Break-in at 1Point offices depletes assets further

Despite burglary, auction raises more than $60k

Email | Print By E. Thomas Wood

11-14-2006 5:22 PM —

People who are owed money by bankrupt employee benefits firm 1Point Solutions and its jailed leader, Barry Stokes, will now get even fewer pennies on the dollar.

Someone broke into 1Point's Bellevue office overnight, stealing office equipment that was supposed to be auctioned off today to pay some portion of the company's $12 million or more in debts. Metro Police spokesperson Don Aaron said auctioneer Bobby Colson discovered this morning that a glass door at the rear of the facility had been smashed open and that four computers and eight flat-screen monitors were missing.

John McLemore, the bankruptcy trustee who arranged for today's auction, told NashvillePost.com that a policeman on the scene suspected the heist was the work of "somebody who does this for a living." The glass door was not covered by the building's alarm system, and the perpetrator avoided motion detectors in the hallway by using a box-cutter to chop through wallboards as he moved from room to room. McLemore said the thief would have had an opportunity to case the joint yesterday when the building was open for buyers to view the goods.

"The good news is that the point of entry wasn't where the good stuff was, in the front," McLemore observed. There were new Dell computers still in their boxes among the goodies at the front of the office, but the ones taken were used.

The auction went on for seven hours before ending late this afternoon. "It was a good sale," the trustee said. "They were packed in like sardines." Some 210 registered bidders spent more than $60,000 in the course of the day.

The auction of a house and steel building owned by Stokes in Dickson is set for December 14, and then on December 16 comes what McLemore is proudly calling "the beaver-skin coat sale" -- the auction of Stokes' personal possessions, including the now-famous coat and other luxury items.