Just-Fired NHL Coach Sues Bank Of America For $3 Million
“Hey guys… anyone know who’s hiring?”
According to Courthouse News [via MarketWatch], Laviollette was fresh of a championship season with the Carolina Hurricanes in real-estate-mad 2006 when BofA approached him with an investment proposal.
At the time, the coach, who would eventually join the Flyers in late 2009, already owned a house in North Carolina and two properties in Florida. He alleges the bank convinced him and his wife to “leverage all of the available equity in the properties, including their primary residence, through several high-interest loans and then to invest these loan proceeds in other purportedly sound, but ultimately high-risk, investments.”
Laviolette says documentation provided by the bank included very tempting projections of real estate and investment values, and that, per the complaint, “by leveraging the properties, the Laviolettes would increase their net worth resulting from these assets from $8,108,494.00 after 30 years to $22,093,833.00 – a gain of nearly $14 million.”
He alleges that the bank “artificially inflated” the value of the properties in the investment and claims he was told it would “build great wealth with minimum risk,” but that ultimately the investments “not only failed to produce the projected high rate of return needed to cover the loan interest, they utterly collapsed, resulting in a loss of the principal investment as well.”
The Laviolettes also say they were not advised that they would need to contribute money each month in order to reach the $22 million goal set out in the BofA documents.
Though the suit is just coming to be public knowledge now, it was filed in late September, weeks before Laviolette was given the heave-ho in favor of former Flyer Craig Berube.
Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.
