Witness Protection gave a N.Y. mobster a new life. He used it to open Toby Keith restaurants. Then came the fraud allegations and losses. Now, his fingerprints are on another nationwide restaurant collapse with a new country music star: Rascal Flatts.
Rascal Flatts' only connection to the restaurants was its name. Sheppard Sloan said the band had no ownership stake in the restaurants.
RF Restaurants opened its first Rascal Flatts restaurant in Stamford, Connecticut, in August 2017. It offered a Southern-fried menu and a rockabilly roster of country concerts. According to news reports, the comfort food and down-home feel struck a chord with customers and fans of the band, known as Flattheads.
A video shows Tawny Costa at a Foxborough, Massachusetts, Board of Selectmen meeting on Jan. 23, 2018.Costa and Burka appeared to bring culinary and business savvy to the table. And they clearly passed muster with Rascal Flatts' business managers, whose job is to protect the interests of the three-man band, which has an estimated net worth of $150 million.
Burka owned development and investment companies. He had launched restaurants in Tempe and Chandler. In 2008, he promoted a concert tied to Super Bowl XLII featuring big-name rock, pop and country acts. Costa declined to answer a list of questions delivered to her Scottsdale attorney. The lawyer, Shawn Richter, is also Capri's personal counsel.Richter said Burka mischaracterized his role in the company.
In lawsuits against the company, mall owners and developers contended RF Restaurants breached contracts and failed to pay rent on the Rascal Flatts projects."Those are lawsuits I have to defend, because my name is associated with them," Burka said. "My name is on the lease ... I'm not the big owner in the business. I'm small. I'm a minority. It was Tawny.
Burka claimed his name was invoked without his knowledge and his signature was forged on documents, including a contract. Burka acknowledged making phone calls to mall owners and meeting them to initiate projects. But he said he was not involved in the day-to-day management or construction of projects.
"I said, 'What the hell are you talking about? You're a manager of the company,'" Burka said. "In cases where there was money involved … she would step up and say, 'No, no. I'm the owner. I'm the manager.'" Burka confirmed he has been spending a lot of time in Colombia. His social media pages, including Facebook, are loaded with pictures of international destinations, including Europe and South America, posted in the past year.
Roshto and another project manager hired by Capri said they quickly realized he showed no interest in building Rascal Flatts restaurants. Yates, who does not have a contractor's license, lives in Apache Junction. He said he makes his living serving as a middleman between contractors and project owners.
Documents and interviews with subcontractors and developers in multiple cities confirmed their roles. Roshto's license gave RF Restaurants access to job sites across the country. Yates hired contractors, collected bids and rented equipment. The contract gave Yates permission to operate under Roshto's license. It authorized Yates to schedule and supervise subcontractors on the restaurant projects.
Roshto said he is proud of his company, which he has built up over the past 10 years. Ussher Construction specializes in home remodels and small commercial projects. The Rascal Flatts project at the Flats East in Cleveland fell behind schedule in January 2018 and developers launched a flurry of legal action.When the Rascal Flatts project fell behind schedule in 2018 and the developer launched a flurry of legal action, officials discovered they once more were locked in a financial battle with Capri.
The dispute illustrated the complexity of the deals Capri had structured — and the difficulty in holding anybody accountable for work on the projects. "Ray, you have no contract with Rob Clarke. You have no contract with the land owner. Your contract is with us. We hired you ... No performance bond was provided. You have nothing, OK?"If the Cleveland project was bad, Pittsburgh's was worse — at least for developers.
"Everything is on hold right now because we put in for paperwork that says we are at 50 percent. ... They are jacking us around because they owe us money, OK? And it took six weeks to go tell us that. All the while, all the while we thought it was being paid." The recordings are not date- and time-stamped. Some are cut off mid-conversation. A few last less than 2 minutes. Others are longer than 6 minutes.confirmed the recordings came from a cellphone used by Capri. The same cellphone was used to send texts to Roshto.
When Roshto said in August he would contact developers and pull his license from all six jobs, Capri accused him of extortion. Roshto said he learned Capri was using his license when Florida state investigators threatened to fine him. Goodkin said the mall won a $780,000 judgment against RF Restaurants and a restraining order so it could negotiate a new lease with a new tenant.
Workers sued Capri and his companies. Even when they won substantial judgments against Capri, payments weren't often made, court records show. In the show, the crime family takes over a sporting goods store and jukes the owner's credit line with no intention of paying it back. It squeezed every asset out of the store until it went under. A character refers to it as "planned bankruptcy."
By his own admission, Gioia was a regular racket boy at 12, loan-sharking, bookmaking, stealing cars and doing the occasional stickup. He first shot someone at 18 and became a “made man” in 1991 at 24. And she is accused in a lawsuit of helping Capri defraud creditors by transferring his upscale Scottsdale condominium to a shell company.
He said Costa helps raise money for Phoenix Children's Hospital and sponsors local elementary and high school parent associations through her businesses.posing as other people to gather information for Capri. She later acknowledged the ruse and described herself as Capri's girlfriend and his facilitator.Costa in June obtained a license to sell real estate in Arizona and is listed as a salesperson with a Phoenix residential real estate firm.
Stone said in his claim restaurant staff told him to send invoices and emails to Costa. Stone said when she didn't respond, the general manager texted him Capri's phone number and told him Capri would pay. a string of texts from the general manager that included Capri's cell phone number. "It doesn't make any sense to me," Burka said of Capri. "How does a person like this, who is walking around, affecting people's lives, damaging people's lives ... still continue?"
Yates said he went to the FBI last year in Florida when it became clear projects were going to fold. He said authorities "laughed at him" and didn't take his complaints seriously.
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