The list of Phezer’s local creditors is long. It includes Bob Krautsak, partner with Patriot Steel. Patriot sold Phezer steel beams, plates sheets and angle iron used in the construction of 40-foot-long stainless steel tanks.
Krautsak said his business relationship with Phezer started to sour in June 2008. Slow payment evolved into nonpayment, and checks bounced, he said.
“We had a few decent-sized orders with them in the fall of 2007, and there wasn’t a problem,” Krautsak said. “But in June 2008, things started to change. I’m out $180,000, … and he actually wanted me to sell him more material. I had another $380,000 on order with him [when Phezer shut down].”
Robin Pendergrast of RFP Photography Inc. in Crystal Lake said he is owed $28,000 for photos and broadcast-quality video promoting a Phezer offshoot, Alluma-log fire logs.
“They ought to be in jail for what they’ve done to people like me,” Pendergrast said. “That money came out of my pocket and my profits.”
Ed Konopasek, owner of Eagle Fastener in Crystal Lake, said he was out $10,000 worth of screws, nuts and bolts, which he thinks Phelan turned into cash by selling them for scrap, as alleged in the bankruptcy motion

A local business man declares bankruptcy and screwed his creditors he bought metal on credit and then sold it as scrap to China. Minor scandal big deal. However

. He also stated that the company was not going out of business or claiming bankruptcy.
“I do not believe in this and I always pay my debts,” Phelan wrote.
But former employees claim they still are owed money as well.
Welder James Greinke, 49, said Phezer owes him more than $1,300 for medical premiums and about $5,622 in lost wages. Greinke said he had to move out of his Round Lake Beach home after the bank foreclosed on it in February. He also said employees learned that their health insurance was canceled Aug. 1, 2008 – after an employee’s wife called in to report coverage problems with their children’s school physicals. He is among those who have filed a claim with Illinois Department of Labor.
“If somebody told me that one man could have done all this damage, I’d have thought not,” Grienke said.
Both Victor and Phelan have separate trial dates before Judge Charles Weech scheduled for November. The bankruptcy court proceedings are ongoing.

http://www.nwherald.com/articles/2009/09/23/r_zsdhm7ubrx6dpmvyno4kyw/index.xml

My Bold Phelan’s employees also believed him too James Greinke lost $5,622 in lost wages and $1,300 for medical Premiums National Health insurance if we had it could have reduced his debt.
Better laws to punish financial funny business would help too Phelan is only being charged with misdemeanors.
Steal a few hundred bucks with a gun you get 10 years, steal a few hundred thousand dollars with a pen you get misdemeanors? As regular people lose their homes.
We need financial reform, we need healthcare, we need to charge people like Phelan with felonies. Rep Melissa Bean has been a problem blocking change favoring business however this scandal changes things.
We win when we get personal stories about healthcare about hard working people losing their homes as fat cats laugh all the way to the bank.
We need to push stories like this and address the problems presented. If we have a Primary challenger for Melissa Bean we now have the perfect local issues to run on.