Madoff on the other hand there was quite a paper trail (pretty detailed monthly statements)or maybe you haven’t heard that?
My first read on this two years ago was that Thomas was an egomaniac who insisted on doing everything his way and often did it himself – ignoring logic and advice.
He had no real business plan. Any investment in his idea was of highest risk. Operationally, he floundered.
He was stupid. The investors were stupid. Heck, I was stupid for buying six season passes.
Was there criminal intent? Hard to say. However, just like when a child gets killed in an accident – someone has to pay. It doesn’t really matter who is at fault, the jury wants SOMEONE to blame.
Unfortunately for Tommy, be it stupidity or fraud, he’s the only target.
“Heck, I was stupid for buying six season passes.”
They didn’t comp you those for playing Junior Samples?
I call it…suspicious…that Terry Fox, who DID seek a high profile in the past has seemed to disappear since that monument to hicks sank like a lead balloon.
How could Terry Fox’s disciple be involved in such questionable activity? It must be a hoax.
“KSGolfnut
Posted April 30, 2009 at 3:39 pm | Permalink
…Was there criminal intent? Hard to say. However, just like when a child gets killed in an accident – someone has to pay. It doesn’t really matter who is at fault, the jury wants SOMEONE to blame.”
Therein lies one of the biggest problems in our society today.
People need to realize that sometimes sh*t happens and it is not the direct fault of anybody and no one needs to nor should ‘pay’.
I don’t know if Tom Etheredge is guilty or not – that’s up to a jury to decide. But I am getting a good laugh at how stupid the investors were. It’s too bad they could not be charged with stupidity.
Of course, I expect Terry Fox to give another performance of his moral outrage.
Fox is going to keep his head low and his mouth shut for a while…. he doesn’t want too many people shining flashlights around his backyard right now.
In my opinion, Thomas Etheredge had an American Dream. It was to build an amusement park for the young people of Wichita and southern Kansas. Not a garish overblown amusement park but a modest place that could have been fun for all who yearned for that sort of thing. Frankly it was built on a shoestring without enough capitol and without access to a tax base that so-called “private-public partnerships” require these days.
Personally, Etheredge’s project struck my interest. I was waiting to go there when the rain started and never stopped that year. But it rained, and rained, and rained. Destiny stepped in as Humphrey Bogart said in Casablanca and Etheredge’s resources ran out.
Etheredge was operating like 20th century American builders, developers and inventors. Dream it and build it with your own money.
Don’t dream it and then get taxpayers to pay for your faulty double visions and nightmare dreams.
For example, the new downtown unwanted, unneeded Intrust ice hockey arena was the dream of a small coterie of then Wichita cheerleaders who promised all kinds of benefits if hardworking Sedgwick County taxpayers would only hand over a half billion dollars in sales taxes for this grotesque, ugly glass walled building facing southwest towards tornado alley.
SO, YOU CHOOSE. WHICH WAS ETHICALLY RIGHT AND WHICH WAS ETHICALLY WRONG?
Thomas Etheredge trying to build an American dream while promising nothing more to his supporters of trying to do his personal best,
OR
A small group of arena cheerleaders making bloated promises all at Sedgwick County taxpayers expense where even $500,000,000.35 was not enough to publicly build an arena with parking. Try to find these cheerleaders now … most have left town or are in hiding.
Good points JWink.
Why aren’t those people that are after Etheredge to hold him ‘accountable’ after the arena proponents and developers to hold them accountable for cost overruns, missed projections, failing to consider parking, secret contracts, etc…
I remember Ewing Kauffman from the days he was building the Kansas City Royals baseball team. The Royals were then still playing at old Kansas City Muehlbach stadium on the southeast side.
How did Mr. K accumulate the money to get into baseball? The story was that back in the 1950’s, this modest man and his wife Muriel would drive down to the Texas coast and pick up sea shells in the trunk of their automobile. They would then return to Kansas City and in their basement, grind these shells into calcium pills at the beginning of the health movement.
As Ewing’s business began to grow, he asked his friends for $500 loans which he kept track of on napkins from a Kansas City coffee shop. By coincidence, in the middle 1960’s, I met Mr. K himself and several people who made those early loans to him. It was said that within a few years, all became members of the Ewing Kauffman Millionaires Club.
What’s my point? Some of these old time entrepreneurs were successful, some weren’t. But at least they weren’t gambling with your hard earned tax money.
Brian Nuevo: I wish I knew answers to your question.
To that I would add that when an investment didn’t pan out and they lost money, they would not point the finger everywhere else. Rather they would kick themselves for taking a bad investment, not thinking the deal all the way through, or getting caughtup in a scheme that was too good to be true.
They knew it was their choice where to put their money, and if they lost it it was their own fault (fraud aside) for making a bad investment.
I have a question…why did they have to arrest him getting off a plane. Was he in hiding?
Jwink you just can’t stand that they were all con men can you. I suppose you still think that his buddy Terry Fox wasn’t really hurting the chuch there either huh?
You are absolutely right JWink. Etheridge is a man who can get things done. And those kind are few and far between.
Now, did he swindle anyone? That will come out in the wash. He certainly left a lot of folks holding the bag, including Fox’s Summit Church. But he went bankrupt himself because of WWW, so it’s not like he is some CEO with a golden parachute.
“I have a question…why did they have to arrest him getting off a plane. Was he in hiding?”
VERY good for you political mama. GOOD catch!
That sure sounds about right. He’s hiding out somewhere and the law catches his name on a flight manifest.
Thank you editors, for granting my request for this thread.
Hmmmmm…..
They took him in Texas.
He MAY have the attention of the Feds. This looks especially likely since he was taken out of state and has waived for extradition back to Kansas.
This man is in some very serious trouble is my thinking.
Did Etheridge mean to defraud fundies? Maybe not, but we all know fundies are so gullible that he might have accidentally defrauded them.
You may have noticed Jed T-O-T-T, that we are not gullible enough to believe your “stories”.
I know one of his investors, they are not rich and were not alone but do feel that they were deceived.
But more in a different sense then simply the money invested. It came more from yet another claim of Etheredge’s. One of faith and using it to make people feel he was trustworthy. He had went out to churches and got investors.
Now the former operation of Etheredge the Prairie Rose was a great venue. It truly did draw to this region of Kansas. Not just locally but from around the world, it appealed more to the old movie concept of the West than the actual reality. But for most even in the United States that was their concept of the West.
JWink
Posted April 30, 2009 at 7:17 pm | Permalink
I remember Ewing Kauffman
—————————————————-
Time for Ewing Kauffman’s and the rest of the millionaires he created survivors to give back to the rest of us everything they stole. Those were public beaches. Who did he think he was collecting more than his fair share of shells?
(See Culture War thread)
Outie,
“You may have noticed Jed T-O-T-T, that we are not gullible enough to believe your “stories”.”
Yes, I’ve noticed, and I find it intriguing. All those total fictions you swear are absolute eternal truths, and you refuse to believe what’s right in front of you. Strange, very strange.
what is T-O-T-T?
Acronym Definition
TOTT Talk of the Town
TOTT Testing on the Toilet (Google)
TOTT Tales of the Tempest (video game)
TOTT Think on These Things
TOTT Tool of the Trade (Geocaching)
TOTT Tip of the Tongue
TOTT Tavern on the Tracks (Charlotte, NC)
Mr. Kia says: “Time for Ewing Kauffman and all those other millionaires he created to start giving back to the rest of us …”
Ewing Kauffman reminded my of Sam Walton, a modest man from a modest background and remained true to those basic principles of thrift through his life of business success.
Give back? I think his life was a continuous “give back” over the years. His original business of preparing calcium pills was done in his basement with a common kitchen grinder … grinding grinding grinding to make calcium powder to sell.
He named his company Marion Laboratories using his middle name to disguise the fact his was originally a one man company. After his company grew ever larger into one of Kansas City’s largest companies, he sold to Merrill-Dow Pharmaceuticals making, it was said, another 300 millionaires.
Early on after success started to shine on Mr. Kauffman, he entered the baseball business by creating or purchasing the Kansas City Royals (baseball history buffs can explain), played a few seasons in the old Muehlbach baseball stadium on the near east side of Kansas City. The Muehlbach name was related to the Muehlbach Hotel and Muehlbach Beer of Kansas City. Ewing Kauffman and Lamar Hunt convinced Kansas City’s city council to build the Truman Sports Complex with separate baseball and football stadiums for the Royals and Chiefs with shared parking some 10 miles east near Raytown.
The examples convince me that when private individuals such as Ewing Kauffman and Lamar Hunt spend their money for public purposes, the public receives multiple times the value of the money invested.
When government takes your hard earned taxes for public purpose, the government takes half or more for its voracious appetite and returns only a fraction thereof.
So I think Ewing Marion Kauffman gave back much more than he received when he was grinding, grinding, grinding those calcium sea shells in his basement in the 1950’s.