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Aspen home part of court order in race car driver fraud case

This rental home at 269 Park Avenue in Aspen is being advertised for $65,000 a month, while the bulk of the payments, as ordered by a federal judge, are to go into a court-managed account.
Anna Stonehouse/The Aspen Times |

The advertised monthly rent of $65,000 for an Aspen home won’t go to its owners, but instead the bulk of it has been court ordered to be placed in a account that is part of a civil fraud case.

Located at 269 Park Ave. in Aspen, the residence is part of a federal lawsuit in Nevada by the Federal Trade Commission against Scott Tucker, a racecar driver whose payday loan company was found civilly liable for misleading low-income borrowers.

As part of U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro’s granting of a summary judgment by the FTC, which was issued Sept. 30, the judge ordered Tucker and his associated businesses to pay nearly $1.3 billion to the commission.



Tucker subsequently filed a notice of appeal on Nov. 29. The next day, Navarro issued a court finding that the Tucker-controlled Park 269 LLC, which owns the home, hadn’t satisfied an $8 million payment to the FTC as part of the September ruling.

The judge has appointed a court “monitor” to work with the home’s rental broker to administer “all rental income deposited into the Park 269 account and the only allowable disbursements from that account to be reasonable expenses, as coordinated by the property management company with the cooperation of (Scott and his wife, Kim Tucker), associated with the maintenance, upkeep and taxes owed by Park 269 LLC,” the order states.




Tucker’s LLC bought the 5,498-square-foot Aspen home for $8 million, according to Pitkin County property records.

Brittanie Rockhill of Compass Aspen Real Estate is the listing agent for the rental home. She was traveling and could not be immediately reached Wednesday.

Tucker also faces criminal charges related to his payday lending firm, which prosecutors claim supported a lavish lifestyle.

Court documents show Tucker and business associate Timothy Muir pleaded guilty Friday in a New York federal court to 14 criminal counts contained in what’s called a “superseding indictment,” meaning the prosecution added new charges to the original indictment.

Prosecutors say Tucker engaged in predatory lending by providing high-interest loans, some charging more than 700 percent interest, to poor people. The practice lasted from 1997 through August 2013, according to the original indictment that was delivered Feb. 8.

Tucker, 54, and Muir face as many as 20 years in prison if convicted of the charges, which include conspiracy to collect unlawful debts, collection of unlawful debts and false disclosures.

Tucker is a full-time resident of Kansas. He has competed in such racecar events as the Ferrari Challenge, Rolex Sports Car Series and American Le Mans Series.

rcarroll@aspentimes.com