$5.3M returned to clients of Jacksonville businessman nearly burned to death in car fire
A lengthy court fight involving clients of a Jacksonville businessman who spent months comatose with millions of dollars unaccounted for has apparently ended with customers recovering about 79 cents of each dollar owed.
Notices sent this week told 28 clients of Robert Hetsler that Circuit Judge Bruce R. Anderson had approved a final report from a liquidator hired to sell off Hetsler’s possessions to pay them.
The liquidating company, its attorneys and attorneys for Hetsler’s clients “are hereby discharged from further obligations,” the judge wrote in an order signed late last month.
Hetsler nearly died when an unexplained fire consumed his car outside a closed San Marco business in November 2017, covering most of his body with third-degree burns and leaving crippling injuries.
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He regained consciousness long after the clients had filed claims each demanding tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars they had entrusted him to handle —– but that no one could put their hands on.
Accused by clients’ attorneys of operating a Ponzi scheme, he was interviewed by FBI agents but not charged with a crime.
Hetsler ran a business that held profits from clients’ real estate deals until they could be reinvested without paying income taxes. But he had used the money to finance other deals without leaving directions for recovering clients’ money if he wasn’t available.
Clients of his tax-saving service, called a “1031 exchange” after a section of the tax code allowing it, said they had lost about $6.5 million.
Hetsler agreed to surrender his own real estate and investment accounts, together worth at least $7.5 million, as part of a settlement negotiated in 2019.
But converting those assets for top dollar was slow and the lawyers and experts involved in finalizing the case were costly.
Hetsler’s land and accounts eventually yielded almost $8.1 million, but legal fees topped $1.3 million and about $750,000 more went to fees for the liquidator.
Taxes ate another $78,000 of the proceeds, property maintenance cost $41,000 and countless other costs until the money left for Hetsler’s clients dwindled to about $5.3 million.
The clients’ money was returned in a series of installments, the last one parceling out a final $307,000 approved last month after expenses were paid.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: $5.3M returned, lawsuit around burned Jacksonville businessman closed
